Stolen Funds, Minimal Records: Where is Nigeria Injecting Its Recovered Stolen Funds?

In April 2017, a Swiss court ruled that the Swiss government should repatriate $321 million, money confiscated from the Abacha family (Stolen Funds), to Nigeria on the condition that the World Bank monitor the process.

In December 2017, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the World Bank signed a tripartite MoU that emphasized that the recovered funds would be used to finance targeted cash transfers; the World Bank would “monitor the use of the Funds;” and Nigeria will engage “civil society organizations (CSOs) to participate in the monitoring” of the project.

The fund was targeted at poverty alleviation that has for long decked the hem of the country. These was intended through cash transfers from the National Social Safety Net Program (NASSP).

By June 2020, Nigeria had witnessed the disbursement of $113.3 million to over 800,000 households (constituting over 4 million individuals) of the $321 million in corrupt funds that were returned by Switzerland during GFAR in 2017.

The above mirrors one of the rarest documentation of recovered stolen funds being put to use. In other words, Nigeria is doing a great job by ensuring that looted funds by its past leaders is being retrieved into the Nations treasury. However, the country seems ebullient in the victory of recovery, yet sullen afterwards.

Even the Abacha loot was not totally accounted for. According to an incisive report, The Economist, a London based magazine said in an article published in an article said, monies looted from Nigeria by its public officers and refunded to its government were often “re-looted.”

Ocean of Embezzlement

In Nigeria, lack of accountability has been in the picture for long, most importantly as regards the amount received as stolen funds.

Like Abacha loot, The case of James Ibori also illustrates why there is reason for concern about the lack of accountability in Nigeria. Ibori was governor of the oil-rich Delta State between 1999 and 2007 and was sentenced in September 2013 to 13 years imprisonment in Britain after pleading guilty in February 2012 to 10 counts of fraud and money-laundering worth tens of millions of pounds.

Ibori had reportedly hidden some of his assets in the oil firm Oando and money passed from the company’s accounts to Ibori’s Swiss accounts. Ibori’s case remains one of the biggest embezzlement cases witnessed in Britain, and the successful prosecution of Ibori was also a rare example of a senior Nigerian politician being held to account for the corruption that blighted Africa’s most populous country.

In the wake of Friday, according to a report by Asiwaju media, a sum of $52.8 million was retrieved from the US as looted funds, from the former Minister for Petroleum, Diezani Alison Madueke. That’s just a small fraction from the $582 billion reported by Chattam house, to have been looted away from this country since independence.

According to Report, the immediate past Muhammadu Buhari made tremendous efforts in recovering stolen and hidden Nigeria funds back to the country, however, the real success does not lie in the heralded talks of recovery, but rather transparency on how the money is being spent or kept.

What Happens to the Recovered Funds?

Over the years, reports normally have it that foreign banks and governments return part of the stolen funds, but Nigerians are not given detailed explanation on how they are spent. The National Assembly that has the constitutional duty to demand and receive full details has consistently been remiss in its responsibility. These advances however, makes the recovered treasury easy to misappropriate again.

In response to public pressure, mostly from civil society organisations, the government had variously claimed to have used part of the previously returned loot to fund some road infrastructure projects. It has never provided evidence to back this up.

A former United States president, Barack Obama, emphasizing the importance of accountability in building an enduring democracy, maintained that “information obtained by the government is a national asset” to be made available to its owners–the people–as a matter of duty and right.

Student Loan 50 Billion Donation

The Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) was set up by the federal government to ensure that students who are in school do not drop out due to lack of funds. Although, a report by Business Day, mirrors that the scheme’s major source of funding will be 1 percent of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)’s collections. The scheme has received donations from other sources which includes a sum of 50 billion naira, proceeds of crime, from the EFCC in the quarter three of 2024.

Meanwhile, the EFCC admitted the funds being proceeds of crime, it however, said the fund was not a donation by the Commission but part of the recovered proceeds of crime remitted to the government.

It furthered that It is “not the place of the Commission to determine where the government commits recovered proceeds of crime. But the student’s loan scheme is a salutary innovation which has the potential to reduce youth involvement in criminality.”

Although it is settled that Democracy thrives on the just rader of both accountability and transparency, yet what the Federal Government does with the received stolen funds remains a mystery to an average Nigerian, with the Federal Government sabotaging most of the proceeds even when the funds belong to the three tiers of government.