The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday handed over N263, 327, 800 belonging to Kwara to the Governor, Abdulrahman AbdulRazak.

The Ilorin Zonal Head of EFCC, Mr Isyaka Sharu, at the event in Ilorin, said that the money was recovered from suspected Kwara state treasury looters.

“These alleged looters siphoned from Kwara Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS) and 16 Local Government Areas of the state about N5 billion,” he said.

Sharu said the amount was shared by some notable individuals in the state through their cronies in the ratio of 30 per cent to 70 per cent.

The EFCC zonal head said that the mandate given to the commission was to conduct holistic and all-inclusive clean up of fraud and pen robbery.

“We have 48 convictions and the worth of recovered assets, both at interim and final forfeiture, is in excess of N8.5 billion,” Sharu said.

Receiving the recovered fund, Gov. AbdulRazak promised to use part of it to augment the state budget, , ensure social development and pay state government debt.

“The money I received today is N263, 327, 800, while the last recovered fund was N210 million.

“This fund will be augmented into budget, social development and the remaining will be used for paying state government debt to Federal Government on the SME programme,” AbdulRazak said.

The governor said that the previous administration took a loan of N2 billion from the federal government on SME programme, but nothing was accounted for as most of it was basically stolen.

“The federal government is deducting N35 million monthly from the state government allocation. Part of the recovered fund was from the looters of SME programme fund,” he said. (NAN)