The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ola Olukoyede, has urged the National Assembly to pass the Unexplained Wealth Bill, which has been pending since the 9th Assembly.
Olukoyede appealed to the ongoing National Conference on Public Accounts and Fiscal Governance, organised by the Senate and House of Representatives Public Accounts Committees.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme for the three-day conference is “Fiscal Governance in Nigeria: Charting a New Course for Transparency and Sustainable Development.”
He said there was evidence of people living above their means, and there was no clear-cut law holding them accountable.
“In the last three weeks, we started a commission-wide investigation into the extractive industry, particularly the oil and gas sector. What we have discovered is mind-boggling.
“And we have only just opened the books. Much more corruption is yet to be unraveled. If this is what we’re seeing at the surface, imagine what lies beneath.
“There is a very strong connection between the mismanagement of our resources and insecurity.
“When you look at banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, trace it back, and you will find a pattern of corrupt practices and diversion of funds that were meant to improve people’s lives.
“Help me pass the Unexplained Wealth Bill. I’ve been begging for the past year. This same bill was thrown out in the last Assembly. If we don’t make individuals accountable for what they have, we’ll never get it right.
“Someone has worked in a ministry for 20 years. We calculate their entire salary and allowances. Then we find five properties, two in Maitama, three in Asokoro. Yet we’re told to go and prove a predicate offence before we can act. That is absurd,” he said.
The EFCC boss urged all Nigerians to set aside their creed, politics, and ethnic sentiments to block revenue leakage and save the country’s economy.
Olukoyede said that Nigerians should not fail to take advantage of the opportunities presented by President Bola Tinubu’s administration to block revenue leakage, as it could spell doom for the country.
According to him, no amount of capacity will be able to recover half of the resources stolen from Nigeria, as many host countries are unwilling to repatriate them.
He stated that the best option was to prevent corruption, emphasizing that failure to do so would harm the country.
In his remarks, Dr. Adebowale Adedokun, Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), decried the persistent inefficiencies and violations in Nigeria’s budget and project implementation processes.
He said that uncoordinated and underfunded capital projects had become a conduit for corruption and fiscal irresponsibility.
Adedokun stressed the urgent need to overhaul Nigeria’s project funding model and enforce accountability through judicial sanctions.
The BPP boss warned that projects should not be allowed to commence without adequate funding.
He described the practice of allocating paltry sums to multi-billion-naira projects as a deliberate invitation for budget variations and corruption.
Adedokun revealed that in recent months, the Bureau discovered some contracts were awarded and executed without any financial backing, a practice he described as “contrary to law” and “endangering the 2024 budget cycle.”
“There are projects worth ₦10 billion or ₦5 billion, but what I see is that only ₦300 million is allocated. Already, it tells me that I’ll be asked for appropriation again, or to incur variation. That is wasteful and unacceptable.
“In global standards, a project must already have funding from start to finish before execution. But here, people just award contracts without funds, and that’s a clear violation of the procurement act.
“If we are serious about stopping waste and corruption, we must start monitoring at the beginning of the budget cycle. Not after projects have failed or funds have been misused,” he said.
He urged all fiscal oversight bodies, including the EFCC, the Fiscal Responsibility Commission, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), to initiate their monitoring from the very beginning of the budget cycle, rather than midway or after funds had been disbursed.