By Chimezie Godfrey
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, NIGCOMSAT, have vowed to work together to ensure that the Anti-graft agency’s job of getting rid of corruption is enhanced through the deployment of cutting-edge satellite communication technology resources.
The Executive Chairman of the EFCC Abdulrasheed Bawa and the Managing Director of NIGCOMSAT Dr. Abimbola Alale reached this understanding when the latter visited the EFCC Headquarters on Thursday April 22, 2021.
Dr. Alale who said the visit was to expand the existing partnership between the two agencies, presented through the Special Projects Officer, Morakinyo Akinola, a bouquet of services by the Agency, which she believes would add value to the work of the EFCC.
According to her, NIGCOMSAT thrives on seamless communications through innovation and “provides channels and broadband connections to be able to transmit virtual data in a secure and comfortable way.”
She went ahead to offer a panoply of solutions which she believes would assist the EFCC. These include creative solutions in the identity authentication ecosystem and use of dedicated channels for broadcast of programmes. “We have innovations in terms of biometric and RFID-based solutions that will look into the issues of staff attendance, access control system, report management, leave management and guest/visitor management system”, she said.
Alale expressed the hope that EFCC would avail itself of these services to become the number one client of NIGCOMSAT.
Impressed by the presentation, the EFCC Chair, Abdulrasheed Bawa noted that most of the propositions from NIGCOMSAT were issues already being considered by the Commission.
“We have received several proposals from consultants in the private sector and we have set up committees to look at all these things, because we are planning on digitalising all our processes. We believe technology is the way forward in the fight against corruption,” he said
He emphasized the importance of collaboration between government agencies. “As a government agency, we need to work with sister government agencies; it is very important because we need some of the services that were presented to the EFCC.
“We have 15 zonal offices, we should be able to search for any officer at any time in any of the zones; we should have a web-based technology to track attendance also”
“While calling on NIGCOMSAT to join the anti-corruption fight, the EFCC boss stated that “you know what we do which is to rid the country of economic and financial crimes but we are not angels and so we need information from everybody; NIGCOMSAT can provide us with such service,” he said.
