Date Published: 01/12/11

EFCC set to quiz multi-millionaire, billionaire civil servants

Farida Waziri

Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,EFCC , Mrs Farida Waziri, has said that the anti-graft agency is set to beam its searchlight on multi millionaire and billionaire civil servants.

She disclosed this in her office in Abuja on Wednesday when the Head of Service of the Federation, Prof Oladapo Afolabi, led members of the Inter-Ministerial Task Team on Pension on a courtesy visit to her.

The EFCC boss stated that the Commission has been empowered through Section 7 (b) of the EFCC Establishment Act to “ cause investigations to be conducted into the properties of any person if it appears to the Commission that a person’s life style and extent of the properties are not justified by his source of income”. She further assured Professor Afolabi of the Commission’s commitment to the already existing collaboration between the two organizations.

According to her, “in a matter of days, our team set up to handle this will start interracting with some of those on our watch list. We will request for the support of your office in this regard should we require any information on the record of service of some of these people

The step was promptly commended by Prof Afolabi who announced that the EFCC’s intervention in Pension reforms being coordinated by his office has saved the Federal Government a whopping N1.1billion monthly. He explained that before the intervention of the EFCC, the monthly pension bill of the Federal Civil Service was N2.3billion but the involvement of the EFCC in the process has brought it down to N1.1billion.

He charged the Commission to lend another helping hand to further reduce the menace of fraudulent practices in the Civil Service. “We are starting a second phase of cleaning our data base. We recently captured about 27 thousand additional new entrants and I insisted that this will not be successful without the involvement of the EFCC,” Afolabi said.

He lauded the EFCC’s consistent and effective methods of bursting scam, saying that he was positive that a slimmer wage bill would eventually be achieved at the end of the renewed intervention of the Commission.

In her response, Waziri promised to do more to get the Civil Service to a more disciplined and accountable level. “We have gathered sufficient intelligence on some serving and retired public servants and we are still compiling information on others who live above their means with a view to inviting them to come and account for the means of maintaining such lifestyle,” she said. .

The Head of Service was accompanied on the visit by Dr(Mrs) Dere Awosika, Permanent Secretary, Science and Technology; Mr Charles Bonat, Permanent Secretary, Establishment and Pensions; Mr Tunji Olaopa , Permanent Secretary, Career Management Office and Alhaji Abdulraheed Maina, Chairman, Pension Reform Task Team.