- Safiu Kehinde
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has lauded the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ola Olukoyede over reforms instituted against corruption, economic and financial crimes in the country as well as the new fraud preventive frameworks of the Commission.
This was made known in a statement issued by the anti-graft agency on Friday.
According to the statement, the lawmakers commendation came following the committee members working visit to the Commission at its corporate headquarters in Abuja.
Speaking on behalf of the committee, its Chairman, Hon Salam Bamidele praised Olukoyede for his leadership style, commitment, and dedication.
“Having worked for close to one year now, we felt it is important to reach out to stakeholders, those whose mandate and ours share things in common.
“We have also observed your leadership of the Commission in the short time within which you have been here, and I must say that we have seen in you a good measure of dedication, commitment and understanding of the issues at stake and the best approaches you employ towards making sure that we remove this blight, this very unfortunate listing of Nigeria in every poor record on transparency, accountability and good governance, all around the world.
“I know that you have a lot of advocacy that you do, they are very important especially with respect to leadership education,” he said.
On the role of the Public Account Committee, Bamidele explained that they are saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that funds appropriated by the legislature to the various organs of government are applied with probity and accountability on the matters for which they are appropriated.
The convergence of EFCC and the Committee’s mandates, according to him, makes synergy and collaboration between the Commission and the Committee imperative.
“There is no way that you will be doing this kind of work and we are doing our own in the National Assembly without us having a synergy.
“We make laws and have the mandate of oversight and if we find any agency that is working within the ambit of its Establishment Act, it is always good for us to have a deep engagement with them because that is how we will understand their challenges and know the areas where we can collaborate.
“So we have decided to come and identify with you and to seek a deeper engagement in these respects,” he said.
Bamidele further disclosed in an effort to ensure probity and accountability in public finances, the House of Representatives had to give the Audit Bill expedited hearing and passage and transmit to the Senate for concurrence.
“What the Audit Bill will do is to ensure that the Office of the Auditor General is empowered not only with more resources but capacity to prevent financial crimes and corruption and violation of compliance from happening.
“If we are able to do more of prevention, your own burden too in the EFCC would be less. So, we are working to ensure that we have the Audit Bill passed in a manner that would strengthen that office and ensure that we have more preventive measures,” he said.
He, however, expressed regret over justice delay in the country which he said often sees corruption cases drag endlessly in courts.
Meanwhile, Bamidele calls for collaboration of the EFCC with other relevant committees for the improvisation of Nigeria’s justice system.
“We have identified a few gaps in our anti-corruption drive and crusade. One of it is that we have to look at our justice administration system and mechanism of justice administration.
“If you start a case against somebody who has committed a financial crime and it takes up to 10 to 15 years to determine, it leads to frustration on so many ends.
“So, working together with other relevant committees of the House, we should be able to see how to improve on our justice administration system in a manner that will make corruption cases to be determined within the shortest possible time, even if it means creating special courts to tackle issues of financial crimes.” the lawmaker added.