Corruption in EFCC shocking – Lamorde

ABUJA —  Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, has disclosed that the rampant corruption in the Nigerian society may have permeated the supposed iron curtains of anti-corruption agencies, including the commission he heads.

Lamorde, who made the disclosure, yesterday, at a two-day Public-Private Sector Workshop on Corruption, organised by the United Nations Global Compact, UNGC, and the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, NESG, in Abuja, expressed dismay that the commission had succumbed to the “determination of grand patrons of corruption to foist their nefarious ways of life on the rest of us.”

EFCC's new helmsman: Ibrahim Lamorde.
He noted: “By the time I returned to the EFCC at the instance of the President, I was profoundly shocked to find that many of those I was supposed to send out to carry out the Commission’s mandate on certain individuals were themselves enmeshed in corruption.

“The patriotism and even idealism of 2003 (when the EFCC was established) had succumbed to the unrelenting onslaught of corruption; an undue dose of atavistic acquisitiveness and other personal interests had been injected into the war that it was inevitable for the anti-corruption effort to flounder so noticeably.

“EFCC had to do some introspection and we realised that we could ill-afford to raise a finger against the behemoth of corruption if we did not first put our house in order.

“We needed to tell ourselves the bitter truth, which is that the corruption we had been set up to fight, amongst other economic and financial crimes, had permeated the very fabric of the EFCC!

“I was roundly shocked to discover that the EFCC of today was not the one we worked so hard to build nine years ago. I had on my hands, a totally strange organisation, one whose operatives responded to a stimulus other than that of patriotic call to service.”

The EFCC boss said he realised that he needed to “clean up” the system, and had since started on that, adding: “Today, we have created an Internal Affairs unit to give teeth within the EFCC, and we have taken immediate remedial action to name and shame.”