Mr. Ola Olukoyede, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has revealed that many public officers are now declaring assets in anticipation to justify planned theft of public funds.
He made the disclosure in Abuja on Tuesday, August 12, 2025, while delivering a goodwill message at the launch of the Virtual Tool on the Code of Conduct for Public Officers, organised by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB).
Explaining how anticipatory asset declaration is carried out, Olukoyede said: “There is an investigation we carried out and we discovered something not too strange that proves how criminally smart some of our politically exposed persons carry out some of the various activities we investigate them for.
“I asked my boys to get the CCB form because there is something we were not clear about and we discovered one of the very big properties valued over N3 billion that the person declared in the CCB form carried an address different from the address of the location of the property.
“I felt something was awry here, we decided to dig further and after more interrogation, we discovered that the person declared the property when the property was not in existence.”
He urged the CCB leadership to take note of such criminality and intensify investigations through innovative methods to curb corruption.
The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, stressed that the foundation of public service lies in adherence to established standards and ethics.
The AGF commended the CCB’s virtual tool as a milestone in the digitisation and technological investigation of public conduct, saying it will promote preventive compliance and awareness. He encouraged public servants to embrace the new tool for improved integrity in public service.
In his opening speech, the CCB Chairman Abdullahi Usman Bello said the tool will promote accountability among public officers and is simple to operate.
“The tool will ensure that public servants carry out their duties in high esteem and educate them on the step to step rules and regulations that guides them,” he stated.
