EFCC’s 5% reward for whistleblowers – run for your life!
By Ambassador Lilian Onoh
Recently, the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, told a UK Symposium that whistleblowers will get 5% of whatever assets are recovered from their whistle-blowing. (Punch and BBC, 27th August 2026). The timing of the announcement, just as election campaigns gets off the ground, is especially alarming and suspicious to me.
My advice to any person tempted to take up the EFCC on their offer and reveal what they know is this: Run for your life. Run faster than Ben Johnson on steroids unless you have already made your peace with the total destruction of your life as you know it. Exposing what you know about the criminals bleeding Nigeria dry is a one way ticket to hell – be it physical elimination from earth or the total destruction of your life with every lever of the government you are trying to help. Run.
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Not only will the EFCC do nothing to the powerful people you expose, the same EFCC will be used by these same people to destroy your life, assuming that you are not first eliminated in a mysterious fire or by “unknown gunmen”, or by “suicide” or simply turning up dead on the side of the road. Whistle-blowing will only let the corrupt cabal know who knows their dirty secrets and make them easier to eliminate. As an Ambassador who spent years reporting economic and financial crimes to Buhari and the EFCC, as well as practically every relevant agency as part of my normal official duties, the EFCC has never acted on a single report I submitted to them despite incontrovertible evidence, including notarised evidence from the Namibian Government and international banks in Jamaica and Namibia.
Instead of following the clear money trail and apprehending the perpetrators, the response of the fake anti-corruption Buhari regime to my Reports was to launch an all-out war against me, mobilising all apparatus of State to shut me up because my reports exposed the fact that the Buhari Administration was abusing Diplomatic Immunity and Privileges to engage in a global money laundering scam and too many officials in the massive criminal enterprise disguised as a democratic government were benefitting from corruption.
The retaliation of Buhari and his henchmen was swift, brutal and shredded any pretence of adherence to law. The EFCC had to fall in line with the corrupt cabal. I am only alive because I was able to leave Nigeria.
Those involved in the coordinated retaliation against me for reporting the industrial scale corruption in the MFA included the Chief of Staff to the President Ibrahim Gambari; Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama, and his Permanent Secretaries, especially Gabriel Aduda; the SGF, Boss Mustapha, on whose behalf Maurice Nnamdi Mbaeri of the PFIPC scandal signed the letter to Onyeama; the EFCC; the National Assembly; Justice Enenche and Keziah Ogbonnaya and the FCT Judiciary; Head of Service Folashade Yemi-Esan and her Permanent Secretaries, the Federal Civil Service Commission; the Police and the media. Even my phone was monitored. The Police routinely gave Onyeama a truckload of armed policemen to arrest me at the Court premises during his spurious defamation case that got him legally declared to be a neuter. Omowere Sowere and Lakeisha Landrum Pierre of Sahara Reporters were the media smear campaign coordinators for the retaliation. I have proof of all their involvement, including Court documents from US Federal Court, so I am not afraid to name them. Only Buhari could authorise such a total coordinated retaliation against an Ambassador that knew too much and refused to shut up about it.
My experience is not unique. Recently, I read an article by Owei Lakemfa about Victor Eburajolo when he became the acting MD of the NSITF. Mr. Eburajolo “was handed a list of outside offices he was to unofficially service monthly. He recoiled and asked what the consequences were if he were to refused to do what was clearly illegal. He was told he would be detained by an anti-graft agency for two or three months during which some misinformation about him would be peddled. He was told that would be the easier option. As the country’s justice Minister Bola Ige had just been assassinated, Eburajolo understood and decided to resign immediately, citing family reasons…He fled the organisation. When later he ran into the supervising minister at an airport, he was almost punched. He was accused of being an ingrate after having been offered a position for which people paid heavily to be appointed. Eburajolo then got summons to appear before the Code of Conduct Bureau, accused of not declaring his assets before or after service at the NSITF. He showed proof that he did.” (Vanguard, 20th July 2026).
The case of the DG of the PFIPC should be an abject lesson to anyone tempted by this offer. The minute he cried foul, he was instantly labelled as a fake DG of a fake Agency that was authenticated as real by every single arm of government, including the President that signed the budget! His partner turned up dead in an inexplicable hotel fire and the hotel was razed to the ground before any forensic investigation could be done. Adeniyi hasn’t been seen since he was locked up. Even more ridiculous is the fact that the House of Reps that participated in passing the budget that included the PFIPC was tasked with investigating a “crime” they were part of committing! Corruption must protect corruption.
It is because I have experienced what a corrupt regime does to those that know too much that I am advising anyone tempted by the EFCC’s 5% Whistleblower to run for their lives.
The people you report wield more power than the EFCC. Where is Yahaya Bello after the media fanfare? Where are all the corrupt governors from 199 to date, whose arrests were media festivals? Once you reveal what you know to the EFCC, the powerful, corrupt people you report automatically become aware of who knows what and how much they know. The next step is to shut you up – whether by a gruesome physical death or making your life worthless.
