The sale of recovered illegal assets

Recent media reports quoting President Muhammadu Buhari as saying that all recovered illegally acquired assets would be sold in the administration’s renewed anti-graft campaign, a welcome development.
The gesture, no doubt is further boost to the Buhari administration’s policy of ensring transparency and accountability, which is the bedrock of democracy and good governance.
The President, who was responding to a question during an interactive session with the Nigerian community in Togo at the Nigerian Embassy on Sunday night, said when the recovered assets are sold the money would be paid into the country’s treasury.
Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Malam Garba Shehu, who disclosed this, said the President assured that his administration had remained steadfast in keeping to its three campaign promises of providing security, improving the economy and fighting corruption.
The President noted that if past governments had utilised 25 per cent of the huge oil revenue available to them, Nigerians would not be complaining today.
He cited the $16 billion reportedly spent on electricity and yet Nigerians could not see the power.
It is instructive that for quite some time now, Nigeria has been intensifying efforts to recover stolen state assets from abroad.
President Buhari’s government has won some recent battles.
On becoming the president in 2015, Buhari anchored his administration on three-policy thrust, namely, the fight against corruption, terrorism and fixing the economy with the first two being dependent on the third. However, assessing the government’s over three years’ stewardship it would appear that the Buhari government has so far succeeded in making major breakthroughs in the recovery of embezzled and stolen assets domestically and abroad.
In April, his government managed a spectacular success, announcing that over $320 million (€270 million) had been returned by Switzerland.
The money is from the “Abacha loot,” named after Sani Abacha, the 1990s military dictator who, with members of his family, pilfered upwards of $2 billion from government coffers and deposited it in overseas accounts. Years of negotiations including litigation in both countries and mediation by the World Bank were necessary before Switzerland would release the embezzled funds. A second international recovery campaign is said to be on the verge of a breakthrough.
In early May, President Buhari visited his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C. During talks, the two reached an agreement on, among other things, a plan for the restitution of about $500 million (€424 million) in stolen state assets.
But when and how the money is to be returned to Nigeria has not been clarified.
Why does it take so long to repatriate embezzled assets from abroad — even almost two decades in the case of the Abacha funds from Switzerland? “If someone owns assets in my country, I, as the government or judiciary, cannot simply take those assets away from that person on the basis of allegations,” said Jean-Pierre Brun, who works for the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, a partnership between the World Bank Group and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Brun assists governments in recovering embezzled funds from abroad.
He said most of the cases he had dealt with were very complex.
Still, at the very least, Nigeria’s recent success has drawn international attention to the issue.
This week, the heads of Africa’s anti-corruption authorities met in Abuja to discuss better coordination in recovering illegal assets.
Germany’s government has also acknowledged the need to take action.
In March, the BMZ launched a dialogue between African nations and EU countries on the repatriation of stolen assets.
Similarly, President Muhammadu recently called on nations where looted assets have been stashed to release them without the usually long technicalities involved in the process of repatriation.
The President’s Special Adviser, Mr. Femi Adesina, in a statement said Buhari made the call in Nouakchott, Mauritania during his introductory remarks as the leader of the African Union.
The theme of the year is, ‘Winning the Fight against Corruption, A Sustainable Path to Africa’s Transformation.’ He said, “We must all collectively work to place high on the agenda the need for open and participatory government, as well as the repatriation of stolen assets without procedural technicalities and legal obstacles”.
We laud the Buhari administration’s for its efforts at the recovery of illegally acquired assets, considering the many legal and administrative hurdles it has to surmount in this regard.
We, however, urge the federal to ensure the faithful and prudent deployment of the recovered assets in other prevent the relooting of these assets.