A human rights organisation under the aegis of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre on Wednesday said Nigeria should block revenue leakages and stop Illicit Financial Flows to reduce the nation’s debt accumulation.
The Executive Director of CISLAC and Transparency International, Nigeria, Auwal Rafsanjani, stated this at the one-day dialogue on the status of adoption of High Level Panel report on IFFs in Economic Community of West African States organised by the West African Tax Administration Forum.
Rafsanjani said Nigeria was loosing billion of dollars annually to IFFs encouraged by multinationals and foreign countries, adding that the menace was replicated throughout Africa.
He, therefore, stressed the need for government to see the menace as major threat to the nation’s social economic well-being.
Rafsanjani said, “NASS has the responsibility to ensure that leakages are blocked and financial outflow that is going on is minimised. As it is, there is no conversation and debate in the national assembly to discus this very important high level report and we are losing billions of dollar annually. They need to wake up to their responsibility.
“It is not enough to be approving and endorsing loan requests from the President but to also asked critical questions like why are we borrowing money and it ends up in some people’s pocket?. The laziness in which some public official always resort to borrowing is getting out of hands.
“It is when the national assembly begin to interrogate government’s policies and practices and implementation that is when we get governance right. But if they just endorse whatever the president brings, then the checks and balance will not be realised.
“We are calling on them to interrogate how Nigerians continue to suffer due to IFFs. The NASS should talk to Central Bank of Nigeria to ensure that they block the leakages. This is because all financial institutions are regulated by the CBN. We cannot be loosing these huge amount of billions annually and CBN is not showing so much interest in blocking the leakages. They should discuss with finance minister on how to block it. It is undermining the progress of the country.”
He stressed the need for African Civil Society Organisations and partners to properly problematise IFFs and develop distinctly African policy responses.
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