The House of Representatives has resolved to summon the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Federal Inland Revenue Service over illicit financial flows in Nigeria.
On Thursday at Plenary, the House expressly mandated its committees on Finance; Anti-Corruption; Financial Crimes; Banking and Currency; and Insurance and Actuarial Matters to ‘investigate the phenomenon of illicit financial flows and appraise the Federal Governments current policy framework to curb the continuous loss of Nigeria’s’ revenues to illicit financial flows’.
The agencies are to ‘address the committees on the continuous loss of government revenues to illicit financial flows and present reports on the measures to curb revenue losses or leakages, curb tax evasion and money laundering activities.
Ochiglegor Idagbo moved the motion and titled it ‘Need to appraise Nigeria’s Legal framework against illicit financial flows’. He described the IFF as a cross border transfer of funds that was illegally earned, moved or utilized and most times including commercial money laundering, tax evasion and proceeds of corruption and criminal activities.
Idagbo also revealed the socioeconomic development of Nigeria had extremely suffered due to the uninterrupted cross border financial dealings of the Nigeria revenue resulting from illegal money laundry. He mentioned that the statistic revealed the amount of revenue loss yearly was more than what they receive as development aid.
He said, “The net official development aid received by Nigeria in 2017 was $3,358,790,000, and the United States Agency for International Development has donated over $526.7m in humanitarian assistance to Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin since 2017. Yet, none of the aforementioned figures matches the estimated $15 and $18bn Nigeria loses to IFFs annually; hence Nigeria continues to struggle with growing inequality, poor infrastructure and lacking service delivery.”
