Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon Yakubu Dogara has in September 2016 bared his mind on the planned removal of Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU from the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), kicking against the move then.
But almost a year after, the Senate has passed the bill to establish the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency pulling the country’s financial intelligence unit out of the control of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
The bill which was hurriedly passed last Thursday within a week of its introduction at the floor of the Senate, The New Diplomat gathered was without the usual public hearing, organised to consider opinions of concerned parties on any public related subject.
EXCERPTS FROM DOGARA’S THOUGHT ON NFIU
I don’t know how independent they want the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU except if we are going to create an agency that will have enough independence to
superintend over the affairs of the
financial intelligence unit.
The problem you run into is that when
you duplicate these agencies, you are going to spend more funds, there will be more finances committed into this agency and that takes us to the issue of looking elsewhere for guidance.
I sincerely believe that for the EFCC to be effective, [it needs to] exercise some kind of control [over] that unit [NFIU] in the sense that in most cases, the hard core evidence that [is] needed to secure convictions may rest on the activities of that unit.
Now if you have taken the unit out of
EFCC and conferred some kind of
independence on the agency
running the unit, you will have inter-
agency rivalry and that, sincerely
speaking, may harm our fight against
corruption, more than the good
granting them autonomy may bring
to the system.
So, if we are talking about inability to
secure convictions, I believe the journey must begin where you can control all the avenues that give you that quality and sound evidence that you need to tender before the judge to secure convictions.
If we start granting autonomy to some of the units, and then instead of cooperating, we are having inter-agency rivalry, you will further frustrate the battle against
corruption.
What is right is right, and what is
wrong is wrong. Sincerely, I believe
that the NFIU should be under the
EFCC. Even if in some jurisdiction, it is
independent, for the reasons I have
mentioned, that if you create an
independent unit, you will be
encouraging inter-agency rivalry. In
Nigeria, [sadly], it is very difficult for
independent agencies to
cooperate.
(Hon Yakubu Dogara, Speaker,
House of Representatives, in
ZeroTolerance, September 2016)
WhyNFIUShouldBeDomiciledintheEFCC – Hon Kayode Oladele
Chairman, House of Reps Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, Hon. Kayode Oladele, is no doubt of the firm view that any attempt to pull the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) out of the EFCC, is tantamount to a palace
coup aimed at whittling down the powers of the anti-graft agency, and by extension render the NFIU a toothless bulldog.
“I knew very well that there was a
conscious attempt by the political
class to clip [the wings of] the EFCC,”
he says. “At the same time, there was
a very serious effort made to take the
NFIU out of the EFCC, because they
felt that with the NFIU out of the EFCC, it will weaken its powers.” Push by some members of the legislature, for establishment of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Centre (NFIC), to replace the NFIU as the central body for receiving financial intelligence reports, has long been in the works.
“In 2013, they introduced to theNational Assembly, the NFIC Bill, which would have created an agency out of the NFIU,” he says. “Several sister [law enforcement]
agencies that should have worked with the EFCC to counter its establishment, came out to say they were supporting it.”
For Oladele, the development was rather unfortunate, “and it was as if every other agency in the country came out against the EFCC, because they wanted the NFIC”, an
indication of “no inter-agency relationship, per se”.
“I was there, and I did my homework very well, and I discovered that among the 194 member-countries of the Egmont Group, at the time, only four countries had the kind of agency that the political class in
Nigeria wanted to create,” he says. “But those were countries where they had very poor anti-corruption regime.”
The NFIU became fully operational in
2005 and has from inception being
domiciled in the EFCC, as the unit
representing the Nigerian arm of
Financial Intelligence Units, FIUs, in
the international community. Under
its current structure in the EFCC, it
was admitted into the Egmont Group
of FIUs in 2007, and was in 2015 at the
Group’s plenary, which held in Berlin,
Germany, elected as the regional
head of Western/Central African sub-
region.
According to Oladele, “we fought
hard at the time and because of my
understanding of the system, and of
the workings of the NFIU, as well as
international best practices, I was
able to convince my colleagues,
here, that we should not [pull the
NFIU out of the EFCC].”
Resolution 29 of the FATF indicates
that an FIU can be situated
anywhere within an existing
organization. The FIU of the United
States – Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network, FinCEN, is
domiciled within the Treasury
Department. In France, it is in the
Ministry of Justice, and in Germany
with the Police, while in the United
Kingdom, UK, it is with the Organized
Crime Agency.
“So they can be situated within an
existing organization, but should
have operational autonomy, and
that is exactly what we are trying to
do,” he says.
However, Oladele stresses the need
to amend Section 1 (2) (c) of the
EFCC Act, which stipulates the anti-graft agency as the designated financial intelligence unit, noting that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) notes that is was not good enough. “The FATF believes that the section in the Act does not give that operational autonomy to the NFIU,” he says, adding that we are amending it, to
give the NFIU a separate autonomy
within the EFCC.
“A [draft] copy has been sent to the
FATF, and to the Egmont Group,” he
reveals. “They’ve looked at it, and they
say that’s fine.”
He adds that: “Our committee as it
stands will resist any effort to take the
NFIU from the EFCC.”
Explaining further, he says, “There will
be no need for us to constitute a
different agency, because what we
are trying to achieve by re-positioning
the NFIU within the EFCC will create a
hybrid type of FIU, like they have in the
UK, where you have an administrative
type fused with an enforcement type;
Placing the NFIU within the EFCC will
give it the teeth it needs to ensure its
efciency, and at same time the NFIU
will be able to enforce its mandate in
case of violation.”
Credit: EFCCAlert
