Fire incident will not affect our operations — EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), has assured the public that Friday, May 5 fire incident at the Enugu Zonal Command of the Commission will not affect its operations. The Secretary to the Commission, Dr. George Ekpungu gave the assurance on Sunday, May 7, 2023 during an inspection visit to the Command.

Speaking with journalists after a tour of the facilities affected by the fire incident, Ekpungu expressed relief that the inferno did not affect critical components of the work of the Commission, noting that the digitisation process initiated by the Abdulrasheed Bawa leadership of the Commission had ensured that all the Commission’s processes are fully digitilised with back-up at the central server in Abuja.

The incident was said to have been triggered by a surge in the public power source. But Ekpungu said the Commission cannot make any categorical statement on the cause of the inferno until the ongoing investigation is concluded.

He   however expressed happiness that no life was not lost during the incident.

“We cannot at this point in time know the exact cause of the fire but the preliminary investigation reveals it was a spark. We are grateful to God that no life was lost and our critical components of operations were saved. For now, we don’t know the cause of the inferno but the investigation will tell us the cause of the fire and that will be done by professionals. We thank God that in the records, our armory, suspects, detainees and every other thing critical to our work are safe.

“And you know EFCC is ICT sophisticated. Whatever we have here, we have it at head office. So, we have a way of recovering a lot of things. So, since the coming of our chairman, we have been digitalising our processes. What happened here will not affect our operations,” he said.

Dr. Ekpungu was accompanied on the visit by the Director, Public Affairs, Mr Osita Nwajah.