The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) has become a menace to Nigerians.

EFCC harassing people in Nigeria is now the next nightmare after SARS….breaking into people’s houses and acting like arm robbers demanding to gain access to people’s phones and laptops mostly at ungodly hours of the day.

This was how SARS started humiliating and arresting innocent citizens until they got out of hand. These days, it is difficult to differentiate between robbers and men of the EFCC as they seem to adopt the same tactics in carrying out their operations.

The news of EFCC harassing people in major cities in Nigeria started trending early this year on social media. Several people have made complaints concerning officials of the EFCC barging into their homes and hotel rooms at odd hours of the day, unannounced. These men do not knock on doors or wait to be invited in. They start demanding passwords to phones and laptops and searching every nook and cranny not leaving any stone unturned.

On February 4, 2021, EFCC operatives stormed 1004 Estate, in Victori Island to arrest suspected fraudsters. They shot sporadically into the air and moved from one apartment to the other. A young man reportedly tried evading arrest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) operatives. He jumped from the sixth floor and died.

BBNaija’s Dorathy Bachor and members of her family recently got an unannounced visit from EFCC. On her instastories, Dorathy said she ran out of her room after hearing a loud bang to find EFCC officials in her living room. They told her they were looking for someone who ran into her estate, and then asked her to stay in, lock her door and not say a word.

Dorathy is not the first person to experience this.

In July, filmmaker Biodun Stephen also narrated how officials of the EFCC, “dressed in black with wielding weapons”, barged into her hotel room at 3:00 am claiming to be looking for someone, and then apologizing because she turned out not to be who they were looking for. In 2019, officials of the EFCC raided a nightclub and arrested 94 suspected fraudsters. In 2020, they rounded up 89 persons suspected to be involved in cybercrime at 360, a nightclub located in Ibadan. To date, many innocent people who were unlawfully arrested are yet to get a fair trial or get access to a lawyer.

EFCC have abandoned their primary assignment of apprehending corrupt political officials and interrogating the corruption scandals which rocked almost all the government parastatals.

But have extended to harassing citizens who make the mistake of appearing fresh, young, and have the guts to have laptops and phones.

Some argued that EFCC was working based on intelligence reports and if you are not a confirmed suspect they won’t come knocking. I disagree with this. Their Gestapo style of harassing people in their homes and on the roads is illegal. Turning people’s homes upside down without a search warrant is Illegal.

This new trend by EFCC is pure evil. Fighting crime should be INTELLIGENCE-LED, not just harassing people. They should devise a method to arrest internet fraudsters if they intend to curb the rate of fraud in the country.

In October 2019, an expectant father accused EFCC officials of breaking into his home in the middle of the night to search without a warrant. The man said he was at his home in Olokuta, Abeokuta when some men forcefully broke into his house using a hammer between the hours of 3 am to 5 am.

He said he was afraid that they were armed robbers, so he hid in the guest bedroom with his pregnant wife as the men broke in through the sitting room window. Who acts this way if not thieves?

According to him, the intruders claimed to be EFCC officials looking for “Yahoo boys”, but they had no form of identification, neither did they have a search warrant.

Even without a search warrant, the victim alleged that they searched his house, damaged things, then left without as much as an apology.

The world has revolved around Technology. Some people do legitimate jobs online from home? That someone is working from home with a laptop doesn’t make them an internet fraudster.

This menace created by EFCC is still going on today because the country lacks a good judiciary system. No punishments/consequences for whatever action is carried out by these law enforcement agencies.

If EFCC is keen on ridding the country from corruption, they should interrogate and raid houses of most of the top politicians who own expensive properties in Abuja, Lagos, and even outside the country.

I work from home; I work with my laptop and my phones and I’m not an internet fraudster.

We urge the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission; Mr. Ibrahim Magu, to take a thorough look at these complaints and put a stop to this harassment and unlawful breaking into people’s homes.

The commission should look for ways to enforce good working ethics among its personnel.

Have you or anyone close to you experienced any form of harassment from EFFC? What happened and what were your reactions? Kindly share your experience with us.