Elder statesman and former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, was unusually critical of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Saturday, when friends and family converged on his Abeokuta, Ogun State residence to celebrate his 79th birthday.
It is on record that the EFCC was founded under his administration.
Obasanjo, who is never afraid to be involved in national issues and controversies, compared the EFCC under pioneer Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, to the present one under Ibrahim Magu.
He said that the present EFCC was not more than a “toothless bull-dog”, calling for an appraisal aimed at determining while the EFCC has lost courage.
The former President said: “the good thing is that we all enjoyed the work and we all felt that we were contributing our own meaningful quota to the development of the country.
“As all know, when Nuhu Ribadu was handling the EFCC, he handled it in such a way that people coined the saying that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of Ribadu.
” And the thing you will ask is how did we go down, how did we lose that, how did we? Nuhu Ribadu is still here, he is still alive, the institution that we started together is still there, what made the institution to become a toothless bull dog.
“We need to work things out so that we don’t take two steps forward, one step and three steps backward.”