The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has revealed that underage boys who are into internet fraud popularly called ‘yahoo yahoo’ do age declarations to falsify their age to enable them get driver’s licences to be able to open bank accounts to expend their proceeds from the crimes.
The anti-graft agency has also vowed to go after government agencies and individuals that issue the documents to the criminals to perpetrate fraudulent acts.
The Zonal Director of the EFCC in charge of Edo, Delta and Ondo States, Effa Okim, stated this in Benin City, Edo State, while on a courtesy visit to the Edo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) led by Comrade Festus Alenkhe, where he also revealed that Edo State was second to Lagos in terms of convictions despite the small size of the state.
Okim said parents who normally claim that their children are underage when convicted would also go in for it for their complicity in forgery.
He said: “Crime, what we call ‘yahoo yahoo’ is visible in our streets. When you walk on our streets, when you visit our hotels per second you see these boys and it is so visible that it is disturbing and in addition to being visible.
“The statistics that we have is that Edo is after Lagos in terms of conviction, it calls for concern because in terms of size, Edo is not, but look at the slant on the level of convictions, it is not a good reputation and for me, Edo is too great in the Nigerian history to be reduced to that level in terms of criminality.
“When you hear that a 12-year-old-boy has been sent to jail, that in law he is not supposed to go because he is underage but it happens here often because they go and agree with some authorities and do age declaration stating that they are 18 just to enable them to open account and put their criminal structures in place and at the end when they are arrested, their father will come and say their children are underage.
“We are asking them ‘where were you when he got his driver’s licence, where were you when your underage son opened an account?’ because in the Nigerian law an underage cannot open an account, where were you when your son was spending money in an irresponsible manner?”
He said the Commission, in line with its mandate and vision, was ready to partner with the media “to reduce the visibility of crime on our streets.”
On his part, the NUJ council chairman Alenkhe urged the new EFCC zonal director to maintain an open-door policy to always make information available to journalists for easy dissemination to the public.
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