Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ola Olukoyede, has made startling revelations that banks in the country lost over N8 billion to internet fraud, otherwise known as Yahoo-Yahoo Boys, in 2022.
The EFCC chairman who made the disclosure during an interactive session with media executives in Abuja, yesterday.
He narrated how cyber crime has hurt the companies and its negative effects in attracting direct foreign investment for the country. He lamented that no fewer than 71 percent of companies operating in Nigeria were victims of cybercrime in 2022 even as he argued that the Commission’s war against internet fraud is about safeguarding the country’s future.
“In 2022 alone, I’m waiting for the report of 2023, we discovered that more than 71 percent of Nigerian industries, companies and firms fell victim to cyber crime. Now, which country or company would thrive with this kind of thing?
“You want to attract foreign direct investment; the moment you come in, Yahoo boys will attack your platform. You start losing money and you think they would stay?
“Is that not what we are seeing? We are rescuing the future of Nigeria by going into this cyber crime investigation and prosecution.
“Now, within that period, the Nigerian economy lost $706 million (via) these companies through cyber crime, to the activities of these Yahoo Yahoo boys because we don’t take them seriously now, not knowing that we are sitting on a keg of gunpowder.
“The alarming statistics continued with Nigerian banks losing over N8 billion to electronic transfer fraud in the first nine months of 2022.
“A system lost over N8 billion to a particular scheme of fraud and you are asking EFCC to close its eyes to that kind of situation. Are we even fair to ourselves?”
He said the agency is prosecuting two of its operatives for violating the agency’s code of conduct.
He said the commission has made some reforms to enhance its fight against corruption, including the creation of the directorate of fraud risk assessment/control and ethics/integrity.
•300 Illicit forex accounts
The EFCC chairman also told newsmen that, in the last one week, over 300 illicit foreign exchange accounts were frozen as their activities, if left unchecked, could lead to another crash in the value of the country’s currency.
“We got an order to freeze those accounts. Somebody would come and ask us, ‘what is your business with forex transactions? Some people are happy; they take pleasure in seeing this country boiling and I’ve come to realise that in the course of this work, some people want to see things go bad! From bad to worse”
Olukoyede said over $15 billion passed through one of the platforms in the last year, which was not regulated by financial regulators.
“There are people in this country doing worse than Binance,” he said.
