Media reports alleging that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is investigating former Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, are misleading and untrue, his Media Adviser Paul C Nwabuikwu said. “This is clear from eyewitness accounts of the Budget 2016 presentation by the EFCC at the House of Representatives and gaps in the reported stories. The headlines are a misrepresentation of what the EFCC Chairman actually said during the event,” Nwabuikwu said in a statement issued in Abuja.

According to him, “While the headlines claimed that the EFCC Chairman, in response to a question by an APC, member Hon Razak Atunwa, stated that Dr Okonjo-Iweala is under investigation, the actual words quoted in the same reports told a very different story.”

Nwabuikwu quoted Hon Atunwa as having said: “Very soon we will go into the petroleum industry. Such investigation requires that we have to build capacity, we have to bring in experts to enable us tackle what we are doing properly and the investigation must be conducted properly. We have internal lawyers and external lawyers. We have to pay insurance…”

On the words said to have been spoken by EFCC Chairman Ibrahim Magu, Nwabuikwu said that they “cannot support the lurid headlines that Dr Okonjo-Iweala is under investigation by the EFCC.”

“The Nigerian media plays an important role in our democracy and we urge them to be fair, balanced and factual in their reports,” he stated.

•Photo shows Okonjo-Iweala.