PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari may
not involve the nation’s anti-graft
agencies such as the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission and the
Independent Corrupt Practices and
Other Related Offences Commission in
his government’s efforts at
recovering looted funds, The PUNCH
has learnt.
Our correspondents learnt on Monday that
the President did not have confidence in the
anti-graft agencies.
A top government official, who is familiar
with the Buhari’s government’s efforts at
recovering looted funds, told The PUNCH in
confidence that President might rely more
on people outside the system to achieve
good results.
The official said, “The President’s body
language as far as the anti-corruption
agencies are concerned suggests that
he does not have so much confidence
in them.
“Most of the recovery job may be
done by people outside the system,
like consultants.”
He added that Buhari’s reliance on outsiders
had started yielding positive results and that
the President was currently in possession of
incriminating information about individuals
and institutions suspected to be culpable in
looting the nation’s treasury.
He added that the information was not
made available to Buhari by the anti-graft
agencies but by concerned individuals and
groups.
“I can confirm to you that the President has
received plenty information that is useful for
the recovery process. Anti-graft agencies
are not the sources of the information. He
got the information from different sources,
including anonymous and known sources,”
he said.
When contacted, the Special Adviser to the
President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi
Adesina, said Buhari was committed to the
recovery and repatriation of all stolen funds
from any part of the world.
The President had on June 23 said his
administration had received firm assurances
of cooperation from the United States and
other countries in his quest to recover and
repatriate funds stolen from Nigeria.
He said it was up to Nigeria to provide the
international community with the facts and
figures needed to drive the recovery effort,
saying that he would be busy in the next
three months, getting the facts that would
help in recovering the stolen funds.
“In the next three months, our
administration will be busy getting those
facts and the figures to help us recover our
stolen funds in foreign countries,’’ he had
said while granting audience to members of
the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, led
by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad
Abubakar III, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
It was learnt on Monday that the President
had not given any directive on the recovery
of stolen funds to any of the nation’s anti-
graft agencies.
Investigations revealed that the leadership of
the EFCC and the ICPC were unsure of the
level of their expected involvement in the
task of recovering the looted funds under
Buhari.
Some very senior officers of the anti-graft
agencies told one of our correspondents in
confidence that they had not been involved
in any looted funds recovery effort under
Buhari’s administration because the
President had not indicated what he
expected from them in the exercise.
An officer in a strategic position in one of
the agencies simply said he had no
knowledge of whether the President had
issued a directive or not.
It was gathered that the President had been
engrossed in discrete moves to recover
billions of Naira believed to have been stolen
by officials of previous governments.
Buhari was said to have reached out to his
counterparts in several countries to seek
assistance on how the stolen funds could
be repatriated.
It was further gathered that some of the
leaders contacted had indicated readiness to
assist the President on the issue of assets
recovery.
The government source said that some of
the politicians who got wind of the move
by the President had become jittery and
had commenced moves to return some of
the funds in a bid to avoid being humiliated.
However, the source could not give the
exact amount of money believed to have
been recovered so far in the course of the
efforts by Buhari to recover stolen Nigerian
assets.
The source said, “Let me make it clear that
no anti-graft agency is involved in the
ongoing efforts to recover stolen funds.
“The fact is that nobody is sure of what the
President wants to do or which security
agency he intends to rely on in the bid to
recover some of these funds.
“What we know is that he reached out to
some foreign countries where some of
these former government officials have
gone to hide the funds and these countries
are cooperating with him. They have
promised to assist him to recover them.
“Some of those involved who got wind of
the President’s move have started returning
some of the stolen money.”
Most of the missing funds in Nigeria are
believed to have been lodged in secret bank
accounts in the U.S., UK, Switzerland and
other European countries.
The President had indicated his resolve to
trace and recover all such stolen funds on
his resumption at the Presidential Villa on
June 27, 2015.
The President, who raised the alarm that he
met an empty treasury, said that billions of
dollars stashed away in foreign accounts
could be recovered in the next three
months.
Adesina had told Saturday PUNCH that the
Federal Government had the intention of
engaging foreign private investigators to
assist the country in tracing the looted
funds.
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