BPE seeks EFCC support for transaction transparency

The Director-General, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Alex A. Okoh, has expressed the willingness of the Bureau to partner with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to ensure transparency in all the processes of the reform and privatisation programme of the Federal Government.

Okoh, who made this known during a courtesy visit to the Acting  Chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, at the Commission’s Corporate office in Abuja, recently, said the activities of the Bureau reflect the principles of transparency that the EFCC is known to propagate.He commended the EFCC for its achievements over the years, especially in the sanitisation of the nation’s economy, which he said had increased investors’ confidence.

The DG, who was decorated during the visit as Anti-Corruption Ambassador by Magu, said he was at the Commission to solicit the EFCC’s support in ensuring that the activities of the BPE are better monitored.His words, “the EFCC has provided a platform and atmosphere that has enhanced comfort and confidence in the investors, whom we directly deal with on a regular basis, the kind of comfort to engage and invest in this economy. The BPE is an agency of government that is mandated to provide sector and enterprise reforms as they relate to government and state owned enterprises.”

He informed his host that the Bureau over the years had conducted transactions in the various sectors of the Nigerian economy, which have brought huge revenue to the Federal Government, and improved service delivery.Responding, Magu expressed the Commission’s readiness to partner with the BPE in all its transactions, saying he was  ready to carryout due diligence on any entity that shows interest in the purchase of government assets, to prevent corrupt elements from using the privatisation process as a means of laundering illegally-acquired funds.

He said: “We will be willing to support you against any threat that will discourage investors from coming into the country, and in order to achieve this; I think we need to establish a common desk for a seamless synergy. Once again I seize this opportunity to thank the BPE and I am happy to tell you that the baby you nurtured has now outgrown its parents as the EFCC today can boost of a befitting Head Office complex which was made possible by our determination and support from the current administration.”

Magu thanked the BPE for its support during the evolution of the Commission, saying the N100 million received from the BPE as take-off support helped it start its operations. “If we hadn’t gotten that money, we wouldn’t have been able to kick start,” he confessed.
The money, he said, brought some seriousness into EFCC’s operations, and “we started arresting those fraudsters, who hitherto were seen as ‘untouchable’ moving around with convoys and sirens. Many of them were arrested and jailed, and the Commission recovered substantial amounts of money on behalf of so many victims from them which were returned to the victims.”