At critical junctures in any given situation, an error of judgment must cease to be excusable as an isolated mistake and begins to raise legitimate questions about the suitability of the individual repeatedly making such errors for the sensitive office he occupies.
The controversy over the decision by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to place a restriction on an account belonging to the Osun State Government, has brought Nigeria dangerously close to that point.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s intervention, ordering that the restriction be lifted while describing the timing of the action as “deeply embarrassing”, should ordinarily have been the closing argument on the matter. The President disclosed that the action came barely 10 days before the August 15, 2026 governorship election in Osun State and acknowledged the obvious political consequences of such an extraordinary intervention by a federal institution.
But the matter is bigger than electoral optics. It is bigger than Governor Ademola Adeleke. It is bigger even than the August 15 governorship election. At its core is a far more fundamental question: what exactly is a federation if an agency of the Federal Government can, by administrative action, immobilise the finances of a constituent state?
That question should disturb every Nigerian democrat irrespective of party affiliation. The starting point is the Constitution.
Section 162 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 establishes the Federation Account and prescribes the constitutional architecture through which revenue belonging collectively to the federation is distributed among the Federal Government, states and local governments. Subsections (3) and (4) specifically provide for distribution among the three tiers and among the states respectively. The significance is profound.
Nigeria does not operate a constitutional arrangement under which states receive monthly pocket money from Abuja at the pleasure of the President. What states receive from the Federation Account is not a presidential favour. It is their constitutional entitlement.
Once revenue has been distributed in accordance with Section 162 and the appropriate share becomes that of a state, the federal government does not continue to exercise some superior proprietary interest over the money merely because it originated from the Federation Account.
The state has its own government. It has its own House of Assembly. It has its own Consolidated Revenue Fund. It has workers to pay, hospitals to maintain, schools to fund, contractors to settle and constitutional responsibilities to discharge. That is what federalism means.
Indeed, Nigerian constitutional jurisprudence has repeatedly rejected attempts by the federal executive to turn its control of federal institutions into a weapon for disciplining states. Perhaps nobody occupying the Nigerian presidency today should appreciate this history better than Bola Tinubu.
As governor of Lagos State, Tinubu lived through one of the most audacious examples of federal economic coercion in the Fourth Republic. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered that allocations meant for Lagos local councils be withheld following the state’s creation of additional local government development areas. Lagos went to court.
In Attorney-General of Lagos State v Attorney-General of the Federation, the Supreme Court emphatically rejected executive self-help. Although the court found constitutional complications surrounding the newly created local governments, it nevertheless condemned the withholding of funds. The principle articulated was bigger than Lagos: presidential power, however formidable, has constitutional boundaries.
The court stressed that if the Federal Government believed Lagos had acted unlawfully, its remedy was to seek redress through the courts rather than resort to executive self-help. Subsequent Supreme Court jurisprudence has continued to rely on that case when emphasising the autonomy of constituent states and the limits of federal executive interference with constitutionally allocated funds.
That history makes what happened in Osun particularly astonishing. How could an anti-corruption institution operating under a President who personally suffered the consequences of federal financial coercion fail to appreciate the constitutional, political and democratic implications of incapacitating a state government’s bank account days before an election?
This is where the judgment of the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, must legitimately come under examination.
The EFCC Act is Not the Constitution
There is an important legal distinction that must not be obscured. There is no provision in the Nigerian Constitution establishing the EFCC and then granting it some blanket constitutional authority to freeze the accounts of a federating state. The EFCC derives its coercive powers from legislation.
Section 34 of the EFCC Establishment Act is one such provision. Where the commission believes money in an account was derived from an offence within its statutory jurisdiction, the law contemplates an application to court ex parte for an order freezing the account. The Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 provides another, narrower avenue.
Under Section 7(6), the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, EFCC or authorised representatives may place a stop order on a suspicious account or transaction for a period not exceeding 72 hours where it is suspected of involvement in unlawful activity. But the law immediately provides the safeguard.
If the matter is to continue beyond that temporary period, Section 7(8) envisages an application to the Federal High Court for an order blocking the funds or account.
The courts have interpreted similar provisions in precisely that fashion. The Court of Appeal has held that a temporary stop order may operate for 72 hours without a court order, but once that statutory window expires, continued freezing requires judicial authority.
This is extremely important. The EFCC is an investigating agency. It is not a court. Suspicion is not conviction. A petition is not proof. And an administrative letter from an anti-corruption agency must never become a substitute for judicial determination.
