CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom – The Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ola Olukoyede, offered whistleblowers between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of recovered stolen Nigerian assets for information leading to their recovery held abroad on Wednesday, August 26, 2026.
Okay News reports that Ola Olukoyede disclosed the whistleblower financial incentive while delivering a lecture at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom.
“The citizens must be encouraged with your whistleblower protection. If any of you is privy to where a Nigerian asset is stolen or taken to anywhere in the world, we have an incentive for you. Between 2.5 and 5 per cent is going to go back to you upon recovery,” Ola Olukoyede said.
He stated that the anti-graft agency had recovered cash and assets worth over $500 million for the Federal Government within three years of his tenure. “Within three years of my assumption of office, we’ve been able to forfeit both cash and assets worth over half a billion dollars to the government,” Ola Olukoyede said. He noted that asset tracing capability, judicial cooperation, and access to credible intelligence enabled the EFCC to secure non-conviction-based forfeiture orders.
Ola Olukoyede cited multiple asset forfeiture cases, including 753 housing units linked to an erstwhile governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and an aircraft forfeited three months ago by an individual involved in a $30 million bribe concerning a power project in Nigeria. “This aircraft was forfeited by someone who was supposed to be a member of the monetary committee of a power project in Nigeria. We discovered he collected a bribe of about $30 million in Nigeria,” Ola Olukoyede said.
The agency also investigated Nigeria’s former Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, tracing 57 properties to him over eight years in office and forfeiting 48 of them. Additionally, a director in Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health voluntarily surrendered a private university following an investigation by the commission.
Ola Olukoyede noted that EFCC operatives apply ex parte to the High Court upon probable suspicion of crime proceeds, comparing the agency’s legal authority to apply for asset forfeitures to legal frameworks in Australia and Canada.
