George Odok
Economic and Finance Crime Commission, EFCC has assured the general public that the fire incident on its South East zonal office, Enugu State, will not affect their operations.
The Secretary of the Commission, Dr George Abang Ekpungu, who disclosed this on Sunday briefly after inspection of the burnt facility in Enugu, maintained that all their processes are in soft copy.
According to Ekpungu, since the inception of the fourth Executive chairman of EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, the processes of the commission have been digitalized, adding that what they have in Enugu is also in their server at headquarters.
He however, disclosed that the commission has commenced investigation into the inferno, adding that he would be limited with words to allow investigators do their work based on professionalism.
Recall that the commission’s facility in Enugu was burnt down on Friday night and the cause was yet to be ascertain.
When asked if the commission is suspecting any foul play or sabotage, Ekpungu said that they don’t have anything spectacular about Enugu that would make anybody to burn the facility, stressing that he cannot rule out sabotage until the investigation is concluded.
“We cannot at this point in time know the exactly cause of the fire but the preliminary investigation reveals it was a spark. We are grateful to God that no life were 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 armory, suspects, detainees and every other thing critical to our work are safe.
“It’s pathetic that the fire got this bad. I think it’s the components and that the building is old. There was reasonable quick response, but what made it impossible for them was that the fire didn’t start when people are readily available if not for the type of Organization that we are, that people are always on ground, everything would have burnt down because fire started around 1:am till 10am in the morning before they could put it off.
“The Enugu State commissioner of police and the Enugu State Fire service were here. We appreciation them. They were on ground to stop the fire. It was the dept of the inferno that caused damage but there was quick response.
“It would have been a different story assuming our suspects or detainees has had even a burnt in their skin. Once life is preserved and our server is safe, we are lucky. And you know EFCC is ICT wisely sophisticated. Whatever we have here, we have it at head office. So, we have a way of recoverying a lot of things. So, since the coming of our chairman, we have been digitalizing our processes. What happened here may not affect our operations.
“The difficulties we will observe in recovering is just like, going to church or mosque and your clothes tear, you will become conscious of that untill you finish the process,” he said.