In faraway Washington, United States of America, the Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun called for greater global cooperation and collaboration in combating illicit financial flows from Africa.
She made this call while attending the World Bank and IMF Spring meetings in Washington DC, United States. She said the federal government is focused on resetting the Nigerian economy by addressing her traditional over-reliance on oil revenues and establishing the basis for sustainable non-oil revenue growth.
“To improve non-oil revenues, we have 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”, Adeosun told the global parliamentary conference in the U.S.
She revealed that there are monies sitting in foreign bank accounts, which the federal government has 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”, she noted.
The finance minister expressed hope that the Automatic Exchange of Information scheme coming into force next year will be a step towards achieving greater transparency, saying “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”.
On the domestic agenda to ensure significant reductions in ‘leakages’ of public funds and improved efficiency in public expenditure, the Minister said, “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.
“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”.
On the need to create long term growth, she told senior representatives from the World Bank and IMF, as well as over 150 parliamentarians, we need to invest urgently in our infrastructure”
