The pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu, on Thursday, March 22, said the proposed movement of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) out of the commission will bring a setback for the country.
Ribadu said: ''I feel sad that they want to take the NFIU away from EFCC. This will set us back.''
He made this known at an anti-corruption situation room organised by the HEDA resource centre in Abuja.
He said the NFIU achieved milestones because of the institutional backing and the enforcement effect of the EFCC.
According to him, ''What we did with NFIU was to bring Nigeria at par with the rest of the world in terms of financial regulations and tracing suspicious deals.’’
He added that it was a former official in the Olusegun Obasanjo government, Obiageli Ezekwesili, who first drew attention to Nigeria’s negative rating by the Egmont group and what was needed to address it.
Ribadu said the EFCC engaged the financial action task force and made efforts to comply with the requirements, including instituting the NFIU.
Ribadu also called for openness and accountability in the country’s oil and gas sector.
He lamented that failure to implement far-reaching reforms has left the industry undeveloped and used mainly as a cash cow to enrich a few.
In his presentation, the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Waziri Adio, described efforts at instilling accountability in the oil and gas industry as a difficult task.
He said: ''The area is technical and people who are taking advantage of it don’t want it to change.
''They want the status quo to remain so that average people don’t understand what’s going on and when you challenge them they say you don’t know anything.''
Ribadu said management of resources coming from extractive industry is an issue all citizens should be interested about, adding that “resources themselves are not a curse, it is the way people apply them.''
Nigerians may no longer be able to carry out international transactions using Master cards, visa cards and others as Egmont group is considering expelling the NFIU.
The group, comprising 153 countries, mandates its members to establish a financial intelligence unit that serves as a national centre for the receipt and analysis of (1) suspicious transaction reports; and (2) other information relevant to money laundering, associated predicate offences and financing of terrorism, and for the dissemination of the results of that analysis.
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