Grid Collapse: EFCC To Probe Electricity Firms

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said it would investigate the electricity companies to unravel the mystery behind the constant collapse of national grid.

EFCC chairman, Mr Ola Olukoyede, SAN, stated this in Abuja on Tuesday when the House Committee on Financial Crimes visited the headquarters of the anti-graft agency on oversight function.

The EFCC boss identified one of Nigeria’s problems in the last 15 to 20 years to below 20 per cent budget performance.

He also accused some electricity companies of buying substandard goods for power operations, noting that this has been responsible for the frequent collapses of the national grid recently.

Speaking on the agency’s achievements under him in the last one year, Olukoyede said, “I am sure you must read the record of our modest achievements in the last one year, particularly in the area of recovery. If you are fighting financial crimes, and you don’t make asset tracking and recovery one of the key issues that you have to embark on with all seriousness, you may not be able to go far. I say this because when the perpetrators of these crimes still have access to the proceeds of the crime, they can go to any extent to fight you.

“We are happy to report to you that in the last one year, we have done close to N250 billion and several tens of millions of dollars and also quite a number of real estates across the country in asset recovery.

“Within the last year, we have secured close to 3,500 convictions. Some of these convictions are high profile, not minding what some people are saying. When you approve the annual report that we have sent to you, then we can publish them on our website.”

Reacting to criticisms of the commission in some quarters for devoting time to fight cybercrime, the EFCC boss declared that he cannot take his eyes off cybercrime because it constitutes economic sabotage and inflicts reputational damage on the country.

Olukoyede noted, “You are also aware that upon my assumption of office, I identified economic sabotage as a major problem. There is no financial crime that is too small to investigate and prosecute and no one is too big. If you refuse to do the small one today, tomorrow they will become big.

“So, people should stop criticising us for investigating and prosecuting cybercrime. Some of these criticisms are coming from legal minds, people who should know better.

“A crime that has made us lose over $500million dollars in one year and somebody said we shouldn’t do it? You present your Green Passport on a global arena and they mark you out for profiling.”

Apart from cybercrime, Olukoyede also identified currency racketeering and dollarisation of the economy as economic sabotage.

“I would also like you to know that part of the economic sabotage is in the area of currency racketeering and mutilation and the dollarisation of our economy. There is no country in the world that doesn’t regard its currency as a legal tender. We must respect the Naira.

“As I am talking to you now, our Special Task Force is all over the place and we have brought some sanity in the handling of the national currency. People are still committing the crime, I am aware of that. This year alone, we have procured over 50 convictions on it,” Olukoyede added.

Earlier, the chairman of the committee, Hon. Ginger Onwesibe said they were at the EFCC to assess the activities of the commission and see how they can collaborate to move the nation forward.