In October 2023, The Punch did. So did Businessday. And Leadership. You, too: Channels Television. Daily Trust. And many other news organizations.
You all enthusiastically reported the public order of Ola Olukoyede, the new Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), that all staff members of the commission immediately declare their assets.
“The EFCC is a creation of the law,” you quoted him as telling senior members of the commission. “We must do our job in line with the dictates of the law. This is a standard international practice and we would ensure that it is our established norm.”
Mr. Olukoyede added: “All of us are going to declare our assets; from Level 17, downward. I did mine, so there’s no reason for anyone to be afraid to do the same. Even the commission’s secretary did, you all may also have done it in the past, but there’s a need for all of us to do it again. We will declare our assets, and we are going to investigate them.”
The chairman further stated: “We must live above board by setting the pace with good examples. As anti-corruption fighters, our hands must be clean, so we must declare our assets.”
He was speaking less than two weeks after his appointment, President Bola Tinubu reportedly urging him to justify the confidence given in a “newly invigorated war on corruption undertaken through a reformed institutional architecture in the anti-corruption.” Following his confirmation, I congratulated him.
In December 2020, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called property ownership in Dubai “An Oasis for Nigeria's Corrupt Political Elites,” citing334 Politically Exposed Persons involved with 800 different properties.
Three years later, new EFCC boss Olukoyede calledfor legislation against unexplained wealth towardscombating looting in Nigeria.
ThisDay testified. So did you: Peoples Gazette. And The Nation. You did too, Daily Trust. And The Punch. And Arise TV.
The chairman has since frozen 1146 accounts for money-laundering, and at least 105 fintech accounts forunauthorized foreign exchange activity, money laundering, and terrorism financing.
He took personal responsibility for denouncing Yahaya Bello, the former governor of Kogi, confirming that he had withdrawn $720,000 from the state’s coffers to pay his children’s school fees in advance.
Just two months ago, Olukoyede came face-to-face with Nigerian youth, through representatives of the National Association of Nigerian Students who visited his office. Urging them to join the commission in the fight against corruption, he swore to give no quarters.
“It is a collective responsibility to fight corruption in Nigeria,” he declared. “EFCC will not relent, I promise you that whatever it is going to cost us to fight this fight, we will fight it.
Clearly, Olukoyede, a lawyer and the first southerner and pastor to hold the position, had come in roaring. He had the appropriate background too, having previously served the commission as secretary, and then as chief of staff to ex-chairman Ibrahim Magu.
But intentions and promises, we all know, are not performance. And it is time now for Nigerians to evaluate the character and performance of the EFCC under Olukoyede.
“The Commission shall, not later than 30th September in each year, submit to the National Assembly, a report of its activities during the immediately preceding year and shall include in such report the audited accounts of the Commission,” the EFCC Establishment Act 2004 proclaims in Section 37.
In these 20 years, only ONCE—in 2006—has the EFCC dutifully tendered that report to NASS: ONCE. Year after year, the leadership of the EFCC has conspired and colluded either to produce no report, or to smuggle in a flimsy summary of the agency’s workthat is studiously hidden from the Nigerian people, thus boosting corruption instead.
That was why, as one who has followed the work of the commission from the beginning, in 2021 I declared itthe Economic and Financial Crimes Collusion.
“This is far deeper than annual reporting,” I wrote, affirming: “As an institution, the EFCC has taken sides to deepen poverty, injustice, insecurity, and hopelessness in Nigeria.”
This is where we are: the Nigerian government runs without public trust, and so does the EFCC. Olukoyede inherited an EFCC in deep turmoilfollowing the sudden terminations of the Ibrahim Magu and Abdulrasheed Bawa leaderships in 2020 and 2023 owing to allegations of corruption.
It must be kept in mind that Olukoyede’s predecessor, Bawa, had led the EFCC’s probe of Bola Tinubu, who is now Olukoyede’s benefactor and principal.
Prior to that, the end of the Magu leadership was engineered by AGF Abubakar Malami, a man who faced general public disapproval in his eight years in office but enjoyed the protection and applause of his principal, Muhammadu Buhari. Elsewhere, I have drawn attention to Malami’s outstanding issues and armada of allegations, repeated lies to the public, and being sued by SERAP.
After congratulating him last October, I wrote of the issue of reporting: “Will the Olukoyede EFCC be different? At his confirmation, Senate President Godswill Akpabio — a man I cited last June in support of the argument that Nigeria is now scrubbing out character, a man the EFCC has been trying to prosecute and the first picture in Premium Times’ August 2022 Special Report on “11 forgotten cases of alleged corruption by former Nigerian state governors,”— asked Mr Olukoyede not to use his name as an example of officials being investigated. Jokingly.”
And then I said, “Next year, we will see if MrOlukoyede produces a report, whether it is complete and public, and what story of character it tells.”
Here we are. “Next year” is here. Olukoyede’s report, should he issue one, will not be about Nigeria. It will be about Olukoyede. Will it show him putting the Bible down, or picking the Bible up? Will it support his “whatever it is going to cost us to fight this fight, we will fight it?”
Is there “a “newly invigorated war on corruption”? It is time to prove it?
Who will sniff out Olukoyede’s report, or its absence? You have been airing his words: ThisDay, The Punch. Businessday, ThisDay, People’s Gazette. SaharaReporters. Channels TV. Premium Times. Leadership. Daily Trust. The Nation. Arise. So many of you.
Who will now do the work of following-up and dredging up? Are we just hot air reporters who flourish in airconditioned press conferences? Can weidentify a scoop opportunity when it nibbles? I challenge you.
Speaking of challenges, I write this at a time of great peril for Nigerian journalism. Your trade is being throttled. Reporters, whistleblowers, writers and bloggers are being snatched from their beds. Some are being tortured and blackmailed, their bank accountsclosed, and their families starved.
The idea is to muzzle the fact that these are evil times in Nigeria. Nigerians are living this nightmare, but others are seeing and saying it: The Times. The New York Times. Le Monde. The World Bank. AP. The Week. The Christian Science Monitor. Al Jazeera. The BBC. Reuters.
Every Nigerian journalist or journal must consider an attack on another, even a distant professional relative, to be an attack on all. The time to combat internal complacency and complicity is NOW.