Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN has assured all agencies involved in the recovery of the looted funds that the essence of regulations set in place was not to take away their statutory powers.
This was disclosed in a statement signed by Dr. Umar Jibrilu Gwandu, his Special Assistant on Media and Public Relations Office of the Attorney-General and made available to newsmen in Abuja on Thursday 30th of January 2020.
Malami made the clarification on Thursday while delivering his welcome address at the head of agencies sensitization on the implementation of the 2017 – 2021 National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS).
He said the issuance of the Asset Tracing, Recovery and Management Regulations 2019 on 29th October 2019 was aimed at consolidating the efforts, attaining synergy and encouraging record centralization.
“I wish to use this medium to reassure particularly our Law Enforcement Agencies that are directly involved with asset recovery that the essence of the Regulation is in no way intended to take away the statutory powers of any agencies but rather to consolidate these powers by encouraging synergy and also centralized records of proceeds of crime and ensure transparent disposal and management of assets in line with the vision of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR,” he said.
The Attorney-General of the Federation said the purpose of the meeting was to solicit cooperation and collaboration of the pilot MDAs in the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) which he believed that going forward and the time within the lifespan of the Strategy is more than enough for us to collaborate and make significant progress in the implementation of the NACS.
To achieve the implementation objective, Malami said four cardinal measures were put in place which included the fact that agencies have been put on adequate notice in relation to the Regulations and agencies shall be provided access to input inventories of all the assets recovered and status of these recovered assets.
Malami said agencies shall be provided with a Standard Operating Procedures as a guide for the disposal and management of assets with each agency; and that the disposal process will be joint, transparent and open with collective input aimed at building the established database which will eventually establish institutional memory.
While calling for more political will from heads of agencies involved, the Minister stated that the technical team under his supervision has attained milestone achievements. He said meetings of Heads of Agencies shall be held quarterly with a view to consolidating on the
gains and way forward in the fight against corruption.
The Attorney-General of the Federation also reiterated his commitment in the fight against corruption and the implementation of the NACS, while calling on all heads of agencies to add their might to the efforts of their various foot soldiers as encouragement for achieving the goals in the vision of having a Nigeria free of corruption for sustainable human development.
