Over £400bn worth of Nigerian money is being stashed away in Europe, Asia and America, says a group, Africa Secretariat.
Currently, President Muhammadu Buhari is
seeking the assistance of the United States and European countries to
recover looted Nigerian funds kept in foreign banks.
Coordinator of the United Kingdom-based group, Mr. Ben Oguntala, told SUNDAY PUNCH on Friday that his group had suggested ways of recovering the looted funds to President Buhari.
He said, “The image President Buhari is
projecting is his promise to fight corruption. He cannot do this alone
and it is for this reason that we have sent the President our proposal
for addressing corruption.
“There
is over £400bn worth of Nigerian money being fraudulently held in
Europe, Asia and America. When we met with the President on his visit to
London (earlier this year), he asked us to find out how Nigerians in
the Diaspora can contribute to the development of Nigeria and we see
fighting corruption as a cornerstone of that change that Nigeria is
leading across Africa.
“The perpetrators thought they got away
from the Nigerian law but now, finally, the law can be extended to bring
them to account.”
According to Oguntala, an anti-corruption agency which will be established in Britain has been suggested to Buhari.
“The Nigerian Corruption Amnesty
Commission proposal has been suggested and submitted to the President.
It will be headed by one of the most talented lawyers in criminal law in
the world. The commission will be answerable directly to the President
and will be held in the UK, using the UK and European Union laws to
target perpetrators who thought they were out of the Nigerian legal
jurisdiction,” he said.
The proposed commission, Oguntala noted,
would invoke the powers of UK’s Bribery and Corruption Act of 2010 and
its EU and US equivalent, in collaboration with the Serious Fraud Office
and the Metropolitan Police and international fraud agencies that
already have names of those that defrauded Nigeria on their radar.
The NCAC will also allow Nigerians in the Diaspora and their country to give evidence to the commission.
Oguntala added, “Using social media and
the Internet, witnesses will be able to give evidence from any location
across the world, providing evidence of corruption they know. The
commission will also give a window for perpetrators to confess and
return their loots or face the book being thrown at them.
“As part of the confession they give,
the commission will demand details of how they carried out the
corruption and the information will be used to plug the loophole in the
commensurate sources in Nigeria to ensure we prevent such graft from
happening again.”
Source: +The Punch Newspapers
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