By Adeolu Adeyemo

Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Mustafa Magu has painted a graphic picture on how 55 individuals stole over N1.3trillion in 11 years when corruption feasted on the country without bounds. Of the stolen N1.3trillion, Magu said EFCC had recovered about N738billion in less than two years.

He said this yesterday at the convocation ceremony of Fountain University, Osogbo in Osun state. Magu said: “Indeed, corruption could have killed Nigeria if the rate at which corruption was festering then had not been checked. Take for instance, the money stolen by just 55 people between 2006 and 2013 is well over N1.3trillion.

“One third of this monies, using world bank rates and cost could have comfortably been used to construct 635.15 Km of roads; built 183 schools; educate 3974 children from primary to tertiary level at N25.24 million per child; built 20, 062 units of 2 bedroom houses across the country and do even more.

The cost of this grand theft therefore is that these roads, schools and houses will never be built and these children will never have access to quality education because a few rapacious individuals had cornered for themselves what would have helped secure the lives of future generations, depriving them of quality education and healthcare, among others.

“One need not be told that N738billion is no small change. To appreciate what it could have done for the nation if it had been properly invested and spent as it should, we should know that this amount is way greater than the combined allocation to the health sector in 2015 and 2016 budgets which added up to N562billion.

“In the 2018 budget estimates placed before the National Assembly, the president proposes to spend N605.8billion on education. In other words, what was corruptly stolen and now recovered by my Commission, the EFCC, is more than what was budgeted for all the universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education and the Universal Basic Education being funded by the federal government in 2018.

Newtelegraphonline