The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ola Olukoyede, has commended the management of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on its sustained efforts to standardize the Nigeria’s statistical system, describing statistical data as crucial in national planning and developmental processes.
Olukoyede gave the commendation on Thursday when a combined delegation of the management team of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), led by Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the Bureau, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, and the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime’s (UNODC’s) Country Representative, Oliver Stolpe and his deputy, Danilo Campisi, paid him a working visit at the EFCC’s headquarters in Abuja.
While acknowledging Adeniran’s transformational efforts at the NBS, Olukoyede noted that Nigeria’s developmental processes would be much hampered without statistical data being produced by the statistics agency on all areas of national planning and development.
He said: “Thank you for your efforts in seeing that Nigeria made progress. We need facts and figures and statistics to add value to developmental processes. Statistics is important to development and we appreciate the work that you are doing for the evolution of our developmental processes.”
Speaking on the anti-graft agency’s renewed drive to frontally tackle all forms of economic and financial crimes nationwide, the EFCC boss explained that without prejudice to the impact of enforcement, preventive frameworks offered better prospects.
He clarified: “In the EFCC we have been doing a lot of enforcement over the years and we are known for that and have recorded quite a number of successes with it. Yes, we believe in enforcement and we are still applying that very seriously but we resolved that we are no longer going to allow money to be stolen before we go into action and that’s what we have been doing.”
According to him, going by his survey and experiences over the years in the area of asset recovery, if N10 or $10 is stolen, it may cost about N4 or $4 to recover it, but to prevent N10 or $10 from being stolen, less than N1 or $1 may be spent.
Olukoyede stressed: “So, prevention is a more effective way of fighting corruption and that is where we are channeling more strength without necessarily undermining the importance of enforcement. We just created a whole department for that purpose. We call it Fraud Risk Assessment and Control (FRAC).”
While commending the UNODC and the country representative for collaborating with the EFCC over the years, particularly on the Office’s support for good governance in Nigeria, Olukoyede noted that the essence of the anti-graft crusade was to create good governance.
In his brief remarks, the Statistician-General of the Federation lauded the EFCC chairman on his anti-corruption initiatives and the readiness of the commission to partner relevant MDAs, particularly the NBS, in order to reduce economic and financial crimes in the country to the barest minimum and by so doing make the country more investment-friendly.
Photo Caption
The Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Prince Adeyemi Adeniran (left) and the Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ola Olukoyede, when a team from the NBS and the Country Representative of the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC), Oliver Stolpe, and his Deputy, Danilo Campisi, paid a working visit to the EFCC’s chairman at the Commission’s headquarters on Thursday in Abuja
