EFCC says $218bn illegally taken out of Nigeria in 38 years

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Wednesday, said a staggering sum of $217.7 billion was illegally taken out of Nigeria between 1970 and 2008.

The anti-graft agency revealed this in Abuja through its acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu at the one day conference organised by the Online Publishers Association of Nigeria (OPAN) in Abuja.

Magu, who was represented by the commission’s acting spokesman, Tony Orilade, said the various investigations, arrests, prosecution and assets recoveries over the years had confirmed that the level of corruption in Nigeria had been truly staggering.

Insisting that corruption in Nigeria was being perpetrated by individuals and groups both in the private and public sectors, Magu identified former state governors, ministers, high ranking military officers, chief executives of parastatals and top bureaucrats in state and federal agencies as culprits involved in the public sector theft.

Magu said: “The alarming rate of corruption committed by these unpatriotic elements can be partly seen in the number of convictions secured by the EFCC from Nigerian courts since I assumed duty as the head of the commission in 2015.

“The figure stands at 103 in 2015, 195 in 2016, 189 in 2017 and 312 for the period of January to December 2018. The total figure for the period of 2015 to 2018 is a mind-blowing 799 convictions. In the process of such convictions, the EFCC recovered N794.5bn, $261m, £1.1m, €8.1m and CFA86, 500.

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“One of the most graphic ways through which the absence of democratic accountability manifests itself in Nigeria today is through the prevalence of rampant corruption at all levels of governance. For example, Transparency International reported that Nigeria was the most corrupt country in the world for years: 1996, 1997, 2000 and second in the line for remaining years up to 2003.

“In February 2015, a high-level panel on illicit financial flows from Africa constituted by the African Union, under the chairmanship of a former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, revealed that Nigeria ranked first among ten African countries by cumulative illicit financial flows between 1970 and 2008. The total outflow from Nigeria for the period was $217.7bn constituting about 30.5 per cent of Africa’s total share.”

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