The Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination and Head, Central Results Delivery Coordination Unit, Hadiza Bala Usman has hailed the meteoric transformation of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC , since inception to its upscale status as an anti-corruption agency.
She made the observation on Thursday, October 16, 2025 when she led a team of professionals to submit the Performance Charter of the Commission to the EFCC’s Executive Chairman, Ola Olukoyede at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
“You should all be proud of yourselves seeing your trajectory. Some of us have been observing the EFCC journey for a long time and I just want to say that collectively your staff and the organization should be very proud of what has been built in these years. Every day you visit EFCC you see how it has improved. Every day is an improvement time in the EFCC. I’m not sure there’s any organization that has grown in the way the EFCC has grown from 2000 to date. I don’t know anyone. This is just to say well done; keep up the good work you’re doing. We’re all very proud of you as Nigerians.”
On the performance indicators of the Commission, she explained that the Central Result Delivery Unit realized the EFCC Performance Charter through engagement with experts, who deployed the requisite knowledge, tools and technical support of Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, Partnership for Agile Governance and Climate Engagement FCDO, PACE, in the delivery of the document.
“They provided us with support in terms of the technical content of what we are presenting here to you. That’s why they are part of this team and they will contribute towards our submission. Mr. Chairman, sir, we have concluded the assignment. We have done the initial draft of the Performance Charter,” she said.
According to her, “This document outlines target baseline data measuring the organizational performance of EFCC periodically. So. there will be monthly, quarterly and annual performance derived from the units and departments within the organization. It is expected that this document will serve as a framework for monitoring and evaluating the performance of the Commission on its mandate as well as its local and international obligations. These deliverables are well aligned with the vision, mission, mandate, values and strategic objectives of the Commission.
“The Charter aims to strengthen transparency, accountability and informed decision making by the Commission in a manner that is consistent with the overall purpose and stakeholder expectations of the Commission. The performance metrics were set around domestic and global parameters for assessing organizations with similar responsibilities as EFCC worldwide. It is composed in a way that should enable the EFCC to be more focused on its mandate and set clarity on the performance expectations for each department, each unit, and its zonal offices. All of these are clearly defined within the KPIs for easy evaluation and tracking of their respective progress and contribution to the overall purpose of the Commission. So, primarily this is what the document sets out to do. We’ve done a lot of work across the different tiers of areas that will require these deliverables and measuring indicators. And the staff of the Commission will be able to avail themselves of what is expected of each unit.”
The last lap of the assignment will have to do with the validation of the Charter. “We needed to have a validation session on which basis we’re going to have engagement with the staff of the Commission for them to look at the content of what has been developed and for them to provide the necessary input that we need to complete the process.
“I felt that it was imperative for us to present the draft to you as the Executive Chairman before we have the validation session. I’ll say that the important part of the assignment has been completed and we submit that to you. Following which the validation session will be held. And once that is done, then the final document will have been versed and submitted for implementation. So this is where we are now. Our teams have held extensive sessions over the last month where they have come up with this document.
Olukoyede in his remarks, praised Usman for her commitment to her job of coordination in the activities of the government, noting that proper coordination was the missing link that hobbled activities in the past administrations.
“One of the things that the past administrations lacked, is the lacuna in this area of policy coordination, even when individual MDAs are doing well. Silo performances will not lead to good assessment if there is no proper coordination. So when this proposal came to me, I was very delighted given also my background in regulatory compliance.
“I believe so much in policy reforms. One of the things I put in place is policy reforms. Every aspect of our mandate now, has a policy driving it. Because if you don’t have that, the performance measurement will be extremely difficult. And because of the specialized nature of our organization, we are a sophisticated and tight agency; we are not just law enforcement, we do trend analysis of financial crimes, you discover that you cannot do without having good policy. And some of our policies are also treated like living documents that we review almost every time.
“So when this proposal came I said, this is what I’ve been waiting for because we are not just out there to hunt people and make noise about the work we do. I will give you an example. On the issue of recovery of assets. It’s not just enough for us to say we have recovered this, we have recovered that. How do we ensure that those recoveries translate to impact and benefit the entire society? For you to achieve this, you must have a proper policy coordination system in place. And so that’s why some of these issues that you have brought up are very key to us.
“I want to thank you for the months, if not years of work that I’ve gone into this. Rest assured that you will see the impact of this effort very soon. In addition to what you have in place, we have our own templates for performance measurement. We are very good in statistics in all my departments and my zonal offices. That’s why before the expiration date for submission of the annual report, ours is always ready. We keep our record, regularly. It was difficult before I came on board, but now, we leverage on softwares,” he said.
Speaking further, Olukoyede observed that the Charter missed out on giving the Commission enhanced financial muscle to execute its mandates. “You have addressed almost every area of our mandate but there is an area you’ve not addressed that is resource allocation. I don’t have money. You have to come up with a policy that will mandate the Attorney General to mandate the Minister of Finance to give me more money.
“I was just telling you now that I need to renew my Forensic License, which is key to some of the work we do. I recover money, but I can’t touch it. So maybe you need to also come up with policy reform on that. If you just give me five percent of my recovery, I can tell you that you won’t see me before the National Assembly asking for money. This is an area we need to actually critically look into. I’m supposed to be a law enforcement agency, but people have almost turned me into an IGR organization. So we need this kind of synergy, this kind of support, this kind of collaboration in order to reposition EFCC and place it where we ought to be. When we get these, rest assured that you will see the impact of the support in our output, in the area of prosecution, in the area of conviction, baseline recovery, effective management and watertight proof of evidence by the time we take our cases to court.”