There is, admittedly, an important constitutional qualification. Section 44(2)(k) recognises circumstances in which property may temporarily be taken or restrained for purposes of examination, investigation or enquiry. Nigerian courts have consequently held that properly authorised interim preservation orders are not automatically unconstitutional.
But that principle does not create an unlimited executive licence. Rather, it reinforces the central point: where coercive powers exist, they must be exercised in accordance with law, for their proper purpose, proportionately and subject to judicial supervision.
And when the target is not merely the private bank account of an individual suspect but an account through which an entire state government conducts public business, the threshold of institutional responsibility should be considerably higher.
Millions of citizens cannot become collateral damage in an investigation. Civil servants are not suspects merely because investigators have questions for political officeholders. Pensioners cannot be punished by proxy. Hospitals cannot be financially paralysed. Schools cannot be deprived of operating funds.
A state cannot constitutionally be placed under economic siege because a federal agency is investigating alleged wrongdoing by persons within its government.
Investigate the suspects. Trace the allegedly illicit transactions. Identify the beneficiaries. Freeze accounts into which criminal proceeds can demonstrably be traced, subject to the law. Prosecute anybody against whom evidence exists. But disabling the machinery of a federating state is another proposition altogether.
The Unanswered Question About the Court Order
The Osun episode is made even more troubling by the conflicting accounts surrounding judicial authorisation.
President Tinubu stated that he understood the EFCC to have obtained a court order on August 5. Yet, Premium Times reported that the EFCC letter that triggered the Post-No-Debit instruction did not cite a court order and that EFCC Director of Public Affairs Wilson Uwujaren subsequently defended the Commission’s ability to impose the restriction without first obtaining one.
That contradiction deserves clarification. Was there a court order before the initial restriction? If there was, when precisely was it obtained? What account did it cover? What evidence was presented? For how long was the order granted?
And if the initial Post-No-Debit instruction preceded judicial authorisation, under what exact statutory provision was the EFCC proceeding? These are not semantic questions. They go directly to the legality of coercive state power.
Interestingly, this broad issue has reached the Supreme Court before. In Attorney-General of Abia State v Attorney-General of the Federation, Abia raised, among other questions, whether the EFCC could investigate state finances and freeze a state government’s account under Section 34.
But contrary to how that case is sometimes cited, the Supreme Court did not determine the substantive question. It struck the suit out because the proper dispute was against the EFCC itself, a statutory body capable of being sued, meaning the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction over Federation-versus-state disputes had not been properly invoked.
Therefore, anyone claiming that the Supreme Court has already given the EFCC an unrestricted power to freeze state government accounts would be overstating the law.
Tinubu Cannot Merely Be Embarrassed
President Tinubu was right to intervene. He was also right to recognise the catastrophic optics of a federal anti-corruption agency immobilising a state account immediately before an election in which the President’s own party is attempting to defeat the incumbent administration.
But embarrassment is not enough. The bigger question is accountability. If the President genuinely believes that the action displayed such disastrous institutional judgment that he had to publicly countermand it, then he must ask himself what that says about the leadership responsible for the action.
An EFCC chairman exercises enormous powers. His institution can destroy reputations before trials commence. It can disrupt businesses. It can restrict property. It can arrest citizens. It can compel financial institutions to produce intimate financial records. It can commence proceedings capable of changing political careers and commercial fortunes.
An office carrying that much coercive authority requires more than legal knowledge. It requires judgment. Temperament. Restraint. Emotional intelligence. Political neutrality. And an instinctive appreciation of constitutional boundaries.
This is why the controversy cannot end simply with: Mr President has ordered the account unfrozen, everybody should move on. No. The decision that produced the crisis must itself be scrutinised. Olukoyede must explain why an extraordinary step against a state government became necessary immediately before a governorship election.
He must explain whether less disruptive investigative alternatives were considered. He must explain the precise legal foundation for the original instruction to the bank.
And if President Tinubu concludes that the chairman exercised lawful powers with such catastrophic lack of institutional judgment that the presidency itself was embarrassed, the question of whether Olukoyede should remain in that exceptionally sensitive office becomes perfectly legitimate.
Indeed, dismissal in those circumstances would not amount to weakening the anti-corruption war. It could strengthen it. The credibility of an anti-corruption institution rests not merely on how aggressively it acts, but on public confidence that its aggression is never politically selective.
Tinubu’s Democratic Credentials on Trial
Tinubu has repeatedly presented himself as a democrat shaped by the battles of June 12, opposition politics and the struggle against federal overreach. Fine. Then Osun provides an opportunity to demonstrate that those democratic instincts survive the acquisition of presidential power.
