Nigeria’s fraudulent asset recovery and disposal procedures

 

Ahead of the 2015 general elections, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), campaigned on the mantra of change and highlighted three pillars of attention if voted into office. These are economy, security and anti-corruption. Six years down the line, how well has the president fought corruption? If you ask the anti-graft agencies, they are likely to tell you that they are doing great and are winning the fight against corruption. On the other hand, average Nigerians and international rating agencies, such as Transparency International, are not convinced that the country is getting the upper hand in the war against graft.

In this piece, I decided to focus on an area many Nigerians are not paying attention to. That is asset recovery and disposal by the anti-corruption agencies. Does the country have a comprehensive asset recovery register? The answer is No! Is there a standard operating procedure for the disposal of recovered stolen funds or assets? Doubtful. Yet there are several agencies that are involved in asset recovery. The Nigerian Customs Service daily addresses the press on seizures of contrabands such as imported rice, frozen poultry products, cars, used clothing etcetera. However, not many Nigerians know what happened to these seized products eventually. Same with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. All those seized boats, trucks and stolen petroleum products, how are they disposed of? The story is the same with the Nigeria Police Force.

I have seen hotels and residential buildings marked as having been impounded by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. These are apart from seized cars, cash and other items. Not many of us know when and how these seized assets are eventually disposed of. The same can be said of properties impounded by the Independent Corrupt Practises and Other Related Offences Commission. The question is: Why are there no full disclosures on the seized properties? This newspaper in its editorial of yesterday, December 7, 2021, quoted the Centre for Democracy and Development, an anti-corruption watchdog, as having put the value of assets recovered by the EFCC and the Code of Conduct Bureau in the past 20 years at about N900 billion. But it queried the efficiency of the management of those assets.

A November 29, 2021 story in this newspaper offered an insight into how some of the recovered assets are mismanaged. It said that a syndicate in the Federal Ministry of Justice had been selling off forfeited and recovered assets belonging to the Federal Government. The syndicate, comprising top justice ministry officials, including directors, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (name withheld) and political aides to the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN, has allegedly been disposing of some properties, mostly in Abuja and Lagos, and pocketing the proceeds. Whoa, so much for the fight against corruption!

It was gathered that former members of the defunct Ad Hoc Committee on the Sale of Non-essential FGN Residential Houses in Abuja were also involved in the property racketeering going on in the ministry. The committee was allegedly disbanded in 2014 but its members were said to be deeply involved with senior officials of the ministry in illicit property deals. A reliable source in the ministry reportedly confirmed to The PUNCH correspondent that the members of the syndicate, who had access to title documents of forfeited and recovered properties, had been making millions of naira from selling government properties. Can you beat that?

The PUNCH correspondent, who investigated the story, said he was reliably informed that the former committee members give people offer letters, which they use in obtaining Certificates of Occupancy on government properties. When you trace it, you find that payments on the affected properties are not made to the government. The syndicate members are simply pocketing the proceeds from the sales of those properties. He quoted his source as having said that “the impunity going on is mind-blowing, but the AGF, unfortunately, is not aware of how his aides have been using his name and office to perpetrate all manners of illegal activities. Come to the ministry and see all manners of characters sealing eye-popping deals on government properties. It is shocking.”

The modus operandi of the group, it was learnt, involved doctoring the dates on property titles by backdating them to the year 2013 and thereabouts before selling off the properties at below-market prices. The PUNCH correspondent gathered that a recent deal carried out by the officials and their accomplices involved some buildings estimated at over N2bn, which were allegedly sold for less than N1bn. The proceeds, The PUNCH correspondent was told, were allegedly shared by the syndicate members, which included a female deputy director known to be close to the AGF. This newspaper’s findings also indicated that the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Disposal of Forfeited Assets, which claimed to have marked for auction 1,620 forfeited properties in 25 locations across the country, might have under-reported the number of recovered properties in Abuja. The committee had claimed that less than 100 properties forfeited in Abuja would be auctioned alongside others, but an official put the number of confiscated properties in the nation’s capital at over 500.

The AGF had, on November 9, 2020, inaugurated the inter-ministerial committee headed by Dayo Apata, SAN, the erstwhile Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice, who retired in July. The committee, which included representatives of the presidency, the police, navy, the EFCC, the ICPC as well as ministries of finance, justice, works and housing, among others, had the mandate to collate and dispose of all assets permanently forfeited to the Federal Government within six months. But one year after its inauguration, the committee said it was still in the process of carrying out the disposal of assets, including land property, plants, machinery, vehicles, electronics, furniture, ships and equipment. Briefing journalists in October 2021, the new chairman of the committee, Umar Mohammed, announced that 68 independent valuers had been shortlisted for the forfeited assets.

Mohammed, who is the Solicitor-General and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Justice, disclosed that 229 proposals were received for the valuation of plants, machinery, motor vehicles, furniture and equipment, while 75 companies submitted bids for the valuation of marine vessels and 25 companies presented bids for the valuation of jewellery, ornaments and clothing materials. But a licensed auctioneer, who purportedly participated in the exercise, said the committee had already awarded auction slots to certain persons to handle the sale of the properties, noting that the process for the disposal of the assets was less than transparent. A source in the justice ministry corroborated the auctioneer, saying some of the assets had been sold off to cronies and fronts, adding, “The announcement by the committee was just a mere formality.”

I have quoted The PUNCH investigation report in extenso so as not to distort the findings. These allegations need to be thoroughly investigated and should they be found to be true, this will be a big blow to the fight against corruption in Nigeria. When the seized properties of the former Petroleum Minister, Diezanni Allison Madueke, were published recently, no mention was made of seized cash, yet I was reliably informed at a recent anti-corruption workshop I attended that huge cash was confiscated in her home during the raid. Unfortunately, brassieres that were not part of the seized items made the major headlines. The question is, how trustworthy are the anti-corruption officers who go to search or raid homes and offices of suspects? How sure are we that they are not helping themselves to some of the seized items especially cash, thereby under-declaring the recovered items? So much for Nigeria’s fight against corruption!

Why can’t seized properties continue to generate income until their final disposals? I mean if they are hotels, residential apartments or offices why can’t anti-corruption agencies allow them to continue to generate income through rent or lease and the proceeds kept in Federal Government account rather than allowing the properties to become dilapidated due to non-use?  This will also save a lot of jobs aside from providing funds for the maintenance of these properties before their final disposal.

I fully endorse the recommendation of yesterday’s The PUNCH editorial which stated inter alia that “The government needs to implement a programme for efficiently managing frozen, and confiscated property and, where necessary, disposing of such property. A 2005 Best Practices for the Administration of Seized Assets guide by the Group of Eight States stressed this, declaring; “States must ensure that strong controls for the administration of seized assets are in place. Transparency in the management of seized assets is critical, such as by means of an annual examination of the asset management authority by independent auditors, including the examination and certification of financial records, which are made public.”