Magu, NFIU Director Tackle Senate Over Moves To Create Independent Agency

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Wednesday insisted that the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, NFIU, was independent of its control.

The Acting Chairman of the commission, Ibrahim Magu, said at an interactive session with editors on Wednesday in Abuja, that ongoing efforts to create a “stand-alone’’ NFIU was needless.

It would be recalled that the NFIU, which is domiciled in the EFCC, was recently suspended by the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units reportedly for allegedly not being independent.

Egmont Group is a global financial intelligence gathering body made up of 156 Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) representing 156 countries.

It is a platform for members to share expertise and financial intelligence to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

The group reportedly demanded autonomy for the NFIU as a condition for the suspension to be lifted, failing which Nigeria would be expelled in January, 2018.

Following the suspension, the Senate moved to establish the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Agency through a bill, which passed second reading in July.

Mr. Magu said, “I am not opposed to the autonomy of the NFIU; in fact, the NFIU has always been operationally autonomous.

“I understand the workings of Financial Intelligence Units around the world and they are domiciled in law enforcement agencies based on their credibility.

“This is another way of corruption fighting back; people are fighting and pretending to be in support of what is ongoing, but they are not giving a face to the fight against corruption.’’

Shedding more light on this, the Director of the NFIU, Francis Usani, said the Egmont Group was simply asking for amendment of Section 1(2)(c) of the EFCC Act.

Mr. Usani said the group was not demanding the creation of a separate NFIU as being portrayed in some quarters.

“The section says that the EFCC is a designated FIU, but the group is saying the provision is not clear to them.

“What the group is saying is that we should create the NFIU as a unit under the EFCC by amending that provision of the EFCCT Act. It is as simple as that.

“But it is unfortunate that the perception generally is tending towards abusing what the Egmont Group is asking us to do.

“As the chairman has said, there is a very high level of operational autonomy in the NFIU.

“When we talk about operational autonomy, it is different from administrative autonomy.

“The NFIU has three core responsibilities which are to receive information, analyse the information and disseminate it to law enforcement agencies.”

Mr. Usani said other law enforcement agencies make request for information directly to the NFIU without the knowledge of the EFCC chairman.

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