Joseph Bakare
The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede has reiterated his commitment towards using the anti-corruption fight to stimulate growth in the economy.
He stated this in Abuja on Thursday, April 4, 2025 while receiving the the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Export- Import, NEXIM Bank, Mallam Abba Bello who came on a courtesy visit to the corporate headquarters of the EFCC.
While expressing delight at the visit, Olukoyede noted that the mission of the EFCC and that of NEXIM Bank align in the area of stimulation of the country’s economic growth.
“We have shared mandates with your bank as an export-import promoting bank, which is to grow the economy. Doing that, you are promoting the economy and on our part, one of our mandates is to also use the instrumentality of the fight against corruption to grow the economy. So, from that perspective I believe we have a shared mandate”.
The EFCC boss lauded Bello’s leadership skills in steering NEXIM Bank away from insolvency to profit-making entities. “You deserve a round of applause for turning the institution around. To have done that is no joke at all. It’s a major responsibility because you have to deal with both external and internal factors. Even changing the orientation of the people you met on ground, changing the system, the processes and all of that takes a lot. For you to have achieved that milestone, I think you need to be applauded and also be encouraged to do more”, he said.
While acknowledging that the Commission is not a debt recovery agency, Olukoyede disclosed that the Commission only steps in when debts verge on economic sabotage. He pointed out that many cases of non-performing loans have underlining fraudulent content and the EFCC would stop at nothing to tackle such cases.
“We are careful of the way we come in, particularly when it comes to the issue of loan recovery. We look at the area of economic sabotage. When somebody is granted a loan, particularly if the money is from the commonwealth or from investors’ resources in a bank and they divert the money or the money did not go to what it was meant for, obviously that is economic sabotage. More than 90% of the cases of bad loans have underlining fraud”, he said.
Earlier in his remark, Bello commended the EFCC for assisting his bank in handling several cases resulting from “abuse which was occasioned by all kinds of things, technical abuse of the process of lending money to beneficiaries of the bank. So what we started doing was to see how we can redeem the situation. The EFCC helped us and played a leading role in the recovery of the monies that were given out fraudulently or without following due process”.
The NEXIM boss appealed to the EFCC to continue to assist his bank in the recovery of loans taken by former internal staffers of the bank.
He also sought collaboration with the Commission in the area of fraud prevention, especially “not allowing people to get into fraudulent activities and corruption; stopping those with virtual knowledge to engage in things that are unworthy. The EFCC has done a lot of engagement for those that are in that kind of business. We can partner with the EFCC either as participants or stopping them from engaging in the fight on the bad side, we would be giving them an option to train and engage in the export value chain,” he said.