Crown Agents Parley EFCC on Procurement
Crown Agents, an international development agency, on Thursday, May 23, 2024 pledged collaboration with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC in handling procurement and associated issues.
Speaking during a visit by a team of in-country and UK-based officials of the social enterprise to the EFCC’s corporate headquarters, its Country Director, Nkiru Anonyo noted that Crown Agents “over the years have worked with the EFCC”, stressing that her Agency still desired to collaborate with the Commission in different areas.”
“One area that will be of interest to the Commission is our expertise on procurement and personnel management. Crown Agents have well-established procurement capabilities, supporting governments in different areas. The key reason why we are here today is to talk about our training and development areas. We want the Commission to understand the capabilities of Crown Agents. We have technical ability to support, monitor processes and risk assessment, even co-development of programmes,” she said.
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In his contribution, a member of the team, Mr. Aaron Smart, who is the Business Development Lead, touched on providing “international and in-country trainings and training in the areas of leadership and management, governance and strategy, public procurement, financial management,” as well as on trainings with direct relevance to the Commission’s mandate “ in combating corruption, combating cybercrime, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. These are the areas where we can support the EFCC.”
While welcoming the international development Agency, the Executive Chairman of the Commission, Ola Olukoyede, who was represented by the Acting Director, Executive Chairman’s Office and Coordinator, Special Duties Headquarters, Friday Ebelo stated that the Commission welcomed all partnerships that align with capacity building and evolution of strong institutions, noting that the EFCC under Olukoyede’s leadership is striving to be an organization that is driven by professionalism and global best practices with strong capacity to effectively face all challenges that arise pursuant to its mandate.
The Chairman pointed out that the Commission was on the path to reinvention and recalibration of the anti-corruption war with primary emphasis on prevention above investigation and prosecution.
“The new policy of today’s EFCC focuses more on the area of prevention. In pursuit of the prevention agenda, the Commission now has a full-fledged department: Fraud Risk Assessment and Control, which is saddled with the task of driving prevention activities of the Commission. If you can prevent it from the beginning, it would save the government a lot of expenditure, meaning that it is more cost-effective to prevent crime from happening than to allow it to happen and begin to fight it”, he said.
Ebelo pointed out that capacity building on all fronts was of primary interest to the Chairman and lauded Crown Agents for coming to the right place and at the right time.
