as it may sound to many, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu on Tuesday, February 18, 2020, linked the coronavirus to corruption.
Magu made this strong remark during the passing out parade of 281 inspector cadets of the EFCC in Kaduna state, The Cable reports.
Commenting on the side effects of corruption, the EFCC boss made it known that the social vice is worse than any known disease, and is the cause of the global epidemic.
“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,” Magu 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.”
The EFCC boss said that the major objective of the commission is to kill corruption in all part of Nigeria at all levels and in whatever form related to financial activities.
“As part of vigorous pursuit, the commission has created new specialised directorate and section taking into cognisance the changing phase of criminality,” he said.
“This directorate 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.”
However the commission has responded to the trending video to be “false and misleading”, requesting the news platform to make corrections.
“This information is false and misleading. The Acting Chairman said, Tackling corruption is a clarion call, given that corruption is a huge burden to the nation. It is worse than Cancer, Ebola Virus, Coronavirus and all other deadly diseases put together. Correct this, please! ” – the official Twitter handle of the EFCC wrote.