Assets of all public officials and senior political office holders will soon be open for public consumption, according to the Director, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Alhaji Modibbo Hamman-Tukur.
Hamman-Tukur disclosed this in Abuja, yesterday, at a budget defence session with the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes led by Kayode Oladele.
The NFIU director said it is part of the conditions for lifting of its suspension by the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units.
He told the committee that the suspension, which was lifted in September 2018, was based on certain conditions that needed to be met by the country.
He said the Egmont Group would want the NFIU to work closely with other agencies of government in fighting terrorism, financial crimes and other related offences.
“With the lifting of the suspension, it is likely that all assets of all leaders, public officials and political office holders will be displayed.
“They want to see us work with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC).
“They want us to work closely with the Presidency, Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
“They want to see the assets of all public officials displayed publicly,” he told the lawmakers.
“We believe that the National Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), are doing a good job.
“But, it will be good that the beneficiary-owner data base would be domiciled with the CCB, and we will subscribe because CCB has assets declarations of all public officers.”
He said after the suspension was lifted, they faced “the task of European Union (EU) Listing, which was targeted at blacklisting Nigeria and stopping all her transactions overseas involving European countries.”
Hamman-Tukur added that they were able to block the blacklisting but the EU Listing subjected Nigeria to enhanced due diligence in all transactions concerning all EU countries on suspicious transactions.
The transactions, he said, would be through their own agencies within their jurisdiction.
The NFIU boss further said that the concerns raised by the EU include terrorism, kidnapping and corruption.
On the 2018 budget, he said the NFIU had a total budget of N1.185 billion in 2018, made up of N385.310 million as personnel cost, N600 million as overhead while N200 million was for capital cost.
According to him, the capital release to date stands at N174.946 million out of the budgeted amount of N200.1 million.
He added that utilisation percentage stood at about 12 per cent while the balance stood at N154.936 million.