The Federal Government has reportedly spent N6tn on the terrorism war since 2008, according to the Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa, stated on Friday.
Bawa said this while presenting a paper titled, ‘Combating Crime, Corruption and Implication for Development and Security,’ at the 38th Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime, organised by the Centre for International Documentation on Organised and Economic Crime, Jesus College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
According to the EFCC boss represented by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Sambo Mayana, between March when he took office and now, the anti-graft agency has recovered over N6bn from financial and economic saboteurs.
This was contained in a statement by the EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, titled, ‘In UK, Bawa calls on world leaders to rise to the challenge of fighting corruption.’
Citing a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, he noted that resources that could support a country’s development are lost through criminal acts such as corruption, tax evasion, money laundering, and others.
Bawa noted, “The spoiler effects on countries’ development processes are diverse, and particularly severe for fragile states: economic crime, including illicit financial flows, diverts much needed resources needed to rebuild countries’ public services, from security and justice to basic social services such as health and education.”
