President Bola Tinubu has put corrupt public officials across Nigeria on notice, warning that his administration would pursue wrongdoers with unrelenting vigor and that no one who abused public office would find shelter under his watch, as the federal government commissioned a new Economic and Financial Crimes Commission zonal directorate complex in Ado Ekiti and broke ground on a major knowledge and innovation hub in the same state.
Represented at both ceremonies by Vice President Kashim Shettima, Tinubu used the occasion to reaffirm the philosophical underpinning of his anti-corruption posture, saying that a nation could only rise as high as the integrity of its public institutions and that development became a hollow promise wherever corruption was permitted to stand between the state and the citizens it owed a duty of care.
He described the new EFCC facility as more than a physical structure, calling it a crystallization of a vision for institutional strength and public accountability that the federal government was determined to translate into concrete enforcement action across every part of the country. He said the commission had moved far beyond rhetoric into measurable results, pointing to the dismantling of foreign-controlled cryptocurrency syndicates, the disruption of organized financial crime networks, and the aggressive asset recovery operations that had channeled recovered resources into critical social investment programs including the Student Loan Scheme, NELFUND, and CREDICORP.
EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede welcomed the new facility, saying the creation of a dedicated Ekiti zonal directorate addressed longstanding operational gaps that had constrained enforcement capacity across both Ekiti and Ondo states. He said proximity of anti-corruption infrastructure to the communities it served was not a logistical nicety but a strategic necessity, enabling faster investigations, speedier prosecutions, and a more visible deterrent effect that changed the calculation of potential offenders.
Governor Biodun Oyebanji said the state government had provided substantial support for the project including office accommodation and a standby generator, describing the partnership as a demonstration of Ekiti’s institutional commitment to transparency and accountability in public life.
The visit also produced a groundbreaking ceremony for the Ekiti Knowledge Zone, an AfDB-backed innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship hub that both the president and the governor described as a transformative investment in human capital over natural resource extraction. Tinubu said Nigeria’s long-term economic trajectory depended increasingly on its ability to develop knowledge-based industries and retain talented citizens who might otherwise seek opportunities abroad.
Shettima separately commissioned a 1.2-kilometre flyover in the state capital, noting that the project was funded entirely from state resources and held up as proof of the expanded financial capacity that states had gained from the removal of the fuel subsidy and the redistribution of previously diverted revenues. He said such projects would have required states to borrow from financial institutions under the old fiscal arrangement but could now be executed without debt, a transformation he credited directly to the president’s economic reforms.
The vice president closed the day with an unambiguous public endorsement of Oyebanji for re-election in the June 20 governorship poll, praising the governor’s track record of fiscal discipline, strategic leadership, and responsible governance and pledging to return to the state to campaign on his behalf across communities in the northern parts of Ekiti.
