The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has called for the establishment of special courts to try corruption cases in the country.

Acting chairman of the EFCC, Mohammed Umar, made the demand, yesterday, when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes for the defence of the 2021 budget proposal of the agency.

He listed other challenges faced by the EFCC to include lack of personnel, poor release of funds for capital projects, among others.

Umar who stated the commission currently had 15 offices nationwide, said a special court, if established, would facilitate speedy trial of corruption cases. He said the commission was in the process of conducting recruitment when COVID-19 pandemic hit the country which explained why it still had N4 billion unspent.

Zakaria Nyampa (PDP-Adamawa) had queried why the EFCC had N4 billion unspent in the 2020 budget approved for the commission.

“Going through your document in 2020, I discovered there are N4 billion unspent money for personnel and N879 million unused under overhead, I don’t know what you are going to do with this,” Nyampa said.

Umar said the EFCC had also made submissions to the committee detailing assets recovery, convictions secured, cases in court among others by the commission. He said the five per cent meant to be retained in the agency as part of money recovered had not been given to the commission as done in other places.

“I don’t think the five per cent to be retained in EFCC for assets recovery has been approved, because we have not gotten any money outside the budget approved,” he said.

Umar, while giving an overview of the 2020 budget performance of the agency, told the Committee that out of about N32 billion appropriated for the commission for the 2020 fiscal year, about N24.99 billion was released. He explained that about N18.23 billion of the released amount has been fully utilised.

According to him,“total releases as at September 2020 was N24.99 billion representing 70.8 percent of total appropriation. Release for personnel cost is N21.98 billion, overhead cost, N2.100 billion and capital of N1.36 billion. Out of the total releases, N18.23 billion representing 74.88 percent has been fully utilised. (Daily Sun)

Update news