The acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, says the “young man” who blew the whistle on the massive stash of money recovered from an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos, is now a millionaire.
In April, operatives of the anti-graft agency broke into a four-bedroom apartment on Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, and pulled out $43 million, £27,800 and N23 million stashed in a wardrobe.
The commission said the discovery followed an operation triggered by a whistle blower’s alert received by its Lagos office.
Speaking in Vienna, Austria, on Thursday, Magu said the whistleblower was already a millionaire by virtue of the percentage he was officially entitled to.
“We are currently working on the young man because this is just a man who has not seen one million naira of his own before,” he said.
“So, he is under counseling on how to make good use of the money and also the security implication.
“We don’t want anything bad to happen to him after taking delivery of his entitlement. He is a national pride.”
Under the whistleblower policy, the individual who gives information is entitled to between 2.5 percent and 5 percent of the recovered loot.
Magu called on Nigerians who want a positive change in the country to take advantage of the whistle-blowing policy.
He noted that aside from contributing to the eradication of corruption, potential whistleblowers also stood to “benefit from the illicit acquisition by the looters”.
“So, we encourage more whistle blowers to come forward with genuine information that will lead to recoveries from looters of public treasury,” he said.
“That is part of the ways we can put an end to the looting madness in the public sector.
“When they know that they have no place to keep the loot, as all eyes are on them, they will find looting of public treasuries unattractive.”
On June 7, a federal high court sitting in Lagos ordered the final forfeiture of the money to the federal government.
Earlier on Thursday, a Lagos court ordered the final forfeiture of the flat where the monies were hidden.