‘We Are Human Beings And Not Spirits’ – Olukoyede Clarifies Claims Of Corruption In EFCC

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has responded to allegations that the anti-graft agency is riddled with corrupt elements.

Naijaonpoint reports that there have been complaints that operatives of the commission corruptly enrich themselves while carrying out their duties.

However, Olukoyede, during an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday, April 30, said nobody is a saint in the EFCC, noting that people working in the anti-graft agency are human, not spirits.

The EFCC chairman recalled that some officers who had committed infractions were referred to a disciplinary committee, and a significant number of them were found culpable.

He said, “It is important for me and my comrades in the EFCC that if we are going to fight corruption, we must fight it from the position of integrity. We sank that into the minds of every operative in the EFCC and we look into records and we looked into the cases of those with pending disciplinary cases and those who have committed one infraction or the other and we set up a disciplinary committee and we found quite a number of them culpable.

“We reviewed it and agreed that those people should leave the system and Nigerians knew that is exactly what we did. We didn’t stop at that. There are so many cases we are still working on and we will begin to take actions and apply sanctions as well. So far we have been able to weed out about 27 people that we have found their character not worthy of being part of this crusade’

“I won’t sit here and say everybody has become a saint in the EFCC. That day will never come everybody will be a saint. People working in the EFCC are human beings and not spirits. There will be this propensity for people to misbehave, overzealousness and all that stuff.

“The promise I have made to Nigerians is that as soon as we discover such characters, we will do something about them in line with our processes and the law.”