Austin Okwor, a top investigator with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), is currently hospitalised in Port-Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, after he escaped from suspected assassins on his way from work.

Wilson Uwajuren, spokesman to the EFCC, made this known in a statement on Wednesday.

Okwor is attached to the Property Fraud Section of the EFCC Zonal office in Port Harcourt and is one of the operatives investigating some sensitive cases including that pertaining to corrupt judicial officials.

He had closed late on Saturday and was on his way home when the assailants opened fire on him.

“Luckily for him, he was able to shake off his assailants but not without sustaining some bullet wounds as they kept firing at him,” uwujaren said.

“He was rushed to a private hospital in Port Harcourt where he is receiving treatment.”

Uwajuren noted that before the attack, Okwor had been receiving threat messages. “One of such messages, which he received sometime in May 2017, was reported to the Police,” he stated.

The assassination attempt has also been reported to the Police in Port Harcourt.

According to Uwajuren, this was not the first time officials of the EFCC were being attacked and unlike Okwor’s, some of the attacks had led to the death of operatives of the commission.

He said: “This incident underlines the hazards which operatives of the Commission are daily exposed to in the discharge of their duties.

“In 2010, precisely September 14, the head of the Commission’s Forensic Unit, Abdullahi Muazu was shot and killed by unknown gunmen in Kaduna.

“Six months earlier a team of prosecutors returning to Enugu after a court appearance in Owerri, Imo state was attacked by gunmen who opened fire on them. Sergeant Eze Edoga the police escort was cut down while a senior counsel with the Commission, Joseph Uzor, was critically wounded but survived.”