Acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, has linked the deadly coronavirus to corruption.
Mr Magu spoke on Tuesday at the passing-out parade of 281 cadets of the EFCC, Detective Inspector Course-5, at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna.
Coronavirus, officially named COVID-19, broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. More than 1,800 persons have died of the disease.
Magu, however, said corruption was worse than any disease and that he was sure corruption was behind the outbreak of COVID-19.
“The EFCC is not satisfied with just prosecuting and jailing the fraudsters, rather the commission has concluded plans to reform them in collaboration with relevant government agencies towards making them better citizens,” he said.
“EFCC has zero tolerance for corruption as our mandate is to kill corruption as corruption is worse than all the diseases we have now and I strongly believe coronavirus is caused by corruption.
“Corruption is a huge burden to our nation it has spread to insecurity, poverty, unemployment, falling standard of education, weak access to affordable health care, falling infrastructure and so many others.”
Magu added that the EFCC had created directorates to expand the agency’s ability in managing crime.
“As part of vigorous pursuit, the commission has created new specialised directorates and sections taking into cognisance the changing phase of criminality,” he said.
“These directorates includes asset forfeiture and recovery management directorate, forensic and science laboratory directorate, anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism section.
“As at 2015, we had 103 convictions, in 2016 195 convictions, 314 in 2018, over 1218 convictions were secured in 2019.”
