The House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes, has pledged to support the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in order to achieve its mandate of ridding Nigeria of corruption.
The committee chairman, Ibrahim Abdullahi made the pledge at a meeting with the EFCC boss at the National Assembly, NASS, on Tuesday.
The meeting which coincided with the first one hundred days of the commission’s chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, offered him the opportunity to brief the committee on his vision for the EFCC.
“Today’s meeting is coming on my 100 days in office. We have achieved quite a lot in terms of the promises that we made, in terms of restructuring and vigorously prosecuting cases… it is still a work in progress, but we have made a lot of inroads,” he said.
Presenting an infographic brochure of his achievements in the first 100 days, Bawa said he was driven by the consciousness to steer the anti-graft war away from fighting corrupt people, to fighting corruption, adding that it was far cheaper to prevent corruption.
He disclosed that the commission had stepped up its prevention efforts with the resuscitation of the interfaith anti-corruption committee comprising Muslim and Christian clerics charged with the mandate of delivering preaching and teaching manual for adherents of both faith.
Bawa also disclosed that the Commission was working towards executing a corruption risk assessment for agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
On restructuring of the commission, he said new directorates, including directorate of intelligence, which is now the fulcrum of intelligence-led investigative activities of the commission had been created, while others were upgraded to improve overall efficiency.
The chairman told the committee that the Commission is poised to improve the capacity its personnel through training, while disclosing that the EFCC Academy is currently under renovation to position it to effectively achieve its capacity development objectives.
Responding to a question by a lawmaker, the EFCC boss promised to look into the possibility of organizing training programmes for the lawmakers to keep them abreast of the workings of the commission, upon the completion of the ongoing renovation work at the EFCC Academy.
