EFCC’s teeth will bite if NEITI wants, says Magu

Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economics and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says the teeth of the agency “will readily bite” if the need exists.

Magu said this on Friday while receiving Waziri Adio, executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), who had himself expressed readiness to collaborate with EFCC in tackling corruption by reporting serious violations of the country’s constitution.

Earlier, Adio stated that NEITI would need the backing of EFCC since NEITI lacks the power to prosecute, as it only carries out audit.

“We have an Act that criminalises certain behaviours; if people do not cooperate with us, if people do not give us information on time, they are liable to be prosecuted, fined and jailed,” he said.

“But we have existed for 12 to 13 years and nobody has ever been tried under our Act and that is not to say some infractions would not have occurred.

“There are a lot of findings that have come up over time about monies missing, about collusion between operators and government agencies, about possibility of money laundering, about all kinds of economic crimes that we are not in a position to push forward.”

According to Adio, the 2013 Oil and Gas Audit Report revealed that some government agencies such as NNPC and its subsidiaries withheld $3.8bn and N358bn.

He also spoke about the $12.9bn withheld by NNPC from NLNG between 2005 and 2013.

The NEITI boss stated that deepening relationship with EFCC would help send signals to all the agencies and companies that relate with NEITI, to cooperate with it.

Responding, Magu, assured the NEITI delegation of the commission’s preparedness to give a quick response in areas of need and to improve on the existing relationship between the two agencies.

“Where you want us to use our teeth to bite, we would readily do so,” he said.