Fire incident will not affect our operations — EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has assured the public that the Friday fire incident at its Enugu Zonal Command will not affect its operations.

EFCC Spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren said this in statement in Abuja on Monday.

He said the commission’s secretary, Dr George Ekpungu, said this during an inspection visit to the command on Sunday.

Speaking after a tour of the facilities affected by the fire incident, Ekpungu expressed relief that the inferno did not affect critical components of the work of the commission.

He noted that the digitisation process initiated by the Abdulrsheed Bawa leadership of the commission had ensured that “all its processes are fully digitilised with back-up at the central server in Abuja.

“Thursday’s incident was said to have been triggered by a surge in the public power source.

“But Ekpungu said the commission cannot make any categorical statement on the cause of the inferno until the ongoing investigation is concluded”.

He, however, expressed happiness that no life was not lost during the incident.

Ekpungu said, however, that the exact cause of the fire might not be known but the preliminary investigation revealed it was an electrical spark.

“We are grateful to God that no life was lost and our critical components of operations were saved.

“For now, we don’t know the cause of the inferno but the investigation will tell us the cause of the fire and that will be done by professionals.

“We thank God that in the records, our armoury, suspects, detainees and every other thing critical to our work are safe.

“You know EFCC is ICT sophisticated. Whatever we have here, we have it at head office. So, we have a way of recovering a lot of things.

“So, since the coming of our chairman, we have been digitalising our processes. What happened here will not affect our operations,” he said.

Ekpungu was accompanied on the visit by the Director, Public Affairs, Mr Osita Nwajah.