According to Ola Olukoyede of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigerian civil officials stole significantly more money than politicians did. Speaking about how widespread corruption is in Nigeria’s system, Olukoyede claimed that civil personnel were crucial. In an interview that he posted on his X account on Saturday, Olukoyede revealed the information. He said that public servants owned the majority of the homes in Abuja’s Asokoro and Maitama neighbourhoods, indicating pervasive corruption in the civil sector. According to him, corruption is not just a problem in the public sector. The private sector was equally responsible, he said. In one noteworthy instance, he noted, the EFCC looked into a ministry and found that N33.7 billion had been stolen.
Only N3 billion, surprisingly, could be linked to the Minister; the remaining N30.7 billion was associated with civil personnel, such as procurement and finance directors. This discrepancy emphasises how important civil servants are to corruption, frequently even more so than politicians. Olukoyede said, “The range of money that establishment people have stolen is far greater than what politicians have stolen.” “The results of the EFCC’s investigation highlight the necessity of a comprehensive analysis of corruption in Nigeria, especially in the civil service,” he stated. The head of the EFCC stated in the interview: “There is no question that corruption exists in the public sector, but I will also tell you that, based on all of our investigation work, the private sector is just as terrible as the public sector.
When it comes to public service, however, we have found that it is very difficult for a political class to embezzle funds without the cooperation of those we refer to as establishment individuals. I’ll give you a typical example, but these folks are constantly there, even when political appointees come and go. “We looked into this specific ministry. When we were prosecuting the Minister at the time, we found that approximately N33.7 billion had been stolen; of that amount, only N3 billion could be linked to the Minister; the remaining N30.7 billion could be linked to the establishment individuals, including the directors of finance, procurement, this, and that.
Because of this, Nigerians would know that the amount of money that the system has stolen is far greater than what we politicians have taken. “No, if you trace money to people and they use it to buy a house in their name and you discover the money in the accounts of their children and then their cronies, and in the cause of making statements they didn’t deny that the money belongs to them,” he said when asked why they didn’t tell Nigerians where they kept the money in Abuja. If they had mentioned the Minister’s name in the cause of making statements, we would have said, “Okay, they were just accessories, either two or after the facts.”
However, if they confessed, it would be hard for anyone to refute them once you caught them and conducted a thorough inquiry using documentation proof. According to statistics derived from our analysis of Abuja’s real estate market, civil servants hold the majority of homes in Asokoro and Maitama. Indeed, statistics have demonstrated that we have proof of that. We have learnt this, and it is crucial that we focus our attention on the core civil service sector, which includes permanent secretaries, directors, and other civil servants in general.
Tracing money to specific people and identifying assets—like real estate—that were bought with illegal monies are two of the EFCC’s investigative techniques. He said that in certain instances, suspects had admitted to having stolen money, which was important evidence for the commission’s claims.
