Tunde Bakare
The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ola Olukoyede on Wednesday, June 8, 2026, convened a strategic meeting of the nation’s anti-corruption agencies at the Abuja corporate headquarters of the Commission.
The roundtable was to fashion a stronger and enduring collaboration and synergy framework among the EFCC, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, the Code of Conduct Bureau and the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP for better outcomes in the fight to eradicate corruption, economic and financial crimes in the country.
In a meeting attended by the Director General, BPP, Dr. Adebowale Adedokun; ICPC Chairman, Dr. Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, and CCB Chairman, Dr. Abdulahi Usman Bello, Olukoyede explained that he called the anti-graft czars to put heads together for broad-based collaboration and synergy for effective deliveries of the anti-corruption mandates.
He identified procurement and contract fraud as the severest of all public sector corruption and financial crime typologies in the country.
“More than 80 percent of public sector corruption is caused by contract and procurement fraud and if you look at its impact on the economy, on our social life, health sector and all that, you will discover that it’s quite huge. If we can reduce this to the barest minimum, we would have gone a long way in realizing our mandates. If we can actually deal with the issue of contract and procurement fraud in Nigeria, probably within the next one year, the impact will be felt everywhere,” he said.
He stressed the need for the three law enforcement agencies to also work better with the BPP, which is a regulator. “The essence of this meeting is to also work with the BPP. The BPP is a regulator. The three of us were enforcers. In fighting public and private sector procurement and contract fraud, if you don’t work with the regulator, technically speaking, a lot of things would be missed. It’s not just about waiting for them to steal the money. It’s about prevention, it’s about risk management. And that’s where the regulator comes in. They have the technical depth of the procurement processes which some of us may not have. If we work together, if we synergize to establish a sustainable institutional partnership between the law enforcement agencies and the BPP it will go a long way in helping us to reduce contract and procurement fraud. Basically that is the objective of this meeting,” he said.
Speaking further, Olukoyede noted that there are many areas in the Public Procurement Act that have not been activated, adding that “that’s what the BPP DG is here to also draw our attention to. He will also enlighten us with respect to some of these regulations that can help our work.”
He noted that anti-corruption agencies’ collaboration efforts would improve information and intelligence gathering and facilitate timely investigation and prosecution of some cases.
“I have discovered that there is really nothing to compete about. We can do joint investigations. Sometimes it may be necessary for us to do joint monitoring. I believe if we do these with the BPP that will help us a lot. Also, capacity building is very key”, he said.
He proposed the formulation of a Standard Operating Procedure, SOP that will help the agencies stimulate the relationship and identify what is expected of each one of them and the need to manage information very confidentially. “That’s why we decided to call for this meeting. And then, going forward we believe we’ll be able to have this meeting on a quarterly basis so that we will review our resolutions and ultimately help our nation”, he said.
Lending credence to the EFCC’s Chair submissions, ICPC Chairman, while calling for greater synergy and collaboration observed that “if ICPC, CCB, NFIU and EFCC come together it will give people confidence that we are really working together to fight corruption. And that will also help us in avoiding duplications because there are a lot of cases that people will file in EFCC, they will come to ICPC and they will go to Code of Conduct”
“This is an area where I have concern for us. Whenever I see any petition which is out of our mandate, I don’t touch it. I will direct it to either the CCB, EFCC or police. So that’s why this kind of meeting is very important and we need to use technology so that we eliminate duplication.”
The Chairman, CCB Chairman, while regretting the impact of corruption in the country, showed in infographics that around N7 to N25 trillion had been lost in the country to corruption. He disclosed that the country has about five million public servants and corroborated that procurement fraud is one of the major scourges in the public sector space. He emphasized the need for improved collaboration, reiterating that partnership among the NFIU, EFCC and ICPC is very important. The NFIU, he said “can provide information for us, the EFCC can investigate financial crimes, regarding procurement. The ICPC can also look at systemic corruption.”
In his presentation, the BPP Chairman took the participant agencies through basic imperatives anti-graft agencies need to know from the regulatory perspective. He made a presentation on “Why Public Procurement Matters,” capturing the consequences of a weak procurement system, which he said usually leads to waste of public resources, cost overrun, project abandonment, poor quality infrastructure and corruption.
He also threw light on public procurement reforms, comprising legal and institutional reforms, capacity building and collaboration. He stressed that “The most effective anti-corruption strategy is not merely to pursue wrongdoing after it occurs, but to design procurement systems where hide.”
He pointed out that public procurement reform required five elements: legal & institutional reforms; governance & accountability; strategic procurement; digital procurement and improved market operations. Discussions were held on such issues as procurement without cash backing, deliberate breaches of procurement procedures, abuse of procurement laws, among others.