Assets Of Politicians, Public Officials To Be Made Public – NFIU

The assets of all public officials and senior political office holders will soon be open for public consumption, the Director, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Alhaji Modibbo Hamman-Tukur, has said.

Hamman-Tukur disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at a budget defence session with the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes led by Rep. Kayode Oladele (APC-Ogun).

The director said it was part of the conditions lifting the suspension of the NFIU by the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units.

The director told the committee that the suspension, which was lifted in September, 2018 was based on certain conditions that needed to be met by the country.

He said the Egmont Group would want the NFIU to work closely with other agencies of government in fighting terrorism, financial crimes and other related offences.

“With the lifting of the suspension, it is likely that all assets of all leaders, public officials and political office holders will be displayed.

“They want to see us work with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC).

“They want us to work closely with the presidency, Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

“They want to see the assets of all public officials displayed publicly,” he said.

According to him, we believe that National Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), are doing a good job.

“But it will be good that the beneficiary owner data base will be domiciled with the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), and we will subscribe because CCB has assets declarations of all public officers.”

He said after the suspension was lifted, they faced the task of European Union (EU) listing, which was targeted at blacklisting Nigeria and stopping all her transactions overseas involving European countries.

He added that they were able to block the blacklisting but the EU listing subjected Nigeria to enhanced due diligence in all transactions concerning all EU countries on suspicious transactions.

The transactions, he said, would be through their own agencies within their jurisdiction.

Hamman-Tukur disclosed that the concerns raised by the EU include terrorism, kidnapping and corruption.

On the 2018 budget, he said the NFIU had a total budget of N1.185 billion in 2018 made up of N385.310 million as personnel cost, N600 million as overhead while N200 million was for capital cost.

According to him, the capital release to date stands at N174.946 million out of the budgeted amount of N200.1 million.

He added that utilization percentage stood at about 12 per cent while the balance stood at N154.936 million.

On the 2019 budget, the director revealed that a total of N8.244 billion had been proposed, made up of N1.154 billion for overhead cost, N4.124 billion as capital cost while N2.865 billion for personnel cost.

He explained that in spite of the fact that the government had financial constraints due to dwindling revenue; the NFIU needed to carry out its role of monitoring financial institutions.

This, he said was for compliance as empowered by the NFIU Act of 2018.