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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission disclosed Thursday that roughly 18 states are currently under investigation over allegations of public fund mismanagement, though the commission declined to name any of them, citing the need to protect ongoing probes.
EFCC Director of Public Affairs Wilson Uwujaren made the disclosure during an interview on Arise Television, responding to questions about the commission’s restriction of an Osun State Government account. He described the Osun action as one of several similar interventions the commission had taken or was preparing against state governments nationwide.
Pressed directly on whether other states faced similar scrutiny, Uwujaren confirmed the number ran into double digits. “Like we said in the statement, there are about 18 other states that we have ongoing investigations,” he said. Asked to name them, he declined. “I don’t want to start mentioning those states by name now,” he said, maintaining that position even after the interviewer argued Nigerians deserved to know which states were involved. “Not running away per se, but not to jeopardise the investigation that is currently ongoing,” Uwujaren said.
Uwujaren said the Osun restriction followed a precedent set under a previous Edo State administration, before Governor Monday Okpebholo took office. He said the EFCC had restricted an Edo State Government account after detecting that funds were being moved to suspicious accounts, an intervention he credited with preserving $12 billion that he said gave the incoming Okpebholo administration resources to work with upon taking office.
He rejected any suggestion that the commission’s actions targeted specific administrations. “So this is not targeted at any particular government. We are simply doing our work under the law,” he said. Asked why the EFCC had not taken comparable action during Ekiti State’s election, Uwujaren said the circumstances differed, citing intelligence available only to the commission. “If you talk about what happened in Ekiti, we didn’t have any reason to intervene the way we are intervening now. And you don’t have access to the information that we have access to,” he said.
On the scope of the Osun restriction specifically, Uwujaren clarified that only one statutory account had been affected, with the state government retaining access to its other accounts. He said the commission has a 72-hour window to obtain a court order to sustain or lift the restriction, and that the window had not yet lapsed at the time of the interview.
Responding to Osun State’s stated plan to approach the courts over the freeze before the EFCC could act further, Uwujaren said the state was within its rights to do so, adding that the commission would respond appropriately to whatever legal action followed.
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Uwujaren cited Section 34 of the EFCC Act and Section 7, Subsection 6 of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2022 as the legal basis for account restrictions, stressing that these powers apply broadly to any account under suspicion, not solely those belonging to state governments. He also pushed back on any characterization of the Osun probe as a sudden or recent development, noting that it began in March and has already involved the questioning of several state officials.
The EFCC’s disclosure of investigations spanning roughly a third of Nigeria’s 36 states is likely to intensify scrutiny of state government finances nationwide. It comes weeks after the commission’s restriction of the Osun State account drew condemnation from the state government and the Nigerian Bar Association, which had criticized the move as procedurally questionable.
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The commission’s dual statutory basis, the EFCC Act and the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2022, reflects Nigeria’s layered anti-corruption legal framework, under which the EFCC’s founding legislation establishes its general investigative and enforcement mandate, while the more recent money laundering law grants specific authority to freeze accounts suspected of facilitating the movement of illicit funds. The 72-hour window Uwujaren described for converting a temporary administrative restriction into a court-sanctioned freeze is a standard procedural safeguard built into that framework, intended to prevent indefinite account restrictions without judicial oversight.
Neither the number of officials questioned in the Osun investigation nor the specific allegations underpinning the probes in the other 17 states Uwujaren referenced were disclosed. The EFCC has not indicated when, if ever, it intends to name the additional states under investigation, and no timeline was given for when the broader set of probes might conclude or result in formal charges.
