The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ola Olukoyede has said that over five thousand fraud petitions have been received and sixty billion naira recovered by the anti-graft agency in less than one hundred days of his assumption of office.
Speaking in Lagos, Olukoyede said the EFCC has approved three thousand petitions for investigation, also recovering ten million dollars.
Olukoyede, added that the anti-graft agency should not be seen as an enemy that goes out to fight as it only investigates and presents its findings to the judiciary for judgement.
He also shared his worry about the low number of personnel in the agency, saying that the EFCC has less than five thousand staff to serve over one hundred and fifty million people.
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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