The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, said the Federal Government has made significant progress in assets recovery.
Malami spoke at a press conference in Abuja, where he also announced that Nigeria had been elected into the global steering committee of Open Government Partnership (OGP).
The minister was represented by the Solicitor-General of the Federation and Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mr Dayo Apata.
TBI Africa reports that the global OGP Steering Committee is the executive decision making body of the OGP, tasked with developing, promoting and safeguarding the values, principles and interests of OGP.
The Nigerian government joined the OGP in 2016, to further deepen the reforms initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari to tackle corruption and block leakages of resources.
The minister said as part of recognition for Nigeria’s efforts in assets recovery, stakeholders had described the co-monitoring of the expenditure of the Abacha loot as a model for other countries to follow.
According to him, a recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the co-monitoring of the expenditure of Abacha loot repatriated from Switzerland has been described by stakeholders as a model for other countries to adopt.
“This is in line with our deliberate policy to have clear transparent guidelines for managing all recovered assets in line with the anti-corruption commitments in the National Action Plan (NAP),” he said.
The AGF added that another area that the country was making progress is the ongoing effort to establish a public register of beneficial owners.
He said government was hopeful that the establishment of beneficial owners’ register would end the era of anonymous company ownership that aided capital flight and illicit financial flows.
“The Nigeria Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) is working closely with the government of the United Kingdom and Open Ownership to develop ownership data standards to achieve this goal.
“A new legislation that will ensure that data is available to the public is already in the parliament and should become enforceable before the end of 2018,” he said.
He noted that as the only African country that would be on the OGP steering committee during its tenure, Nigeria would uphold the ideals of open government through regular sharing of experiences and cross-fertilisation of ideas with other countries.
TBI Africa also reports that Nigeria will serve alongside France, Argentina and Romania for a period of three years, beginning in October.
