The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman, Ola Olukoyede, has said that employment fraud costs Nigeria more than N40 billion a year.
Olukoyede said on Friday at a meeting with officials of the Nigerian Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) at the EFCC offices in Abuja.
The head of the EFCC said that a study he carried out before joining the organisation in 2007 demonstrated that employers and workers were also scamming one another.
“In 2007, way back before I came to the EFCC, I did research into employment fraud, covering how employers defraud their staff and how employees also perpetrate fraud against their employers. I discovered way back then that Nigeria lost over N40 billion every year to employment fraud,” Olukoyede said.
He said that after learning that a large number of unemployed persons were receiving federal government payrolls, the EFCC saved the nation billions of dollars when he took office as its chairman.
According to Olukoyede, the biggest issues preventing Nigeria’s economy from growing are financial crimes and corruption.
“Eventually, when I became chief of staff in the EFCC, we investigated the IPPIS platform and discovered that a lot of people collected salaries when they were not in the employment of the government, and we were able to save the government billions of naira,” he added.
“As I am talking to you, we are still investigating that because the crooks keep on bringing up new strategies, while we also continue to devise new means of checkmating them.”
He pledged the EFCC’s cooperation in encouraging employees to adopt best practices to the NECA delegation, which was headed by Director-General Adewale Oyerinde.
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The NECA DG sought the collaboration of the two agencies to eradicate money laundering and cybercrime in the private sector.
“We are here to seek collaboration with the EFCC in whatever context and partnership in tackling the issue,” Oyerinde said.
“In specific terms, we are looking at having joint workshops on the role of the private sector in reducing or eradicating the menace of money laundering, cyber crime and identity thefts, which are becoming the major concern not only to you as EFCC, but also to us as organised businesses.”
