The 2023 Labour Party presidential Candidate, Peter Obi, has urged the Federal Government (FG) to ensure verifiable and impactful utilisation of the ₦853 billion recently recovered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the last year.
While commending the EFCC for the retrieval of the crime proceeds—which he noted is only a “tiny fraction” of the total looted public treasury—Obi stressed that the true measure of success lies in how the money is deployed to benefit the populace.
“Nigerians want to see impact. We must be able to trace where and how these recovered funds are invested,” the former Anambra State governor stated.
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He insisted that the funds must be channelled into crucial development areas, specifically health, education, and poverty alleviation.
Obi highlighted Nigeria’s dire poverty and education statistics as areas of urgent need.
He cited the country’s record of having over 20 million out-of-school children and over a hundred million acutely poor citizens, noting that the situation is most critical in the North.
To maximise the impact of the recovered sum, Obi proposed a strategic investment breakdown.
He suggested tripling the Universal Basic Education (UBE) budget by dedicating ₦503 billion, which is twice the FG’s 2024 operational budget of ₦251.47 billion for UBE.
This, he explained, would significantly boost funding for basic education.
For the remaining ₦350 billion, Obi proposed distributing it directly to the 19 Northern provinces as micro-credit lending for the poor.
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He noted that many of these states had long sought this level of funding from development banks.
Obi emphasised that the recovery must transition from being just an announcement to marking “the beginning of a new era of accountability, where every kobo retrieved is turned into classrooms, hospitals, skills, and opportunities for ordinary Nigerians.”
