Mr. Ola Olukoyede, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, revealed that within his first 100 days in office, the agency received over 5,000 fraud petitions and successfully recovered N60 billion in stolen funds. Out of these petitions, 3,000 have been earmarked for investigation.
Appointed by President Bola Tinubu on October 12, 2023, Olukoyede replaced Abdurasheed Bawa, who was ousted by Tinubu after being suspended and detained. Speaking at the 20th-anniversary lecture of the Human and Environmental Development Agenda Resources Centre in Lagos, Olukoyede highlighted the EFCC’s swift recovery of over N60 billion and $10 million in less than four months under his leadership.
He said, “When we set out to investigate, people see it as a fight between EFCC and the rest of us. It should not be so. How much will the EFCC do?
“How much will the ICPC do with its staff strength? I have less than 4,800 staff. I am talking of an agency that is serving people who are over 150 million.
“All we have to do is investigate and present the facts before the court. I will not be the one to give judgment. That is where we have collective responsibility. When you see something, you say something.
“The issue is we are working as if we are not working. Upon my assumption of office between then and now, I have received over 5,000 petitions. I am not talking of just the one we received, but the one that we have checked and we discovered that there was substance in it. That is just for one agency, the EFCC.
“As I am talking to you I have approved the investigation of over 3,000 cases in less than four months, but what is our capacity? How many staff do we have? What resources do I have access to?
“In less than four months, we secured convictions of 700 and recovered over N60bn and over $10m.
“If I am able to recover over N60bn in less than 100 days, you can imagine how much has been stolen.
“I can tell you that for the billion that has been recovered, a trillion has been stolen.”
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