Corruption, financial crimes, Nigeria’s albatross-Olukoyede

The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr Ola Olukoyede has described corruption and financial crimes as the greatest problems, hobbling economic growth and development of the country.

He stated this on Friday, February 28, 2025 when the Nigerian Employers’ Consultative Association, NECA, led by its Director General and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Adewale Oyerinde paid him an official visit at EFCC’s corporate headquarters.

“You don’t need a soothsayer or a prophet to tell anyone in Nigeria that our major problems are financial crimes and corruption. One of the major obstacles to our economic development, an albatross and a cankerworm to our progress is the issue of corruption and financial crimes. And that is exactly our mandate,” he said.

While appealing for Nigerian’s involvement in the anti-corruption fight, he stated that corruption left Nigerians with no better option than to fight it. “It’s important for people to identify with our cause. Even though we know it’s difficult to fight the menace, it’s much worse if you don’t fight it at all, because of the impact and the effect on the lives of the people.”

For greater successes, he disclosed that the EFCC under his leadership prioritized prevention in the anti-corruption fight. “When you fight corruption, you ensure that you block the loopholes through preventive means, which is what we are doing now in EFCC. In the last eight months, we are mobilizing our resources towards prevention. We no longer have to wait for money to be stolen before we go into action. And that was what led to my establishing a new department called Fraud Risk Assessment and Control, with which we are effectively looking into the finances of MDA’s, particularly with this new budget.

“Now as the releases are being made, we are following them through. That’s one of the things we have decided to do to ensure that people have the benefit and dividends of democracy and good governance. Like I keep telling people, it costs less to prevent than to investigate and recover where money has been stolen,” he said.

He urged the NECA as a federation of private sector employers to pay closer attention to mitigating employment fraud as it relates to how employers defraud their staff and vice versa.

“In 2007, way back before I came to the EFCC, I did research into employment fraud, covering how employers defraud their staff and now employees also perpetrate fraud against their employers. I discovered way back then that Nigeria lost over N40 billion every year to employment fraud. Eventually when I became chief of staff in the EFCC, we investigated the IPPIS platform and discovered that a lot of people collected salaries when they were not in the employment of the government and we’re able to save the government billions of naira. As I am talking to you, we are still investigating that because the crooks keep on bringing up new strategies, while we also continue to devise new means of checkmating them,” he said.

He promised the delegation of EFCC’s collaboration towards making workers embrace best practices. “I want to identify with your cause and I want to pledge our support to what you’re doing, going forward. We are ready to synergize and to collaborate with you to ensure that we improve on the welfare of the workers as well as make them do the right thing to increase their level of productivity and make them better citizens.”

Earlier in his remarks, Oyerinde stated that NECA needed synergy and collaboration with the EFCC as a result of the quantum of money that has been lost in the private sector in recent times, “many of them were reported that is quite startling for us.”

According to him, “we are here to seek collaboration with the EFCC in whatever context and partnership in tackling the issue. In specific terms, we are looking at having joint workshops on the role of the private sector in reducing or eradicating the menace of money laundering, cyber crime and identity thefts, which are becoming the major concern not only to you as EFCC, but also to us as organized businesses. And a likely establishment of a structured engagement framework with between NECA and EFCC that would ensure a periodic engagement for knowledge sharing which is very vital to tackling money laundering, ensuring compliance, fraud prevention and governance ethics.”