Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption highlights Successes Recorded

Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption in Nigeria, Professor Itse Sagay, says working with anti-graft agencies to recover stolen wealth has been a success.

Professor Sagay says the success comes from going after the loot rather than the accused person.

“That is how we recovered hundreds of billions of naira worth of forfeited assets. The EFCC and ICPC in most cases now go against the property rather than the man,” says Professor Sagay.

Nigerian laws allow anti-corruption agencies such as EFCC and ICPC to trace and confiscate ill-gotten assets.

Professor Sagay says anti-corruption agencies have applied judicious use of the law to recover assets bought with stolen wealth.

“In most cases, once you seize their property, there’s an interim forfeiture order. In other words, it’s forfeited pending the person who claims to own it coming to explain how he got it. In most cases, they don’t come out. 

“They allow the time to elapse and the assets are permanently forfeited. I can say in 90% of the cases, they hardly come out, because they know they cannot establish how they got the property.”

The Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC was established in August 2015. It had the mandate of advising the present administration on how to prosecute the war against corruption.

Greatest Achievement

According to Professor Sagay, the Committee’s greatest achievement has been building the capacity of the anti-corruption agencies to do their jobs.

“We brought in United Nation specialists on loot recovery. We held various dialogues and conferences on how to recover loot from persons without sending them to prison. 

“We just separate them. We leave the criminal and go after the loot. About 1 trillion naira worth of loot has been recovered using that method,” he added.

Confidence Okwuchi