BY SIMON ATEBA AND OLADIPUPO ONI
The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is working hard to bring back stolen billions smuggled abroad by government thieves, Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosu, said on Thursday.
Mrs. Adeosu spoke in Washington DC on the sideline of the World Bank/IMF meetings, a global gathering of economic experts, innovators, lenders and borrowers.
She said the administration is working on an initiative to bring back that money and use it in developing infrastructure in Nigeria.
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On Monday, the Finance Minister lamented that Western nation are hypocritical when it comes to repatriating stolen funds and called for the world to address illicit capital flows.
“When stolen money is transferred from Nigeria, or other African countries, there are too few questions asked by those countries that receive the funds, but when we identify those funds as stolen and seek to recover them, there are too many questions being asked,” the Minister said while addressing senior representatives from the World Bank and IMF, as well as over 150 parliamentarians.
“There is money sitting in foreign bank accounts that we have spent over a decade trying to recover. That is money that could deliver significant value for Nigeria as we seek to increase spending on critical infrastructure and establish a basis for long term sustainable growth.
“I hope that the Automatic Exchange of Information scheme coming into force next year will be a step towards achieving greater transparency, but we need more collaboration amongst parliamentarians in Africa, and across the World to ensure that this situation improves and that recipient countries are held to account,” she said.
Her address to the Global Parliamentary Conference, alongside parliamentarians from around the world, focused on Nigeria’s economic reform agenda and the need for strong executive and legislative collaboration.
The Minister is participating in a range of events focused on different aspects of the Federal Government’s economic reform agenda and President Buhari’s fight against corruption.
“We are going after those who have stolen our money. We have put in place a very successful whistle blower programme that is delivering results, and allows those who report illicit activity to receive up to 5% of any funds that we recover,” she said.
“We are also significantly improving our financial management controls to ensure that it is considerably more difficult for public funds to be diverted. We have to do more though and that means collaboration with the legislature. We need tighter tax and financial reporting legislation and to ratify bilateral agreements so that our enforcement agencies are empowered to deliver the results that we need.”
The Minister will be attending a series of meetings over the coming days, including meetings with the World Bank to take forwards conversations about lending into strategic sectors of the economy as part of the administration’s focus on addressing Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit and accelerating implementation of critical projects, her office said in a statement.
“To create the basis for long term growth, we need to invest urgently in our infrastructure. Achieving energy sufficiency and achieving agriculture and food security are two of the execution priorities we have identified in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan and we are looking forward to advancing our ongoing conversations with multilateral lenders on these priorities over the coming days as we look to accelerate implementation,” she added.
She also spoke about the World Bank loan but gave little details.
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