A group, the Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice, has said it will be good if the United States of America and the European Union could emulate the United Kingdom by undertaking to repatriate looted funds stashed in their territories to Nigeria.
ANEEJ expressed this view in a statement by its Executive Director, Rev. David Ugolor.
The UK had recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Nigeria on how to repatriate funds looted from Nigeria.
Ugolor described the step as laudable.
As a complement to the step, however, ANEEJ urged the Federal Government to expedite action on its pledge to join the Open Government Partnership.
The group said the OGP, which would disclose how the Federal Government would spend the repatriated funds, would give the assurance that the funds would not be re-looted.
Ugolor said, “Apart from this MoU and the commitment between the Nigerian and the UK governments, we urge the Federal Government to expedite action on her own commitment to join the Open Government Partnership, a commitment made at the London anti-corruption summit.
“With that commitment, Nigeria has to sign and provide a document outlining how it intends to be open and transparent in government business. If this is done, it immediately sends a strong message to everyone that the returned loot would not be re-looted.”
ANEEJ urged the US government as well as all the European countries to take a cue from the UK by removing any impediments in the way of repatriating looted funds to Nigeria.
It said, “The UK has already established the benchmark that it would post the MoU it had with the Nigerian government on its website; the Swiss government as well is working with the civil society and the Nigerian government to repatriate stolen Nigerian monies; all that the Justice Department of the United States should do now is partner the Swiss and UK governments and the Nigerian government as well, to tackle the legal and bureaucratic blockages involved in the repatriation of stolen monies from developing countries abroad.”
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