Less than 24 hours after the Senate mandated its Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes to submit a draft bill establishing the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) as an independent and autonomous body, the proposal on Thursday passed First Reading in the Senate.
The development comes after the upper legislative chamber on Wednesday urged its Anti-Corription panel to submit the proposal within four weeks.
The proposal titled: ‘Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency (Establishment etc) Bill, 2017’ is sponsored by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes, Chukwuma Utazi (PDP, Enugu State).
In his remarks, Senate President Bukola Saraki directed the Committee on Rules and Business to schedule the bill for Second Reading next week to ensure that it is passed on time.
The upper legislative chamber is expected to embark on six-week recess from next week.
The bill seeks to ensure that NFIU is independent and autonomous of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Details of the bill are still sketchy as the Rules and Business panel whose duty is to ensure that bills are scheduled on the Order Paper, is yet at get the proposal when BusinessDay inquired from the office on Thursday.
At the moment, the Unit is domiciled within the anti-graft agency.
Nigeria was recently suspended by the EGMONT Group, citing inability of the Federal Government to make the NFIU autonomous from the EFCC, interference of the acting chairman of the anti-graft agency, Ibrahim Magu in the affairs of the NFIU and divulging confidential information concerning EGMONT Group to the media.
The global body stated that if Nigeria fails to comply with the group’s demands for a legal framework granting autonomy to the NFIU by January 2018, the country will be expelled from the organisation.
If this happens, Nigeria will no longer be able to benefit from financial intelligence shared by the other 153 member countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy among others.
Consequently, the development will hamper the country’s ability to recover stolen funds abroad as well as affect the international rating of Nigerian financial institutions by restricting their access to international transactions.
EGMONT Group is a network of national financial intelligence units and is the highest inter-govermental association of intelligence agencies in the world, with 154 member countries. It provides the backbone for monitoring international money laundering activities.
Nigeria became a full member of the group in 2007 during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
However, at its July 7, 2017 meeting in China, Nigeria’s Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the agency of government that represents the country at the meetings of the group, was suspended till January 2018 with a threat of an expulsion if the country does not meet the standards of the groups with regards to its operations.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