Democracy is easiest to defend when you are the victim. Its real test arrives when the coercive machinery of the state is under your control. Tinubu does not need merely to tell Nigerians that he was embarrassed. He needs to establish that no federal institution under his administration will be permitted to weaponise its powers against a constituent state, particularly in the combustible atmosphere preceding an election.
And there is an uncomfortable political dimension that cannot simply be wished away. Weeks before the election, figures associated with the Osun APC campaign had publicly called on the EFCC to freeze accounts allegedly connected to the state’s disputed “ghost workers” payments. That does not prove that the EFCC acted at the APC’s instruction. It would be irresponsible to assert that without evidence. But it makes the Commission’s obligation to avoid even the appearance of partisan intervention exponentially greater. Institutions of law enforcement must understand not only the legality of their actions but their context.
Timing matters. Proportionality matters. Public perception matters. Institutional independence matters. That is precisely why Tinubu himself complained about the timing. And What of the Judiciary and Legislature? There is an even larger institutional tragedy here.
Nigeria’s democracy increasingly suffers because constitutional restraint is too often treated as something to be invoked after power has already been abused rather than as the governing instinct that prevents the abuse in the first place.
The judiciary should remain the ultimate wall between citizens—or states—and arbitrary executive action. That is why ex parte powers must be exercised with exceptional care. A judge being asked to immobilise resources belonging to a government serving millions of citizens should appreciate that he is not dealing with an ordinary commercial account.
Judicial independence demands considerably more than freedom from telephone calls from politicians. It requires intellectual independence, institutional courage and an unwillingness to convert judicial processes into convenient rubber stamps for executive agencies.
Likewise, the National Assembly cannot continue to behave as though constitutional controversies between federal agencies and federating states are none of its business. The EFCC is a creature of legislation.
If ambiguities in its powers are repeatedly generating constitutional crises, parliament should conduct oversight, summon the relevant officials where appropriate and clarify the law.
A legislature that watches executive agencies continually test the limits of federal power without rigorous oversight gradually reduces itself from an independent arm of government to an accessory of the executive. That is unhealthy for democracy.
From Lagos to Osun: The Warning History Gives Tinubu
Perhaps history has offered President Tinubu an extraordinary opportunity. Twenty-two years ago, he was the governor pleading that a powerful presidency could not financially suffocate Lagos simply because President Obasanjo disagreed with actions taken by the state.
The Supreme Court vindicated the larger principle that executive power has limits and that constitutional disputes must be resolved under law rather than through economic punishment.
Today Tinubu occupies Obasanjo’s old chair. That symmetry should not be lost on him. He knows what federal overreach looks like from the receiving end. He therefore carries a special responsibility not to permit his administration to reproduce it. Osun must become a line in the sand.
The EFCC must investigate corruption wherever credible evidence leads it. No governor, commissioner, permanent secretary or contractor should enjoy immunity from investigation merely because public money is involved.
But fighting corruption and respecting federalism are not mutually exclusive. A serious anti-corruption agency should be capable of doing both. What Nigeria cannot permit is an anti-graft institution gradually evolving into a federal constabulary capable of financially incapacitating constituent governments whenever it invokes the language of investigation.
That road is dangerous. Today it may be Osun. Tomorrow it could be Lagos again. The next day Kano. Then Rivers. Federalism cannot depend on whether the governor affected belongs to the ruling party. Rights cease to be rights once their availability depends on political alignment. And constitutional restraints cease to be restraints once they operate only when convenient to those wielding federal power.
President Tinubu has ordered the restriction lifted. That was necessary. But it cannot be sufficient. If he truly believes the action was sufficiently ill-judged to embarrass his presidency days before a major election, then he must determine who authorised it, under what legal circumstances, with what assessment of its consequences and whether the leadership responsible still commands his confidence.
Because the office of EFCC chairman is not a laboratory for experiments in executive power. It is one of the most sensitive law-enforcement positions in the federation. And where its occupant repeatedly demonstrates an inability to appreciate the difference between possessing power and knowing when—and how—to exercise it, the issue eventually moves beyond correcting individual decisions.
It becomes a question of fitness for office. For President Tinubu, therefore, Osun presents something larger than an embarrassment to be managed. It presents a constitutional test. If the democrat he has always claimed to be still exists beneath the enormous powers of the presidency, this is one of those moments when Nigerians are entitled to see him.
