Nuhu Ribadu, a former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said that the anti-graft agency goes through hell before it is able to bring a single corruption case to court. He urged other agencies to step up.
- Other anti-graft agencies have been urged by Nuhu Ribadu to emulate the EFCC
- Commending the agency for its work, the former EFCC boss said corruption was a problem in Nigeria
- According to him, lots of government agencies are not doing anything to support the fight against corruption
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Nuhu Ribadu, a former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said that the anti-graft agency goes through hell before it is able to bring a single corruption case to court.
The Cable reports that Ribadu spoke at an anti-corruption townhall meeting tagged ‘A spanner in the wheel of corruption’, organised by the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation in Abuja on Monday, March 19.
The former EFCC boss noted that Nigeria has the highest corruption cases in Africa and lamented that other anti-graft agencies were not doing as much as the EFCC.
He said: “The EFCC alone has over 3800 ongoing corruption cases in the courts, not to talk of other cases but they have their hands full. They (EFCC) has done fairly well. You need to see what these people go through to get one case to court. It is hell. Because some people will do everything possible to make sure you don’t drag them to court. They do not even sleep.
“Let the ICPC wake up from this their slumber and start doing something too. Same with government ministries. There are lots of government agencies that are not doing anything to support the fight against corruption.
“The Nigeria police force should also wake up and do what the EFCC is doing. Same with the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary; why are we not getting the convictions in the corruption cases? They have a role to play as well."
Ribadu, however, said everything was not all negative, noting that the EFCC has been able to recover monies abroad. He said: “Nigeria is the only country that has successfully recovered stolen money taken abroad. Other countries in Africa and other places have tried but they never succeeded.”
Waziri Adio, executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, who also spoke at the event, noted that there was need to tackle institutional corruption.
He said: “Wherever monopoly exists, and where there is institutional discretion and without measures of accountability, the institutions will definitely be abused. We need to look at issues of sanctions, systems and society.
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“We focus too much on sanctions but as important as they are, they won’t upturn the table. We need to put a formidable system in place. If you have a society where corruption is normalised, no matter the system and sanction, people will abuse it.”
Meanwhile, We reported earlier that the acting chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, on Wednesday, March 14, declared that there is no hiding place for looters in Nigeria.
Magu made this known in Abuja office when he welcomed the leadership of the Print Media Publishers Guild (PMPG) which paid him a courtesy call.
Magu reiterated that ''Corruption has eaten deeply into the fabric of the Nigerian society and all hands must be on deck to ensure that we save our country from this scourge.”
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