A coalition of civil society organisations, Initiative for Leadership and Economic Watch in Nigeria, has expressed willingness to join forces with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on monitoring of government budget to ensure its optimal performance.
The CSOs led by Splendor Agbonkpolor made the disclosure in Abuja on Thursday, February 6, 2025, during a courtesy visit to the Executive Chairman of EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, at the Commission’s corporate headquarters in Abuja.
Agbonkpolor said the CSOs committee decided to team up with the EFCC based on the belief that the fight against corruption is not a one-man show.
He said, “The need for us to come together as a team, to be more formidable, to be able to render that independent service to enhance the work of EFCC is very important. It’s the reason why we put ourselves together and said, let’s come as a committee; let’s see how we can begin to assist the government in this direction. And that’s why we ran to the EFCC through our organizations on behalf of the committee so that we can have this interface and understanding and more collaboration.”
“The budget is our major concern. Our mandate is to monitor budget implementation; to assess budget effectiveness, identify budget gaps, advocate for reforms, promote transparency, provide evidence-based reports, collaborate with stakeholders, and support capacity building.
“In our work, over time, we discovered that despite the huge money received by contractors for projects, whenever we get to the site, nothing would be there. If we go on-site and we see that a project that was supposed to be on ground is not on ground, we will come to the EFCC and say look at this project, look at the amount of money that’s been paid, but there’s nothing ground. So it makes the work easier for the EFCC to just go there and investigate, He said.
In his response, EFCC chairman Olukoyede, who thanked members of the delegation for showing “deep interest in seeing that Nigeria moves forward,” noted that “we can only achieve that by collaboration. I’ve been saying it and I’ll continue to say it fighting corruption is not the work of law enforcement or anti-corruption agencies alone and that’s why I am so much in love with your Initiative. I can guarantee you all our support. When I see civil society with us, it gives me confidence that we will succeed”.
Olukoyede emphasised the need for team work among all agencies and all society organisation in the country.
