TheCable

Recently, Nollywood filmmaker, Biodun Stephen, took to her Instagram page to reveal how some officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of harassment (EFCC )broke into her hotel room at 3am.

She said: “That is how I slept in a hotel whilst filming last week. Next thing, I open my eyes at a little past 3:00 am; what did I see? Two men dressed in black with weapons. I thought I was dreaming.

“Then I heard the door to my room close; I sprang up, and without thinking, shouted. ‘Stay right there! Who are you?’ They replied, ‘we are EFCC’. My head spark. Are you kidding me? You enter into my room unannounced?” (sic)

The movie director further stated that the EFCC officials claimed that they knocked but got no response thus they entered unannounced.

“You decide to enter my room?” she asked them. “You should have kept on knocking. I was sleeping as any normal person would,” Stephen said.

She continued: “One just open him mouth waaa… ‘where is the man of the room?’ I first confuse. ‘The who?’ He replied, ‘your partner.’ Anger well up inside me. Is this one roving mad?

“His partner realised his folly because he quickly apologized. ‘You are not who we are looking for.’ I watched as they interviewed guests rudely and arrested a few. They knew the people they were after.” (sic).

After she narrated her experience, different people have also come out to give similar tales of EFCC officials bursting into hotels and harassing innocent guests.

This Gestapo method by the EFCC is archaic and primitive. What happened to the privacy of individuals who lodge in the hotels?

Granted, cyber-criminals popularly known as Yahoo boys have made it a habit of lodging in hotels to carry out their illicit operations but it still doesn’t give the EFCC license to harass other hotel guests.

I remember last year in Abuja, some officers of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) raided a popular hotel in Abuja and harassed innocent guests at the hotel. Their excuse was they there were looking for custom duties of cars.

I think there is something inherently wrong with men in uniform in the country. They believe their uniform is a license to harass Nigerians.

I expected that with the coming of the youthful chairman of EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, the officials would jettison this medieval way of carrying out operations.

The EFCC should embrace the 21st-century method of carrying out operations. This is the least expected from them.

Similarly, I also believe that if any hotel is known to harbor yahoo boys, the owner and managers of the hotel should be prosecuted. It will serve as a deterrent to other hoteliers.