The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ola Olukoyede, has revealed how some public officers engage in fraudulent anticipatory declaration of assets to justify future acts of corruption and theft of public funds.
Speaking on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, at the launch of a Virtual Tool on the Code of Conduct for Public Officers organised by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) in collaboration with the Technical Unit on Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR), Olukoyede described the tactic as a sophisticated but illegal scheme.
He cited an investigation in which a politically exposed person declared ownership of a property valued at over ₦3 billion on their CCB form — but at the time of declaration, the property did not yet exist.
“We discovered one of the very big properties declared carried an address different from its actual location. On digging further, we found out that the property was declared before it was even built,” Olukoyede disclosed.
The EFCC Chairman urged the CCB to note such criminal patterns and adopt innovative investigative approaches to detect and curb this practice.
Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, described the CCB’s new virtual tool as a “significant milestone” in the digitisation of public conduct oversight, saying it would promote preventive compliance and strengthen ethics in public service.
Also speaking, Head of Service, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, stressed the importance of technology in governance, noting that ethical conduct is non-negotiable for lasting reforms.
“The benefit of this tool is that it is accessible, cost-effective, and promotes transparency, enabling tracking and compliance,” she said.
In his opening remarks, CCB Chairman, Abdullahi Usman Bello, explained that the digital platform will help public officers stay accountable by educating them on the rules and regulations guiding their service.
The new virtual tool is expected to simplify compliance, enhance transparency, and serve as a deterrent to unethical practices among public officers.
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