Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has debunked the report by an online newspaper, TheCable, which stated that its acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu, strongly linked corruption to Coronavirus.

The Cable had reported that Ibrahim Magu said he was strongly convinced that corruption was the cause of coronavirus.

Magu was quoted to have made the statement at the passing out parade of 281 cadets of the EFCC Detective Inspector Course-5, at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, on Tuesday.

“The EFCC is not satisfied with just prosecuting and jailing the fraudsters, rather the commission has concluded plans to reform them in collaboration with relevant government agencies towards making them better citizens,” TheCable quoted Magu.

“EFCC has zero-tolerance for corruption as our mandate is to kill corruption as corruption is worse than all the diseases we have now and I strongly believe coronavirus is caused by corruption.

“Corruption is a huge burden to our nation it has spread to insecurity, poverty, unemployment, falling standard of education, weak access to affordable health care, falling infrastructure and so many others.”

“As part of vigorous pursuit, the commission has created new specialised directorate and section taking into cognisance the changing phase of criminality,” he said.

“This directorate includes asset forfeiture and recovery management directorate, forensic and science laboratory directorate, anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism section.

“As at 2015, we had 103 convictions, in 2016 195 convictions, 314 in 2018, over 1218 convictions were secured in 2019,” TheCable quoted Magu.

The online newspaper, however, shared the video where Magu was captured to have said: “I strongly believe coronavirus is caused by corruption