By David Lawani, Abuja
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says it has recovered more than ₦1.23 trillion in less than three years and is increasingly converting proceeds of crime into public assets and social investments, signalling a shift in the anti-graft agency’s focus from arrests and convictions to restitution and measurable economic impact.
The scale of the recoveries, however, also places a fresh burden on the Commission and other government institutions to demonstrate transparency in the management and deployment of forfeited assets.
Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Mr Ola Olukoyede, disclosed the figures on Monday at a media briefing on his three-year stewardship at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
Olukoyede said that between October 2023 and July 2026, the Commission received 49,673 petitions, investigated 39,615 cases and filed 14,476 cases in court.
Of the cases filed, 10,872 resulted in convictions, representing a conviction-to-filing ratio of 75.1 per cent.
In the first half of 2026 alone, he said the Commission secured 1,370 convictions from 1,889 cases filed.
“These results reflect diligence, resilience and a prosecutorial approach anchored on evidence and courtroom outcomes,” Olukoyede said.
But beyond the conviction figures, the EFCC chairman pointed to asset recovery and restitution as the more consequential measure of the Commission’s impact.
Between October 1, 2023 and June 30, 2026, the Commission recovered ₦1,233,612,040,411.11, alongside $684.48 million, £373,905.78 and €9.34 million in other currencies.
Olukoyede said only about ₦397.26 billion, representing 33 per cent of the naira recoveries, was recovered directly for the Federal Government.
The larger share, ₦836.34 billion or 67 per cent, was recovered on behalf of ministries, departments and agencies, state revenue services, companies, individuals and foreign victims.
“Two out of every three naira recovered were on behalf of beneficiaries other than the Federal Government,” he said.
The EFCC said ₦661.32 billion and $492.37 million had so far been released to beneficiaries.
Of the naira releases, about ₦325.35 billion went directly to individuals and corporate bodies, while ₦335.97 billion was released to MDAs, revenue agencies and other public institutions.
“Our continuing priority is to make restitution faster, more transparent and more efficient,” Olukoyede said.
The figures bring renewed attention to what happens after anti-corruption agencies announce headline-grabbing recoveries.
For years, public debate around the anti-graft war has focused largely on arrests, prosecutions and convictions. But the EFCC’s latest scorecard suggests a growing attempt to measure success by whether seized cash and forfeited assets eventually return value to victims, institutions and the wider public.
One of the clearest examples is the deployment of recovered proceeds to support government social and economic programmes.
Olukoyede disclosed that in August 2024, the Federal Government directed the allocation of ₦50 billion each from EFCC recoveries to the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation.
Further funding of ₦50 billion each for NELFUND and CreditCorp from recovered proceeds was subsequently approved in 2026.
“When recovered criminal value helps finance education and household credit, enforcement moves beyond punishment to restoration and productive national use,” he said.
The Commission also cited the conversion of forfeited property into educational infrastructure.
A recovered NOK University was converted into the Federal University of Applied Sciences, Kachia, Kaduna State, with 1,909 students matriculating in December 2025.
According to Olukoyede, the conversion demonstrated how proceeds of crime could be redirected into opportunities that would otherwise not exist.
Beyond cash, the EFCC said it secured the forfeiture of 10,053 tangible assets under interim and final court orders between October 2023 and July 2026.
The assets included 8,198 electronic items, 1,177 real estate properties, 370 automobiles and 251 plots of land.
Others included schools, factories, hotels, shops, oil rigs, barges, machinery and aircraft, as well as 102 tonnes of solid minerals.
Proceeds from the disposal of assets under final forfeiture orders amounted to about ₦12.07 billion, which was paid to the Federal Government.
The Commission also reported approximately ₦288.1 billion in federal and state tax recoveries, comprising ₦173.2 billion in federal taxes and ₦114.9 billion for states’ internal revenue services.
Olukoyede said the tax recoveries represented enforcement of existing obligations rather than the imposition of new taxes.
He argued that anti-corruption enforcement could help expand fiscal space, particularly at a time governments are under pressure to generate more revenue.
However, the growing volume of recovered assets and cash also makes transparency and speed of restitution critical tests of the anti-graft campaign.
With billions of naira and thousands of physical assets moving through forfeiture and disposal processes, the question is increasingly shifting from how much is recovered to how efficiently such recoveries are managed and whether beneficiaries and the public can track their final use.
The EFCC chairman acknowledged the challenge, insisting that recovery could only be meaningful when value was returned to the public or rightful beneficiaries.
“Recovery is only truly meaningful when value is returned to the public interest and to rightful beneficiaries,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Commission said financial crimes were becoming more complex.
Data from petitions and case analysis between 2024 and 2026 showed 46,288 offences across nine major categories, with advance fee fraud and cybercrime accounting for nearly two-thirds of recorded cases.
Total recorded offences rose by 24.1 per cent between 2024 and 2025, driven largely by increases in procurement fraud, bank fraud, cybercrime and economic-governance offences.
The EFCC also recorded 920 specialised cases involving money laundering, unlicensed bureaux de change, illegal mining, virtual assets and terrorist financing, securing 212 convictions.
Olukoyede said the Commission was responding to emerging threats while continuing to pursue politically exposed and high-profile suspects.
“Our high-profile case portfolio spans former governors, ministers and other public office holders, heads of agencies, financial-sector operators and corporate officials,” he said.
The EFCC chairman maintained that no individual was beyond the reach of the law.
But as the Commission enters another phase of its anti-corruption campaign, its own figures suggest that the battle may increasingly be judged by more than conviction statistics.
The new benchmark, stakeholders say, is whether recovered wealth can be swiftly traced from court orders to victims, public institutions and productive investments.
Olukoyede summed up the direction of the Commission’s approach: “Our responsibility is to convert information and intelligence into prevention, petitions into investigations, investigations into prosecutions, prosecutions into convictions, recoveries into restitution, and enforcement into measurable national value.”
For the EFCC, therefore, the next test may not simply be recovering more money and assets, but proving that every recovered naira delivers value beyond the courtroom.
