The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, expressed his astonishment on Tuesday about the survival of Nigeria, given the massive amounts of money stolen.
In a statement released by EFCC’s Head of Media and Publicity, Dele Oyewale, Olukoyede made these remarks while receiving the management team of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), led by its chairman, Mohammed Shehu.
“When I look at some case files and see the humongous amount of money stolen, I wonder how we are still surviving. If you see some case files, you will weep. The way they move unspent budget allocations to private accounts in commercial banks before midnight at the end of a budget cycle, you will wonder what kind of spirit drives us as Nigerians,” Olukoyede said.
He highlighted that public corruption is the biggest cause of corruption in Nigeria, asserting that if public corruption were eliminated, the country would fare better than many others worldwide.
“A situation where somebody would hold a public office or position of trust for years and you call him to account and he says, no, he would not account, is not acceptable,” he added.
Olukoyede emphasized the need for transparency and accountability in both the public and private sectors to foster the country’s development.
According to him, corruption poses a significant challenge to the country. However, he expressed optimism that the preventive mechanisms of his leadership would ensure that the EFCC stays ahead of corrupt practices, providing Nigerians with good governance.
“The preventive framework for tackling corruption offers more prospects for results and impact. To this end, the EFCC now has a Department of Fraud Risk and Assessment and Control.
“Let’s look at our system of revenue generation. It is a system that allows leakages in mobilisation and appropriation of funds. If we don’t look at the system, we will continue to chase shadows. In this direction, we are not just going to investigate and recover; what we have decided to do in the EFCC is policy review. If we can block some of these leakages and have 50 per cent of capital project execution in Nigeria, the country would be fine,” he said.
The RMAFC chairman praised the longstanding collaboration between his organization and the EFCC, noting that the visit aimed to explore more areas of cooperation, especially in recovering unremitted or lost government revenues.
“It is important to bring to the fore that the collaboration between RMAFC and EFCC is crucial in addressing the challenges of unremitted revenue to the Federation Account. On this note, we are calling on EFCC for more collaboration, not only in the area of enforcement but also intelligence gathering and data sharing as regards government revenue from any source,” Shehu stated.
Shehu also called on the EFCC to assist RMAFC in capacity building for its staff on revenue monitoring.
