The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has said that the Commission will not wait until election day in 2027 before it begins to take actions to tackle vote buying.
The Chairman of EFCC Ola Olukoyede said this on Wednesday, 18 March, 2026, when the President of Alumni Association of the National Institute for Security Studies, AANISS, Mike Ejiofor, led other executives of his Association on a courtesy visit to his office at the Commission’s Corporate Headquarters in Jabi, Abuja.
Speaking during the visit, the EFCC Chairman who is also an Alumni of AANISS, acknowledged that battling vote buying falls within the Commission’s mandate.
He added that the Commission had been playing a critical role to combat vote buying with impressive number of convictions to show for it.
With regards to the 2027 general election, he assured that the Commission was not going to wait until election day to go into action.
According to him, contingent planning and intelligence gathering are crucial to tackle fraudulent actors in any electoral process.
The EFCC boss also urged AANISS’ members to brace up to be champions of national security.
He pointed out that a strong nexus existed between national security, financial crimes and corruption, which he said made collaboration between the EFCC and AANISS compelling.
“There’s this strong link between national security and financial crimes and that is where we need our collaboration. We need to collaborate and synergize. We need you to support the agencies to ensure that we fulfil our mandate,” he said.
He restated his focus on using the anti-corruption war to support security agencies, guarantee stability in the economy as well as reduce the propensity of fraudulent actors towards corruption and financial crimes. In doing this, prevention, he said, continued to be fundamental.
“One of the critical things we did was to ensure that we don’t always wait for money to be stolen before we start rolling up our sleeves. So, I set up a Directorate called Fraud Risk Assessment and Control. Now, they are working with MDAs, tracking releases on a monthly basis. We are looking at where the money is going because it costs more to recover than to prevent,” he said.
