The Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, on Thursday, June 6, 2019, implored statisticians in the country to deploy their research endeavours in the fight against corruption.

Magu, made the call while receiving officials of the Professional Statistician Society of Nigeria, PSSN, at the EFCC headquarters, Abuja.

The EFCC boss noted that statistics is essential in all aspects of the economy and urged everyone to be guided by statistics. “We will like to collaborate with you, as we have different fields reflected in the EFCC including statisticians and statistics is deployed in the work of every department of the EFCC,” he said.

He further noted that collaboration was key in achieving the desired result in the fight against corruption in Nigeria. "The collaboration should not be in the area of training alone but should extend to the area of enlightenment as there is the need to educate the young ones who are under you," he added.

According to Magu, enlightenment is very important because there are lots of Nigerians who do not believe that corruption exists and as such, there is the need to educate the people on the ills of corruption. He also emphasized on the need for Nigerians to stop glorifying corruption by celebrating it.

Magu promised to render support to the PSSN and urged them to work with the EFCC. He encouraged them to continue to give their best while commending them for their sacrifice. He urged the statisticians to strengthen the Zero Tolerance Clubs in schools, adding that university students should embrace Anti-corruption courses in the universities regardless of the course they may be studying.

While responding, Head of Statistics Department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Dr Hussein Dikko, and the chairman, Local Organising Committee, who led the delegation, commended the EFCC for its commitment in the fight against corruption.

“We have been following the trend of events in the country especially in the fight against corruption and have seen the achievements being recorded. The EFCC has been a subject of research using time series analysis, especially in terms of the recoveries made over time and based on the time series analysis, we are highly impressed," he said.

Speaking further, Dikko said, "ABU is there for research and academy, please use us. We are here for you. We have a lot of areas we can collaborate with EFCC. We realise that we can do better, while the EFCC gather the data, the academics who are experts in data management can interpret it, analyze, forecast what can happen in the next few months based on the data collected”.

Dikko used the occasion to invite Magu to PSSN’s international conference holding on June 17, 2019 at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria with the theme “Statistics, Democracy and Nation Building”.

Among the delegates were, Professor Babangida Sani, Department of Mathematics, ABU; Dr Aliyu Usman, Head of Department, Kaduna Polytechnic; Dr Tasiu Musa, Department of Statistics, ABU Zaria; Dr Sani Doguwa, Department of Statistics ABU, Zaria and Dr Baba Bukar Alhaji, Department of Mathematics, Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA Kaduna.



Media & Publicity

June 7, 2019