The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Friday, brokered a renewed strategic alliance towards tackling the menace of internet crimes among others crimes.
The development came when Christopher Wray, FBI’s Director led a team of the Bureau’s top officials on a visit to the EFCC Executive Chairman, Mr. Ola Olukoyede at the Commission’s Abuja corporate headquarters.
In his remark at the meeting, Wray expressed delight at the bond that has existed over the years between the EFCC and FBI and called for its upscaling in the face of common crime threats that confront Nigeria and the US.
“We have had a relationship over the years and this is a reflection of how stronger than ever we are looking forward to taking our partnership to higher and higher levels in tackling threats that affect the people of Nigeria and the people of the United States,” he said.
Responding, Olukoyede expressed appreciation to the FBI for being the EFCC’s personnel and institutional capacity building benefactor over the years and expressed optimism that the collaboration between the two agencies would be taken a notch higher.
“We also want to thank you for the technical support that you have provided over the years for the EFCC and by extension, Nigeria,”he said.
While suing for the enhancement of the collaboration and strategic partnership, Olukoyede noted that doing so was in mutual interest of Nigeria and the US, especially as criminality had become borderless.
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“Some of the crimes we fight are borderless crimes, so it is extremely important for law enforcement agencies across the world to come together to collaborate. Law enforcement agencies must collaborate more. Our activities must be borderless so that we will be able to challenge the activities of the bad guys”, he said.
Speaking further, he said, “one of our major problems in Nigeria is public corruption. Upon my assumption of office I shared my three major policy directives with the entire nation. I promised to use the instrumentality of the anti-corruption fight to stimulate the economy, in other words to ensure that businesses that are registered in Nigeria play by the rules. And we have shown in some of our activities that we were looking into a lot of government agencies as to how they carry out their activities particularly in the area of contract and procurement”
“We also promised the nation that we are going to follow the rule of law. I believe in results but I also believe that the way you achieve the result matters. I promised the nation that we are going to do it right.
“Thirdly is to use the activities of the EFCC to improve the international image of Nigeria and that is why we are vigorously pursuing the issue of cyber criminals because some of the activities of these folks have dented Nigeria’s image in the global space”, he said.
Olukoyede noted that achieving the shift in paradigm called for new dynamism and mechanisms in the tools of the anti-corruption fight.
He expressed optimism that contract and procurement fraud would soon be a thing of the past as “we are going to ensure e-procurement in the entire nation so that it would be easy for us to track the execution of projects. That is one of the key innovations we have brought into our activities and we are really going to follow it through.”
Other officials on the FBI delegation included: Charles Smith Jnr, Sydney Schaur, Joshua James Moldt, William Michael Miller, Vanessa M. Tibbits, William B. Stevens, Leigha Ramson, Sofie Admire Sosenzweig and Dr. Jim Oscar.
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