The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), has broken its long silence over a recent judgement against it by the National Industrial Court sitting in Abuja.
NFIU’s Chief Media Analyst, Mr Ahmed Dikko, while reacting, at last, to the development in a statement on Thursday, said dismissed staff repeatedly associated their case with Atiku Abukar and Bola Tinubu in order to attract cheap sympathy and blackmail the NFIU.
He further added that staff who opened and ran bank accounts without approval can never be spared by any responsible organisation more especially when there is clear evidence of doing so. “In essence they knew what they did, let them tell the truth”, the statement said.
Continuing, the NFIU statement said, “You cannot walk up to a bank and block over 360 bank accounts of ordinary Nigerians without a reason or any court order and expect things to augur well, even when the innocent depositors marched to the National Assembly to complain of being innocently targeted.
“In the same vein, you cannot allow yourself to be used by anybody to trigger investigations on or against innocent Nigerians simply because they are politicians or legislators or judicial officials or senior public servants. Every innocent citizen deserves protection, if you have no definite reason to make them suspects formally and officially.”
The NFIU said it would appeal the verdict by the industrial court, just as it said Atiku and Tinubu are not the reason for the staff dismissal, like being largely touted.
“The industrial court argued technically without looking at the weight of the offences committed by the officers. We will appeal in order to make sure government officials do not use their offices arbitrarily or against perceived enemies.
“Let it also be clear that no management or operating staff of the NFIU has any formal or informal relationship with the two politicians that are repeatedly mentioned in this case. We do not know them. But every innocent citizen deserves respect and privacy, if there is nothing proven suspicious against them. Both law and justice are about equal treatment and NFIU is an intelligence agency that cannot be used for partisan politics in any way,” the statement said.