Olukoyede: Nigeria making progress in anti-corruption fight — global ratings not the focus

Ola Olukoyede, chairman of the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says Nigeria has recorded “substantial progress” in the fight against corruption.

Speaking on Tuesday at the public presentation of a report reviewing Nigeria’s performance in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (TI-CPI) from 2019 to 2024, Olukoyede highlighted major achievements in the country’s anti-corruption efforts.

The EFCC chairman urged Nigerians to focus on internal progress rather than international ratings, arguing that many of the country’s recent successes are not reflected in global assessments.

“There is no gainsaying the fact that in the last one year, the major stakeholders in the anti-corruption environment, including the legislature, executive and the judiciary have made substantial progress in our fight against corruption. Nobody is going to deny that,” he said.

“Transparency International may not capture that, but we must drum it up because they do not know that we have made progress.”

Olukoyede highlighted the EFCC’s “record-breaking” recovery of assets, including 753 real estate properties seized in a single operation.

He said the EFCC arrested over 790 fraud suspects, including 194 foreign nationals, some of whom came from countries ranked higher than Nigeria in corruption perception indexes.

“I am not sure there is anywhere in the world with a record of a single real estate recovery in the magnitude of what we recovered last year in the EFCC. We recovered 753 apartments of various sizes in one single effort, not even FBI, not anywhere, not even America. That was a major leap,” he added.

“In a single operation, we arrested over 790 suspects including 194 foreigners that included Europeans. Some of the countries that have better ratings than us in the TI rating their citizens were arrested by us carrying out fraud in Nigeria. 

“We have started their arraignment, we will see to the conclusion of their cases. We need to maintain the tempo, we need to encourage ourselves; we need to make people play by the rules, scale up our activities and ultimately we will get there. Whether they give us substantial ratings or not, what is important is that we are improving.

“For us as Nigerians we must be more interested in adding value to our economic and social lives than getting discouraged by any international rating because if we don’t do that, it will be a problem for us. 

“Whatever we are going to do, the priority should be to improve on our processes to add value to ourselves as Nigerians. If we do the right thing, the international community will come here and copy from us.”