JUST IN: President Tinubu appoints Ola Olukayode new EFCC Chairman

President Bola Tinubu approved Mr. Ola Olukoyede’s appointment as Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for a four-year term in the first instance on Thursday, subject to Senate confirmation.

This comes nearly four months after he fired the former head of the anti-graft agency, Mr Abdulrasheed Bawa.

“Mr. Olukayode’s appointment follows the resignation of the suspended Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa,” said Ajuri Ngelale, the President’s Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity.

President Tinubu appoints new EFCC Chairman and Secretary of the Commission, according to the announcement.

Olukoyede is a lawyer with over 22 years of expertise as a regulatory compliance consultant, fraud management specialist, and corporate intelligence specialist.

He has extensive experience in the operations of the EFCC, having previously served as Chief of Staff to the Executive Chairman (2016-2018) and Secretary to the Commission (2018-2023). As such, he fulfills the statutory requirement for appointment as Chairman of the EFCC.

President Tinubu also approved the appointment of Mr. Muhammad Hammajoda to serve as the Secretary of the EFCC for a renewable term of five years in the first instance, pending Senate confirmation.

Hammajoda is a public administrator with extensive experience in public finance management who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of Maiduguri and a Masters in Business Administration from the same university.

He began his career as a lecturer at the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi. From there, he went into banking, including successful stints at the defunct Allied Bank and Standard Trust Bank.

The President tasked the new leadership of the commission to justify the confidence given to them in this important national assignment as a newly invigorated war on corruption undertaken through a reformed institutional architecture in the anti-corruption sector remains a central pillar of the President’s Renewed Hope agenda.