The Commander, Nigerian Navy Ship( NNS) Pathfinder, Commodore. A. Ahmed has expressed renewed commitments of the Navy to a collaborative relationship with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in its fight against corrupt practices.
He made this disclosure on Wednesday, June 16, 2021 while on a Courtesy Visit to the Port Harcourt Zonal Head of the EFCC, Assistant Commander of the EFCC, ACE Aliyu. N. Naibi.
According to him, the Nigerian Navy has always cooperated with the EFCC in the pursuit of its mandate and will do more to ensure that the menace of economic and financial crimes is frontally tackled.
“My purpose of visit is to know you and your officers and to re-emphasize our cooperation. We will always be around to support you in whatever means we can and also point out some areas we feel you can improve upon in our relationship with you”, he said.
Ahmed assured Naibi that the Navy would always hand over cases of suspected illegal oil bunkerers to the EFCC and sought feedbacks on such cases to be guided on the progress being made on them. “I appeal that we would want to have feedbacks on cases we hand over to the EFCC for prosecution”, he said .
Responding, Naibi appreciated the sterling roles of the Navy in its collaboration with the EFCC and assured that the relationship would be more robust and mutually- beneficial. “The EFCC and the Nigerian Navy are like twins, we need each other and we are better working together to achieve a common interest which is the progress of Nigeria”, he said.
He admitted that Navy has better capacity in securing the nation’s waterways, tackling illegal oil bunkering on the waterways and EFCC more resourceful in investigating and prosecuting illegal oil bunkerers. “Our interest is to make sure that things work well and we must always put heads together to achieve that”, he said.
Naibi intimated the Naval boss of the planned establishment of a Chemical Laboratory in the Port Harcourt’ Zone of the EFCC, stressing that the initiative would greatly reduce time needed for product analysis and investigation of cases of illegal oil bunkering. “We are trying to review what we are doing in terms of our operational methods and minimising time wastage”, he said.
He also assured that the Navy would be getting feedbacks on cases referred to the EFCC as investigations allowed.