Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde has again stressed the need for journalists to embrace the fight against economic and financial crimes in Nigeria .

Lamorde made this call on Monday, August 4, 2014 during a workshop organised for selected practicing journalists in the North-West Zone in Kano .
 
The EFCC boss who spoke through Osita Nwajah, deputy director, Public Affairs, told participants that there is a need for all stakeholders to take up the fight against graft as EFCC alone cannot fight and win the war against corruption in Nigeria . “The Commission relies on the media to expose incidences of graft and draw attention to inherent challenges to the anti-corruption campaign in Nigeria ”, he said.
 
According to him, the Commission recorded 117 convictions on various economic and financial crimes cases in 2013. While expressing his preparedness to fight corruption to a halt in Nigeria , Lamorde said, “we have stepped up financial intelligence and tracking of illicit transactions across the borders”.

He further stated that, "the policing of the major entry and exit points in our country in the last two years recorded the seizure of huge sum of money, at the three major airports in Lagos , Kano and Port Harcourt ”.

The EFCC Chairman also disclosed that, another area receiving attention of the Commission was cases of alleged corruption in the judiciary. He said investigation is on-going on some of the alleged cases involving high-level judicial officers in a bid to sanitise the system.
 
In his paper titled “Playing by the Rules: The Place of Ethics in Journalism”, Alhaji Mohammed Danyaro, Permanent Secretary, Evaluation and Monitoring Directorate, Kano State lamented that objectivity which should have been the core value of reportage has been thrown into trash bin, and hence Nigerians are easily enticed with bad news.

He urged the press to always champion the fight against graft in a bid to rid Nigeria of economic and financial crimes.
 
Other presentations at the forum were made by Mr Musikilu Mojeed, Managing Editor Premium Times and Mr. Chido Onumah, coordinator, African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, who spoke on investigative reporting and the place of the new media in economic crimes reporting respectively.

More than 47 journalists drawn from Kano, kebbi, Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and Kaduna states attended the workshop.

Media & Publicity
7th August, 2014