The Ilorin Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Tuesday handed over N263,327,800 (Two hundred and sixty-three million, three hundred and twenty-seven thousand, eight hundred naira only) to the Kwara State Government.

The money, which was recovered by the EFCC, was handed over to the state governor, Abdulrahaman Abdul-Razak, by Head of the Zone, Isyaku Sharu, in Ilorin, the state capital.

Sharu revealed that the money was recovered from suspected looters of the state’s treasury.

He said, “The money was siphoned from KWIRS and 16 local government areas of the state.”

He further explained that about N5bn was siphoned from KWIRS and shared in the ratio of 30/70 per cent by some notable individuals in the state through their cronies.

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

“The mandate given to the commission is to conduct holistic and all-inclusive clean up of fraud and pen robbery, and we will not relent in doing this.”

Receiving the recovered fund, Governor Abdul-Razak promised to utilise the money judiciously.

He said, “The money I received today is N263,327,800, while the last recovered fund was N210m.

“This fund will be used to augment the budget, social development and the remaining will be used for paying state government debt to federal government on the SME programme.”

He further revealed that the previous administration in the state took a loan of N2bn from the Federal Government to implement SME programmes but nothing was accounted for, as most of it was basically stolen.

Recall that the Ilorin Zonal Office had in October last year handed over N112m recovered from looters of the state’s treasury and handed over the Kwara Government.