From Magnus Eze, Abuja
Reactions have continued to trail the disclosure of details of recovered looted funds amounting to over N116 billion cash and 239 assorted assets by the Federal Government over the weekend.
Lawyers in Abuja were divided over the failure of government to give details of how much was recovered from persons and date of recovery.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed had, in a statement last Saturday, released details of an interim report on the financial and assets recoveries made by the various government agencies from May 29, 2015 to May 25, 2016. But, the statement did not give details of those the loot were recovered from.
Mr. Valentine Imo of Apex Chambers said there was no law in the land barring the naming of looters. What the law says, according to him, is that nobody must be pronounced guilty of a crime except by the courts. “Nigerians should wake up and support the naming and shaming of looters. Why should we allow those that looted our common wealth to still be celebrating when they have not been named and shamed? With the naming and shaming, to even walk around in the society to them would be a very difficult task. With that, Nigerians would now know the root cause of our under-development which must be linked to these people.”
Nonetheless, a human rights lawyer, Mr. Ugochukwu Osuagwu did not see anything wrong in not naming the looters.
However, Mr. Wisdom Elum of Femi Falana Chambers said their law firm might be approaching government, relying on the Freedom of Information Act to demand details of what was recovered and period of recovery.
“What is the essence of the recovery if you say you have recovered money and Nigerians don’t know who you recovered it from and how much you recovered from the person and at what period?”
That is the problem with how Nigeria is run; there is so much secrecy,” he said.