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From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, in Pretoria, South Africa
Despite having 10 agencies fighting illicit financial flows, Nigeria has continued to lose over $10 billion annually to money lauding hampering domestic resource mobilisation for development in critical sectors.
This was disclosed during the 2023 summer school, themed: ‘Enhancing the Capacity of Civil Society Organisations and Journalists in Efforts to Curb Illicit Financial Flows’, organised by Tax Justice Network Africa, WU Global Tax Policy Centre (WU GTPC) and the African Tax Institute, hosted at the Future Africa Campus at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
The event had 30 participants comprising experts, representatives from the civil society organisations and the media.
Addressing a press conference at the end of the event, Director of the WU Global Tax Policy Centre (WU GTPC) Vienna, Jeffrey Owens, acting Executive Director, Tax Justice Network Africa, Chenai Mukumba, and a lecturer at ATI and advisor, Global Tax Policy Centre (GTPC), Bernd Schlenther, said these agencies would have to overcome some legal barriers that prevent that cooperation between them if meaningful progress is to be made.
The experts also said the country need to muster the necessary political will to encourage and strengthen cooperations between various ant-graft agencies.
Nigeria’s major anti-corruption institutions with prevention mandates are the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Code of Conduct Bureau, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Public Complaints Commission, Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms and Public Complaints Commission.
“I mean, Nigeria has 10 agencies that are fighting money laundering, I’m not sure they talk to one another enough. And you have to have a whole lot of government approach and quite frankly, that’s low hanging fruit and is not difficult to achieve. But it does require political will from the country’s leadership,” Owens said.
Asked how best to identify the challenges militating against the cooperation and how to address them, he said: “I would identify three sets of challenges. One is building capacity, having the resources to do the work. The second would be overcoming some legal barriers that prevent that cooperation between different government agencies. The third one is you need political support from the top, nothing will change in your countries, unless you get the president, the finance minister, basically saying the time for change has come. And I want every ministry, in fact, to seek out and eliminate corruption in wherever form it takes.
“Quite frankly, these illicit financial flows are bleeding Africa, whether you lose in $50 billion or $100 billion it’s a lot of money, and it’s growing. And it’s been around for a long time and there’s a lot of political talk at the African Union. Governments know what to do. They now need to do it. They need to know how they can use the new technologies to counter these out flows.”
On his part, Schlenther stressed the need for civil society organisations (CSOs) to have an understanding about what the issues are that governments are confronted with.
He said: “This is about understanding what technologies are out there that should be used by governments. And also, some of the low hanging fruit is through interagency cooperation. We know that. But we also need to understand as CSOs, what are the perceptions of different agencies about other agencies, and why it’s difficult for them to operate in that space.
“So a system that has understanding government and assisting them in issues such as leadership that can break those silos down within those different agencies.”
