The Rot In EFCC Benin Zonal Office By Douglas Ogbankwa Esq. – TheNigerialawyer

I have been disturbed in my spirit to expose the shenanigans and
illegalities being perpetrated by one Larry Aso Esq, the Zonal Head
of Legal Services of EFCC Benin Zonal Office.
Larry Aso is proud, arrogant, haughty and abusive to even
Lawyers.

Not even the Attorney General of the Federation will treat
Lawyers in the way and manner Mr. Aso treat lawyers, aside from the
syndicate of Lawyers, used to force suspects to plea bargain.
He even threatened to ban a Lawyer from coming to the EFCC Benin
Zonal Office. His reason?

The Lawyer challenged the culture of forcing suspects to plea
bargain, get them convicted, go to prison and lose their properties
and monies to the EFCC; without a full trial, when that is their
intention as per communication with relatives.

If Leaders of Thoughts in Edo and Delta do not rise up to the
impunity being perpetrated by the EFCC in Benin under the watch of
Mr. ASO, a high proportion of young men in the two States will be
ex-convicts.

In one particular case, when some suspects were arrested from
Delta State, the only Hausa Fulani suspect was not re-invited and
was thus left off the hook, Mr. Larry Aso rail rolled 17 of the
above-named suspects to the Federal High Court ,Asaba ,2 days to
the commencement of the Court’s Annual Vacation ,forced them to
plea bargain,with all the 17 of them represented by one Lawyer
,convicted all of them and they are wallowing in Ogwai chukwu
prison as I write this piece.

What a travesty of Justice?

Mr. Aso has maintained a situation in EFCC Benin where suspects
are detained for weeks and sometimes months.

The EFCC will take upto 7 days to verify your surety. In most
Agencies of Government, when you have an issue with the Head of the
Agency, you go to the Head of Legal Services for intervention, in
the Benin Zonal Office of the EFCC, Mr. Aso is the problem.

Another shocking thing is the impunity with which he defends his
unlawyerly conduct, sounding like the Nazi Dictator -Adolf Hitler,
Larry Aso will tell you off with such carefree indignation, that
you can go anywhere if you wished.

The penchant for the EFCC Benin to insist on a Level 16 Civil
Servant as Surety, while the Administration of Criminal Justice Act
provides that you can get bail, either with or without a Surety, is
an affront on our sensibilities as a people. What an audacious
circumvention of the Law?

The worst part is that most of these Matters do not have
Complainants. They are products of indiscriminate arrests of
freeborn’s of our land treated worse than illegal immigrants, by
their prolonged and continuous detentions, without lawful
basis.

Another shameful conduct of Mr. Aso and his cohorts are their
penchant for naked lies even on Oath.If you fail to plea bargain
they will depose to bogus lies in a Counter Affidavit to your Bail
that you are a flight risk, whereas, you came to their office
yourself, after your administrative bail.

If these shenanigans continue, these suspects will not bother
consulting a Lawyer aside the ambulance-chasing pool of conniving
Lawyers, some which are surprisingly prominent Lawyers that Larry
Aso and his cohorts use for convicting our sons.

If the EFCC Acting Chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Magu does not remove
Mr. Larry Aso from the EFCC Benin Zonal Office now, then it may be
presumed that there is an official imprimatur to Mr. Aso’s on
slaught on our people and the debauncery with which he perpetuates
same.

We call on Benin and Warri Leaders of thought to rise up against
the current fervent on slaught on our sons.

They are vulnerable and need our protection.

We must set forth at dawn!