The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman, Ola Olukoyede has stated that the anti-graft agency has recovered more than N673 billion for the Nigerian government in the past three years.
Olukoyede disclosed the figure on Wednesday during an address at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom.
Olukoyede said, “Within three years of my assumption of office, we’ve been able to forfeit both cash and assets worth over half a billion dollars to the government.
He highlighted that Nigeria’s legal framework—similar to systems in jurisdictions like Australia and Canada—empowers the commission to pursue civil forfeiture of assets suspected to be proceeds of crime without requiring a prior criminal conviction.
“We have similar to what is obtainable in Australia and Canada that empowers us to apply the forfeiture to proceeds of what is suspected to be proceeds of crime,” he added.
Olukoyede explained that initiating a civil forfeiture process begins with an application filed in a high court.
To illustrate the mechanism, he cited the recent forfeiture of an aircraft linked to a member of a Nigerian power project monitoring committee.
According to the EFCC chairman, the plane was seized after the official allegedly received a $30 million bribe, with the court securing the forfeiture within two months of the commission’s initial filing.
Furthermore, he disclosed that the agency had confiscated a major residential property comprising roughly 753 housing units from a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Read Also: Tinubu Orders EFCC to Channel Recovered Funds, Unclaimed Dividends to Student Loans
Backstory…
The latest figure comes after the EFCC had already reported substantial recoveries under Olukoyede. In October 2025, the commission said that during his first two years in office, it recovered ₦566.3 billion, $411.6 million, £71,306 and €182,877, alongside 1,502 non-monetary assets.
Among the major assets cited by the EFCC was the final forfeiture of 753 duplex units in Lokogoma, Abuja, as well as the forfeiture of Nok University in Kachia, Kaduna, which was subsequently renamed the Federal University of Applied Sciences.
Read Also: Emefiele’s 753 duplexes recovered by EFCC to be sold to low, middle income earners
