Expectedly, Sonala Olumhense, sworn cynic of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, is at it again. His ritual of acerbic commentaries on the globally-acclaimed works of the EFCC and its Executive Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, every September, has landed again, not with frolic and fanfare, as he may have expected, but with hisses and disdain from well-meaning Nigerians familiar with the achievements of the commission in the fight against economic and financial crimes.
In a piece entitled “Olukoyede’s ledger without a witness”, Olumhense downplayed the impressive records of convictions and recoveries the EFCC openly placed before Nigerians. To all intents and purposes, 10,872 convictions and N1.233tn recoveries in 34 months are not fables. They are facts. They are verifiable.
Although Olumhense sarcastically implied that “what Olukoyede delivered was not the report that Section 37 of the EFCC Act obligates his commission to deliver to the National Assembly by September 30 each year, complete with audited accounts”, he refused to admit that the commission had never failed to render its Annual Report to the National Assembly every September.
It beats every imagination to think that a columnist of Olumhense’s pedigree could betray such laughable ignorance, or is it plain mischief, in saying that, “no EFCC chairman has filed the comprehensive, audited report the law requires since Nuhu Ribadu did in 2006: the year he stood before the Senate and named names”. The truth is that the National Assembly has all the EFCC’s audited reports, particularly since 2023, when Olukoyede came on board. No law says that such reports should be placed on rooftops or advertised outlandishly to attract Olumhense’s attention. A simple search, enquiry or request from the appropriate quarters in the National Assembly would have laid bare the reports.