If I, an Ambassador that headed two missions; and who, along with Ambassador Ositadimma Anaedu, drafted and negotiated the 2000 UN Resolution that opened the way for Nigeria and every country on earth to recover stolen loot stashed overseas, can be forced into exile to protect my life because I reported the global industrial scale corruption supervised by Geoffrey Onyeama for the Buhari Administration’s cabal, then nobody is safe.
My reports went directly to Buhari as the President. But Buhari was the source of the problem. He appointed the marauders I was reporting to him. Reporting to Buhari was like telling the boss of the wolves eating the chickens that his personal pack of wolves was devouring the chickens he appointed them to eat. My reports told him that I knew all the secret entrances he and his wolves used to enter the chicken coop and devour them. The only inevitable outcome was for the regime to mobilize every single arm of government, including the EFCC, to go after me. Without authorisation from the Buhari, such a total, coordinated vicious retaliatory attack could not be done. The EFCC can do absolutely nothing to a single member of the Administration that any whistleblower exposes unless the President gives it the go-ahead. It is a toothless bulldog that can only go after yahoo boys and others that have no godfathers in powerful positions.
Those I reported were handsomely rewarded and protected by the fake anti-corruption Buhari. The multi-nation visa fraudster, Ambassador Janet Olisa, was given an OON for a fraud well done, despite the USA’s formal investigation and cancellation of visas for our diplomats and their families in Jamaica. The Namibia VAT fraud helmsman was elevated to full Chargé d’Affaires, with Buhari going so far as to downgrade a full Ambassadorial Mission to the status of Chargé d’Affaires to protect and reward him, despite the Namibian government’s demand for action and request for a refund of the money they were defrauded of by Nigerian diplomats.
With such a response to corruption by the Buhari Regime, does any Nigerian need to wonder why these governments keep imposing stricter conditions on ordinary Nigerians wishing to travel to their countries, and Nigerians keep getting mistreated abroad? If Nigeria gives these countries the middle finger by rewarding the diplomats that committed provable offences in their countries, those countries will retaliate by making their displeasure known in the way they treat ordinary Nigerians. In diplomacy, reciprocity almost always affects ordinary citizens disproportionately.
How can our diplomats hold their heads up and defend Nigerians overseas with Host Authorities make things difficult because our government rewarded diplomats that provably engaged in criminal conduct in their countries?
The failure of the EFCC under Buhari and now under Tinubu to recover the billions looted from our Missions has crippled our diplomatic missions and Nigeria’s image.
Our Missions are at least three years in arrears because between 2019 and 2021, the entire budget for the six postings cycles to and fro; and for international training of our officers, disappeared. No posting took place. When I got to Namibia in 2017, the entire arrival and return allowances of the officers at the Mission for the two years Buhari had been in office, totalling $265,000.00 was unpaid despite the paper trail to cover it. That is money laundering. Buhari released funds under a special intervention for all Nigerian Missions whose funds had disappeared under him – double money laundering. The entire $265,000.00 for Namibia then disappeared under Geoffrey Onyeama and Kunle Bamgbose, the Permanent Secretary because unlike other Missions, I refused to inflate the Mission’s debt profile so they could line their pockets – triple money laundering. The disappearance of $265,000.00 is verifiable. The same happened to several Missions as well.
Whilst our officers are starving and our National Image is being dragged in the dust and our citizens are being treated like dung abroad, the perpetrators are freely using their stolen loot to entice schoolgirls in Shoprite Mall by flashing Dollar bills at them. One of them serially targets schoolgirls on their way home during the holidays on domestic flights by flashing hundred Dollar bills.
If the EFCC wants to recover money, then the most urgent thing to do right now is to return to the reports I wrote since 2015 and recover the billions of Dollars and Naira that disappeared from the MFA under Geoffrey Onyeama and his Permanent Secretaries and return these funds to our cash-starved Missions so that officers who have been owed allowances for years can get some relief and our Missions can pay the rents, utilities and even hospital bills they owe across multiple countries.
Instead of offering 5% for new information, it should use the existing information and bank records I provided and recover the funds meant for our Missions from Geoffrey Onyeama and his Permanent Secretaries, Sola Enikanolaiye, Kunle Bamgbose, Mustapha Suleiman and Gabriel Aduda. Since the EFCC is openly soliciting information, then let me openly tell them to ask the Government of Qatar for banking details of almost all the officials that served under Buhari, including Buhari himself. They can also ask Jamaica and Switzerland for information on Onyeama. Gabriel Aduda has plenty stashed away in Canada. Several officials have accounts in South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Under existing bilateral agreements, they will give the EFCC all the information it wants if the EFCC is serious.
Nigerian banks can give even more information on how N4.3 billion ($10 million) was used for “travel” by Onyeama and his Permanent Secretaries during the Covid-19 global lockdown in 2020 and give information on how the tens of billions for six posting cycles between 2019 and early 2021 disappeared. When they recover these funds and return them to our Diplomatic Missions then we will know that they actually want to do something about some of the APC Untouchables that bled Nigeria dry.
My final advice remains the same: Do not touch this 5% poisoned carrot. The only 5% reward you will see will be what is left of your life if you survive! Only speak if you are willing to pay the price.
- Lilian Onoh was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Namibia and former Chargé d’Affaires to Jamaica.
