Abdulrasheed Bawa, 40 who was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari as the new Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has finally been confirmed by the Senate.
The Senate, after a two-hour session on Wednesday, February 24th, 2021 at plenary confirmed his appointment as Chairman of the EFCC.
For those who don’t know, prior to his appointment, Bawa was the Deputy Chief Detective Superintendent with the EFCC. He graduated from the Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics (Second Class Upper) in 2001.
Bawa joined the EFCC as an Assistant Detective Superintendent (ADS) in 2004, also holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs and Diplomacy which he obtained from the same university in 2012. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Laws degree at the University of London. He was part of the pioneer EFCC Cadet Officers, course one, 2005.
With about 17 years working with the EFCC as a detective, Mr Bawa has vast investigation experience and has been part of prosecution of advance fee fraud, official corruption, bank fraud, money laundering and other economic and financial crimes related offences.
Mr. Bawa was deployed to head the commission’s operations zonal office in Lagos in August 2020 and remains in the position till date. He had headed the Capacity Development Division, EFCC Academy, Abuja from December 2019 to August 2020.
Bawa was also the zonal head, Port Harcourt Zonal Office overseeing Rivers, Bayelsa and Abia states operations from January 2019 to December 2019. He had also headed the commission’s Ibadan Zonal Office covering Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo and Kwara states from June June 2018 to January 2019.
Bawa headed the Counter-Terrorism and General Investigation/Pension Unit, of the Lagos Zonal Office from March to 2017 to May 2018. He currently heads the Lagos Zonal Office, which without doubt, is the biggest operations zonal office of the EFCC with 604 officers working under him.
He has successfully investigated and testified in prosecution of many cases leading to convictions and recovery of looted monetary and assets across the world.
As the head of the EFCC’s investigations of Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke from 2015 till date, his team has recovered millions of dollars worth of property in Nigeria, U.K., U.S.A, and U.A.E including 92 of such assets in Nigeria.
He also supervised the investigations of Atlantic Energy Group-from 2014 to 2015 leading to the recovery of assets in Nigeria, UK, USA, Switzerland, UAE and Canada.
Bawa also headed the investigations of Crude Oil Swaps and OPA case from 2014 to2015, also leading to recovery of assets. He was also involved in the Petroleum Subsidy Fraud investigations from 2012 to 2015 during which fraud of about N70 billion was identified, funds recovered and many companies were prosecuted.
He has been involved in is one involving a former Governor of Niger State, Muazu Babangida Aliyu, who is currently facing trial. He has also participated in several other periodic raids on “notorious (419) Cyber-cafés”, the sort of operations from which the EFCC records the lion share of its convictions.
