In October 2023, a remarkable event occurred in the Nigerian National Assembly. It was a citizen presenting the most eloquent testimony against corruption to the Senate.
“Let the fight against corruption begin from this hallowed chamber,” he advocated.
His identity: Ola Olukoyede. He got his confirmation, detonating a live political landmine as he unwittingly used the EFCC’s investigation of Senate President Godswill Akpabio as an example.
Akpabio laughed. “Mr nominee, leave the Senate President for now,” he chuckled.
But EFCC was prosecuting Akpabio. Yes, the very man I had cited as an example of Nigeria “scrubbing out character,” whose years-long demonstration of ethical emptiness and attempts to evade prosecution (EFCC first arrested him in 2015), had become the Senate President.
Come with me, then, to the website of the EFCC. Try searching for “Patience Jonathan.”
James Ibori? Sambo Dasuki? Godswill Akpabio? “No results found,” right?
I use these four examples because I can think of no other Nigerians who have been paired more frequently or intensively with the EFCC in news reports in the last 20 years.
But it has been 18 years since I wrote “Patience Jonathan, Nigeria’s most powerful woman,” following the EFCC’s seizure of $13.5 million from her in September 2006.
Parallel narratives exist for the other three searches you have just conducted. And yet, the mighty commission doing the seizing and arresting and charging has no records? “No results found”?
One month ago, EFCC approached various media houses with an article about me, aiming to abort my annual reminder of its reporting obligation.
Now, many Nigerian institutions far less pivotal than the EFCC are glad to report: A sample: The Financial Reporting Council; Auditor-General of the Federation; NIMASA; Bureau of Public Procurement; Fiscal Responsibility Commission; and the National Pension Commission.
Welcoming the first EFCC report in September 2006, Senate President Ken Nnamani stressed the reporting date, asking: “If the report of the Number Two citizen in our country is a public document, why should the report concerning state governors, councillors not be available?”
At that event, Mr Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer EFCC chairman, unveiled “corruption in high places,” listing by name several governors.
That first report, sadly, is the last time any EFCC leader has officially filed the comprehensive, professional and audited report demanded by law.
I have personally searched. I have invited entire news organisations to do so. How can two decades’ worth of reporting elude the mass media of Nigeria unless someone is trying to call them lazy or stupid?
In 2007, “unnamed officials” of the commission declared that the agency would shift focus to “asset recovery,” not prosecution. Translation: deals, not justice.
In October 2012, I described that tragedy as the EFCC moving Nigeria backwards.
This is exactly what I remembered when EFCC last month tried to persuade a few newsrooms that opinions, not reporting, are the first business of journalism and the journalism business.
To prove this wrong, its writer quoted from a report that no journalist had seen! Imagine: they have not even leaked a single report in the past 19 years, yet they had no compunction about quoting from one!
He wrote: “A glimpse of the 2024 EFCC Annual Report shows that the total financial recoveries stood at N364.579,370,151.35 and $326.496,959.95…”
No Nigerian should be insulted this way by an EFCC employee, particularly as he implies, falsely, that the information is available to be shared. The law does not classify the EFCC’s obligatory report as a secret, let alone a perpetual one.
On the contrary, EFCC hides behind technicalities to keep the purveyors of Nigeria’s economic and financial criminal enterprises potent, present and thriving.
I am not the only one who has noticed this. The 2009, 2016, 2020 Nigeria Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of the US Department of State described the EFCC as “focused on low- and mid-level government officials.”
They refer to “allegations that it targeted individuals who were out of favour with the government, while those that were in favour continued their activities with impunity.”
Similarly, in 2011, Human Rights Watch pointed out that while EFCC had indicted around 30 prominent political figures and recovered approximately $11 billion, convictions and prison sentences for the elite were rare; only four resulted in convictions, with little or no jail time.
The problem is EFCC’s conspicuous consumption of its lavish legal authority, with no commitment to earning public trust. The collusion with the National Assembly and the elite over its obligation to report betrays the people.
The commission exposes itself principally because it is a poor manager of its political and legal assets and of information, beginning from its website, from which it is currently purging many elements in a new design.
For instance:
When EFCC says “ARCHIVES,” it is not referring to what the dictionary defines as “a place where public records or other historical documents are kept,” but to religious activity. Where are its true archives?
When EFCC announces “Operational Statistics,” that is only a list of its convictions in 2021, and list is duplicated in its “Convictions” tab, which reports only 2020-2022.
The commission reports interim forfeitures, but only for three years, with no final forfeitures documented.
In 2022, EFCC recorded 3,785 convictions, but over 90 per cent were the low-level fraudsters the commission likes to hide behind. Most of them ended in plea bargains and just months-long sentences.
Keep that in mind when an EFCC official celebrates funds recovered. Recovered from whom? Why is the EFCC acting as the judge and jury over itself?
Where are the big economic and financial criminals? Consider the fiasco of the EFCC January 2025 Motor Vehicle Auction, which involved an astonishing 820 vehicles (yes, I counted them), including 141 luxury brands such as Porsches, Jaguars, and Range Rovers.
The chaos was probably because it was the original owners and their proxies choking up the systems to buy back their property. We will never know from the records because EFCC simply wants to announce “recoveries,” avoiding the identification of privileged criminals.
But EFCC was set up to punish crime; otherwise, it might have been named Economic Assets Recovery Commission. Its reporting is meant to keep Nigerians continually informed, as I detailed previously. That EFCC appears to be institutionally unperturbed by the fact that NASS never debates its reports may confirm that the reports are fictitious.
To advance Nigeria, the fairness and efficiency of public institutions are critical.. But like excellence, accountability must be lived, not preached. To hold others to account, EFCC must be accountable.
This is not a game, as I wrote in 2015. EFCC openly telling its story to Nigerians and to history is non-negotiable.