The House of Representatives has mandated its committee on Financial Crimes to carry out an audit of car dumps and inventory of other movable and immovable forfeited properties seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other agencies.
The committee is to also ascertain whether the anti-graft agency complies with the laid down laws before forfeiture is being carried out; as well as ascertain the current value of the assets and make recommendations to the House within six (6) weeks on how to prevent further decay.
The resolution was taken at yesterday’s plenary following the adoption of a motion, presented by Hon. Babajimi Benson (APC, Lagos).
Presenting the motion, Benson noted that pursuant to Section 20(1) of the EFCC establishment Act 2004, a person convicted of an offence shall forfeit to the Federal Government all the assets and properties which may or are the subject of interim order of the court;
He informed that since its establishment in 2003, the EFCC has seized several movable and immovable properties and assets under interim orders of Courts in order to preserve the properties/assets and prevent them from being disposed of by the suspects while cases were being investigated or tried.
Also aware that the EFCC maintains dump sites in various parts of the country such as Port Harcourt, Lagos and Abuja where it keeps the movable assets while immovable assets are sealed off by the Commission;
The lawmaker said, he was “aware that several of these assets have been there for several years while some are already at various stages of decay, and convinced of the need to avoid this needless waste of recovered properties which would otherwise have yielded some much needed revenues to the national treasury”
Babajimi who also spoke to Hallowmace after plenary, blamed the judiciary for compounding the problems due to longer judicial processes.
According to him, most times the agencies have to wait for a final pronouncement from the judiciary on such confiscated assets/properties." There is also need to introduce information technology (ICT) to fasten the process", he said.
Supporting the motion, Hon. Henry Okon Archibong (PDP, Akwa Ibom), said it was not good that EFCC confiscates goods which are sometimes left to rot away.
In his own contribution, Hon. Prestige Ossy (APGA, Abia) reasoned that if the EFCC has the responsibility to recover looted property and funds, there should be a channel through which information on such confiscated items could be made public.
Also supporting the motion, Hon. Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers) said it was surprising that most ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) do not have the assets registered. He said sometimes, they announced that some seized items are burnt without disclosing what is left. Chinda, consequently proposed that the audit should be extended to other MDAs.
Hon. Aminu Shehu Shagari (APC, Sokoto), in his support for the bill suggested that it was incumbent on the committee to find out if the EFCC complies with extant laws before forfeiting assets from suspects and what happened to the assets when litigation is on course.
Similarly, Hon. Abdulraham Shuaibu (APC, Adamawa), supported the motion urging all MDAs to consider opening registers for their assets.
Explaining need for the investigation, Speaker Yakubu Dogara said “ I think it will be out of place if we do not look into the requirement for forfeiture and ascertain if the EFCC has been complying.
The motion was consequently passed and referred to the committee on economic crimes headed by Hon. Kayode Oladele.
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