Revisiting Nigeria's stolen asset recovery

 resident Muhammadu Buhari’s recent working visits to the United States of America and Britain, rare outings of such nature in recent times, presented a most appropriate platform to re-launch a fresh bid for the recovery of Nigeria’s stolen assets currently holed up in secret accounts abroad. The president addressed the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly last week but, besides that, he shared the stage with many other heads of government with whom issues of mutual benefits were discussed.

With the economy still largely in the doldrums, although gradually inching its way out of recession, Nigeria cannot afford to spare any effort to attract extra funds to beef up her sagging revenue base. The country’s main foreign exchange earner, oil, has been witnessing fluctuating fortunes in the international market in recent years. From an all-time high of $147 per barrel in 2007, the prices of oil dipped below $30 dollars last year, but are now hovering at a little above $50 per barrel.

The situation has been so dire that the government now relies heavily on borrowing to discharge its obligations to Nigerians, even for the payment of salaries of civil servants, with the wage bill put at about N145 billion monthly. Nearly all revenue targets have fallen short of projections and it is becoming increasingly difficult to sufficiently implement the 2017 budget. For instance, reports in July indicated that the Federal Inland Revenue Service failed to meet its revenue target for the first half of the year. Its chairman, Babatunde Fowler, told the Senate Committee on Finance that N1.78 trillion was realised, far short of the projected N2.44 trillion.

It will, therefore, come as a huge relief if the government could persuade countries such as the US, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, France and some British offshore territories, where some of the stolen assets by the late maximum ruler, Sani Abacha, and other corrupt past leaders were hidden, to part with them. It is believed that Abacha and his family alone stole up to $5 billion from the country, according to a Reuters report quoting Transparency International.

Efforts to retrieve the loot have mostly been met with frustration, yielding only partial success. Switzerland, once the most notorious haven for stolen assets by Third World leaders, has been the most cooperative. Having reviewed its secret banking laws, the country has since returned over $1 billion to Nigeria. But in Liechtenstein, for instance, Nigeria’s bid to retrieve $185 million hidden there by Abacha has proved a tough nut to crack. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Minister of Finance, once captured the frustrations of trying to get the money by saying, “We have spent nearly 14 years trying to get it back and we are pleading with the Liechtenstein not to aid and abet the continuation of that corruption.”

There are other sums of money out there, like the $480 million the US took control of in August 2014, following a ruling by a District Judge, John Bates, that the Justice Department should hand it over to the US authorities. Others include the $302 million in two bank accounts in a British offshore centre; $144 million in two bank accounts in France and $27 million in the United Kingdom. These are funds that could come in handy for this administration in these difficult economic times.

One of the reasons why it has proved so difficult to reclaim looted funds has been because the custodians of the loot have always believed that they would be misappropriated if handed over. A good example is the case when Okonjo-Iweala disbursed $322 million to the Office of the National Security Adviser without the proper budgetary process. She reportedly claimed to have acted at the instance of the then president, Goodluck Jonathan.