The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have brokered a renewed strategic alliance towards tackling the menace of internet crimes and other waves of emerging and old crimes that are of mutual interests to Nigeria and the United States.
This was the outcome of a meeting at the EFCC headquarters in Abuja on Friday, when Christopher Wray, FBI’s director led a team of the Bureau’s top officials on a visit to the EFCC’s executive chairman, Mr. Ola Olukoyede.
In his remark at the meeting, Wray expressed delight at the bond that has existed over the years between the EFCC and FBI and called for its upscaling in the face of common crime threats that confront Nigeria and the US.
While speaking, he said, “Thank you for your hospitality and in particular for the partnership that exists between the FBI and the EFCC across a wide range of threats that we face together. We have had a relationship over the years and this is a reflection of how stronger than ever we are looking forward to taking our partnership to higher and higher levels in tackling threats that affect the people of Nigeria and the people of the United States. We have had close partnerships in shared values and focus and I want to say thank you for the wonderful partnership.”
Responding, Olukoyede expressed appreciation to the FBI for being the EFCC’s personnel and institutional capacity building benefactor over the years and expressed optimism that the collaboration between the two agencies would be taken a notch higher.
According to him, “We value the partnership between the EFCC and the FBI. Over the years, this partnership has existed and it is for mutual benefits. We have to acknowledge that we have benefitted from your manpower and capacity development programmes, which have added value to the capacity of our operatives and our Academy. We also want to thank you for the technical support that you have provided over the years for the EFCC and by extension, Nigeria.”
While suing for the enhancement of the collaboration and strategic partnership, Olukoyede noted that doing so was in the mutual interest of Nigeria and the US, especially as criminality has become borderless.
Assuring Wray and his team of the Commission’s commitment to collaboration with the American agency, he said that, “we are willing to continue and develop ideas that would be of mutual benefit to both agencies and ensure that the issue of cybercrime will take utmost priority in our scale of preference and also ensure that sextortion that has become a major challenge to us is taken very seriously.”