The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede has stated that his primary reason for prioritizing corruption prevention mechanisms in the fight against corruption is because of its effectiveness and cost efficiency.
He stated this on Wednesday, September 4, 2024 when the management team of the National Orientation Agency, NOA, led by its Director General, Mallam Lanre Issa Onilu paid him a courtesy visit at EFCC corporate headquarters, Jabi, Abuja.
“Upon my assumption of office, I made it known to Nigerians that one of the key areas that we will pursue seriously and vigorously is the area of prevention. Everything in the anti-corruption fight is not about enforcement. There are policy issues that are involved. It is not all about throwing bombs and chasing people with armoured vehicles and machine guns. No, it has never worked and it will never work. We have been on the path of enforcement for 20 years now. Would anyone tell me that corruption is abating?
“The more you do, the more progress you make in the area of recovery, in the area of prosecution and conviction of people, the deeper the problem becomes. As you are facing one, people are inventing new areas and getting smarter by the day. And so, we have come to realize that there is actually nothing fundamentally wrong with our people, but that our values have been bastardized over the years and also the system that we run, so I made it known to Nigerians and the entire world that we will pursue the issue of prevention very seriously,” he said.
To achieve this, the EFCC’s boss is amplifying anti-corruption enlightenment campaigns and establishment of institutional structures, noting that with prevention, the Commission no longer waits for money to first be stolen before it takes action.
“One of the key elements of prevention is public enlightenment for which we have commissioned EFCC Radio, 97.3 FM, produced “Fraud Risk Assessment Prevention for Ministries, Departments, and Agencies handbook and relaunched our Interfaith Manual. You don’t have to wait for the money to be stolen before you move in and that is exactly what we are doing. Pursuant to that, we have established a Directorate called Fraud Risk Assessment and Control. What we basically do with the new Directorate is that, we will go out and monitor processes and procedures, for example the award of contracts and procurement processes which we know constitute over 90 percent of public corruption and also see how we can prevent the money being released to carry out projects from being diverted. So that is what we are doing, and rather than wait for people to steal, when we know that the system is so porous; when we know that there are leakages everywhere. So the little that filters out, we will pursue that and enforce our powers. I tell you, for every N10 stolen, you hardly recover N5 no matter how effective you are. And without disparaging any arm of government, we all know how difficult it is to get a high-profile conviction in this country.
“When you juxtapose all these, you will discover that the best way to do this is to go by way of prevention. Yes, we are still going to enforce, we have that power, but we believe that prevention is worth doing,” he said.
Explaining the rationale of his visit, Onilu disclosed that the mission of the NOA delegation went beyond desiring to work in collaboration with the EFCC, his agency was obligated by law to deliver the EFCC to every part of the country. He used the occasion to intimate the EFCC boss of the renewed focus of his agency.
According to him, “The new leadership in the EFCC aligns with the focus of the new regime in NOA, and that is in the area of working towards enlightening the people to ensure that they first and foremost understand what needs not to be done before you begin to say they have done the wrong thing. From our huge database of information about perception; about people doing what they do and why they do what they do, we can easily award 70 per cent to ignorance. If you are able to take ignorance out of the way, then you all can sleep easy because many people do the things they do not knowing that they are wrong”.
The NOA boss lauded the EFCC for its intervention against abuse of the naira and Olukoyede for bringing new and more efficient approaches to the anti-corruption fight.
“When we started early this year on the issue of this abuse of the naira, we knew that we have no prosecutorial powers, we can only shout and while we were shouting, nobody listened until the EFCC moved in and showed practical examples of what it means to break that law and people got the message. So we are so thankful for that intervention, even though we didn’t prompt you.
“I also want to commend the EFCC Chairman for the new order, focus and calmness we have seen in the last 10 months or thereabout in the anti-corruption fight. There is a new order that has brought calmness in the way you do things and as they say where I come from, the person that has been invited to come and settle a fight should not be part of the fight. There is no noise, yet there is more effectiveness,” he said
Media & Publicity
September 6, 2024.
