Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has expressed optimism that contract and procurement fraud in Nigeria would soon be a thing of the past.
Olukoyede made the declaration in Abuja, the nation’s capital, when Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), led a team of the Bureau’s top officials on a visit to the EFCC’s corporate headquarters.
The visit, according to a statement by Dele Oyewale, Head of Media and Publicity at the Commission was aimed at strengthening strategic partnership between the FBI of the United States and the EFCC.
He said that the anti-graft agency is going to ensure e-procurement in the entire nation so that it would be easy to track the execution of projects.
While describing the measure as one of the key innovations his leadership at the EFCC has introduced, he emphasised that one of the major problems in Nigeria is public corruption.
“Upon my assumption of office,” Olukoyede said, “I shared my three major policy directives with the entire nation. I promised to use the instrumentality of the anti-corruption fight to stimulate the economy; to ensure that businesses that are registered in Nigeria play by the rules.
“And we have shown in some of our activities that we were looking into a lot of government agencies as to how they carry out their activities particularly in the area of contract and procurement.”
The EFCC boss also reaffirmed his commitment to follow the rule of law, adding, “I believe in results but I also believe that the way you achieve the result matters. I promised the nation that we are going to do it right.
“Third is to use the activities of the EFCC to improve the international image of Nigeria and that is why we are vigorously pursuing the issue of cyber criminals because some of the activities of these folks have dented Nigeria’s image in the global space,” he said.
He declared that “the major thrust is to use the instrument of prevention to tackle corruption in the country. The EFCC has done well over the years in the areas of investigation and prosecution, but upon my assumption of office, I decided rather to look at the sources and causes of these problems. We will not just enforce but also look at prevention, since it is also within our mandate. So we decided to set up a new department, called Fraud Risk Assessment and Control.”
Furthermore, he used the occasion to highlight the centrality of appropriate public communication in the overall success of the anti-graft fight, stressing, “We are also drumming up awareness for our public enlightenment programmes. We have just launched our own FM radio station where we drum up awareness for our activities because of the misconceptions out there.”