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By Chukwuma Umeorah
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), under the chairmanship of Abdulrasheed Bawa, has secured over 6,000 convictions, including recovery of cash and assets worth billions of naira, between 2021 and 2022.
This was revealed by the leadership of Campaign for Dignity in Governance (CDG), at a press conference in Lagos, where it commended the resilience of Bawa and the effort of members of the commission, while emphasising the need to encourage the EFCC in their strides at tackling corruption in the country.
It noted that there had been a spike in conviction and recovery cases across all zones of the country since 2019 with the most exponential number of convictions recorded in 2021 and 2022.
“The number of convictions secured rose from 1,280 in 2019 and hit an unprecedented 2,220 in the year 2021, a value amounting to 98.47 percent of all cases brought before the court. In the same year, over 150 billion naira was recovered, including huge amounts of money recovered in other currencies.”
However, the record for the year 2022 was even more startling for the anti-corruption forces as a total number of convictions in the year was 3,785 signifying a 70 percent increase from the 2,220 cases recorded in 2021. The monetary recovery was also higher in 2022 with over N260 billion, $509 and millions of other foreign currencies were also recovered. These values exclude assets such as automobiles, electronics, machines, factories, hotels, petroleum products and minerals such as lithium, which were recovered in the same period.
The Convener and President of CDG, Razaq Olokoba, said the convictions and recovery by the EFCC highlighted the competence of the enforcement team in ensuring that arrests and prosecutions were based on concrete evidence rather than capricious reasons and intentions.
He added that the EFCC, in the last two years, have been managed by a team who ‘knows their onions’ and had brought experience to bear in tackling corruption under the watchful leadership of a youthful and acute boss in the person of Bawa, noting that it would be wrong to thinker with what he described as a winning team. Olokoba emphasised that there was no need for the incoming government to change the leadership of the EFCC, as they should be allowed to continue their good works.
“The winning team must be allowed to exploit its talent and continue to bring in the laurels and trophies. Today’s team of EFCC, under Bawa, represents such a team. The greatest thank you such a team could get is to retain them,” he suggested.
He also noted that the commission, in recent years, had demonstrated continual relevance and earned increasing confidence among the people in tackling corruption.
“These successes cannot be separated from the commitment and sacrifices of individuals who have relentlessly kept with their assigned roles in pursuit of the EFCC mandate. Bawa, the current chairman of the commission, is among such individuals.”
