By Emma Ovuakporie
ABUJA— In a bid to rid the country of unsuitable candidates during next year’s general elections, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, will partner all stakeholders to ensure that only credible politicians contested the election, Head, Media and Publicity of the anti-graft agency, Mr Femi Babafemi, disclosed this yesterday.

In an interview, Babafemi said the “essence of the partnership is to ensure that political parties do not field candidates that are currently undergoing prosecution on graft charges who might have delayed their trials as the anti-graft body will mobilize all stakeholders to thwart such efforts.

“Towards this direction, we are extending our hands of fellowship to all law enforcement agencies, the Code of Conduct Bureau, ICPC, civil society, political parties, the citizens and other stakeholders, to ensure that only credible contestants are fielded by the political parties.”

He explained further that “those politicians that have pending cases must be properly screened and, if fielded, the civil society has a responsibility to mobilize people to reject them at the polls, the people have a right to elect leaders who had lived above board.”

“W e are not going to draw a list and declare them guilty as we are no law courts, if that was done in the past we won’t do that but we will work with all the relevant stakeholders to ensure the right leaders are elected.”

On the recent clampdown on some states over local government funds, Babafemi said “the commission is saddled with the task to prevent an economic crime from been committed and is not our responsibility to determine what happens in courts that is where people are mixing our jobs with that of the judiciary.”

“Nobody is witch hunting anybody over the issue of Local Government funds these were matters that we have been pursuing before President Goodluck Jonathan became president of the country so there is nothing new here because we started these matters since 2008.”