The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has taken its struggle to extradite former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, and other fugitives of the law, to face corruption charges.
Mrs. Alison-Madueke has been living in the United Kingdom since 2015 when the government of President Goodluck Jonathan expired.
But a statement issued by the Acting Head of Media and Publicity at the EFCC, Tony Orilade, revealed that the Acting Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, actually met British authorities, Thursday, over the repatriation of Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, as well as all looted funds and assets warehoused in Britain.
“Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, on Thursday, 22 November, 2018, met with the National Crime Agency (NCA), in the United Kingdom, to discuss the efforts of the Commission in the recovery of all ill-gotten assets domiciled in foreign jurisdiction by Nigeria’s Politically Exposed Persons, (PEPs),” the statement revealed. “Magu, in the meeting, explained to the authorities in UK why the commission is seeking the extradition.”
Apart from recovery of stolen funds and assets, the statement continued, Magu will also present EFCC’s position on ways to fast-track the extradition of all politically exposed persons, PEPs, who have found safe heavens in foreign jurisdiction.
According to the statement, Magu also explained why his commission is hell-bent on getting Nigerian fugitives, especially the former Petroleum Minister, back to the country. “The EFCC Chairman had explained why the anti-graft agency is bent on extraditing all PEPs. For instance, speaking on the former minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Deziani Alison-Madueke, whose process of extradition from the United Kingdom has commenced, Magu explained that “Having waited for three years, the Nigerian government believes that it is time to initiate the extradition process.”
The statement recalled that in 2017, a Federal High Court in Lagos ordered the final forfeiture of N7.6 billion alleged loot recovered by the Commission from Diezani. The order of final forfeiture to the federal government was granted by Justice Abdulazeez Anka.
It noted that apart from Diezani, the commission was also seeking the extradition of several other PEPs who had fled into exile since 2015 when the Buhari Administration came to office.
The EFCC boss also took time to address Nigerians in the diaspora, urging them to “own the fight against corruption.” He made the call at a lecture he delivered as part of activities marking the Black History Month of the School of Business and Management Studies of the Queen Mary University of London.
In the paper titled: Taming Corruption: The way forward for African Development, Magu posited that Africa had borne the agonising burden of corruption for so long that developmental efforts of government gets truncated as corrupt individuals divert public funds to private pockets.
“This presentation supports the view that corruption is one of the factors that contributed to the current predicament of the African continent,” he said. “The World Bank estimates that about $1 trillion are given out as bribe worldwide annually, representing about 3 percent of world GDP.”
The EFCC boss fingered another worrisome perspective on the corruption pandemic. And that is the massive theft perpetrated by the ruling elite, top government bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, bank executives, captains of industries in the private sector among others. He said that between 1970 and 1996, capital flight from sub-Saharan Africa through corruption totalled $187 billion, an amount that exceeded the external debts of the countries involved.
Among the burdens that corruption placed on the African continent, according to Magu, are: severe wastage and misallocation of resources, delayed growth and socio-economic development through missed investment opportunity, lowered growth and widened inequalities.
Still, Magu would not quit. He lamented that corruption, like a virulent cancer, continues to eat dangerously into government revenues, undermine private sector development and increase inefficiency in the public sector.
