EFCC Set to Take Anti-corruption Battle to Nigeria’s Seaports

From all indications, anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is set to take its anti-corruption war to the Nation’s seaports as it continues in its bid to sanitise the country of corruption. This was made known by the Chairman of the commission, Ibrahim Lamorde, on Friday, in Abuja, while receiving the Special Adviser to the President on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Professor Sylvester Monye, in his office.

According to Lamorde, “I assure you that we all understand the importance of the maritime industry in Nigeria, and we will do everything possible to make sure that your activities are successful. In fact, we will start deploying our people to the ports from Monday, to make sure that people that are not needed there are removed,” he promised.

Prior to this, Prof. Monye had informed the EFCC chairman that he had come to seek the commission’s assistance in tackling some of the challenges undermining the port reform efforts. He said that certain individuals and agencies of government were deliberately thwarting the efforts of government at sanitising the nation’s ports.

Monye had said “We have situations where agencies of government deliberately mount obstacles to generate pecuniary. The idea is that the more delay you have, the more likely people pay up,” he said. He further reiterated the Port Reform Committee’s readiness to remove all obstacles in the way of efficient clearing process at the ports. In his words, “The reason we are bringing EFCC into the whole thing is that these agencies are part of the problem, and when you have agencies of government constituting themselves as bottlenecks, then we have no other choice than to remove these bottlenecks,” he declared.