By David Agba Abuja
Th e Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, is in Washington DC this week, attending the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings. She is participating in a range of events focused on diff erent aspects of the federal government’s economic reform agenda.
At her opening event on Monday, she gave an address to the Global Parliamentary Conference, alongside parliamentarians from around the world, focused on Nigeria’s economic reform agenda and the need for strong executive and legislative collaboration.
Addressing senior representatives from the World Bank and IMF, as well as over 150 parliamentarians adeosun called for greater focus on collaboration in illicit fi nancial fl ows from Africa as a core pillar of the government’s strategy to signifi cantly enhance domestic government revenue and deliver sustainable economic growth.
“Th e government is focused on resetting the Nigerian economy by addressing our traditional over-reliance on oil revenues and establishing the basis for sustainable non-oil revenue growth.
To improve non-oil revenues, we have to address illicit capital fl ows. When stolen money is transferred from Nigeria, or other African countries, there are too few questions asked by those countries that receive the funds, but when we identify those funds as stolen and seek to recover them, there are too many questions being asked. Th ere is money sitting in foreign bank accounts that we have spent over a decade trying to recover.
Th at is money that could deliver signifi cant value for Nigeria as we seek to increase spending on critical infrastructure and establish a basis for long term sustainable growth.
I hope that the Automatic Exchange of Information scheme coming into force next year will be a step towards achieving greater transparency, but we need more collaboration amongst parliamentarians in Africa, and across the World to ensure that this situation improves and that recipient countries are held to account.” Commenting on the domestic agenda to ensure signifi cant reductions in ‘leakages’ of public funds, and improved effi ciency in public expenditure, the minister said: “We are going after those who have stolen our money.
We have put in place a very successful whistle blower programme that is delivering results, and allows those who report illicit activity to receive up to 5% of any funds that we recover. We are also signifi cantly improving our fi nancial management controls to ensure that it is considerably more diffi cult for public funds to be diverted. We have to do more though and that means collaboration with the legislature.
We need tighter tax and fi nancial reporting legislation and to ratify bilateral agreements so that our enforcement agencies are empowered to deliver the results that we need.”
