PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari may not involve the nation’s anti-graft agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission in his government’s efforts at recovering looted funds, The PUNCH has learnt.

Our correspondents learnt on Monday that the President did not have confidence in the anti-graft agencies.

A top government official, who is familiar with the Buhari’s government’s efforts at recovering looted funds, told The PUNCH in confidence that President might rely more on people outside the system to achieve good results.

The official said, “The President’s body language as far as the anti-corruption agencies are concerned suggests that he does not have so much confidence in them.

“Most of the recovery job may be done by people outside the system, like consultants.”

He added that Buhari’s reliance on outsiders had started yielding positive results and that the President was currently in possession of incriminating information about individuals and institutions suspected to be culpable in looting the nation’s treasury.

He added that the information was not made available to Buhari by the anti-graft agencies but by concerned individuals and groups.

“I can confirm to you that the President has received plenty information that is useful for the recovery process. Anti-graft agencies are not the sources of the information. He got the information from different sources, including anonymous and known sources,” he said.

When contacted, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said Buhari was committed to the recovery and repatriation of all stolen funds from any part of the world.

The President had on June 23 said his administration had received firm assurances of cooperation from the United States and other countries in his quest to recover and repatriate funds stolen from Nigeria.

He said it was up to Nigeria to provide the international community with the facts and figures needed to drive the recovery effort, saying that he would be busy in the next three months, getting the facts that would help in recovering the stolen funds.

“In the next three months, our administration will be busy getting those facts and the figures to help us recover our stolen funds in foreign countries,’’ he had said while granting audience to members of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

It was learnt on Monday that the President had not given any directive on the recovery of stolen funds to any of the nation’s anti-graft agencies.

Investigations revealed that the leadership of the EFCC and the ICPC were unsure of the level of their expected involvement in the task of recovering the looted funds under Buhari.

Some very senior officers of the anti-graft agencies told one of our correspondents in confidence that they had not been involved in any looted funds recovery effort under Buhari’s administration because the President had not indicated what he expected from them in the exercise.

An officer in a strategic position in one of the agencies simply said he had no knowledge of whether the President had issued a directive or not.

It was gathered that the President had been engrossed in discrete moves to recover billions of Naira believed to have been stolen by officials of previous governments.

Buhari was said to have reached out to his counterparts in several countries to seek assistance on how the stolen funds could be repatriated.

It was further gathered that some of the leaders contacted had indicated readiness to assist the President on the issue of assets recovery.

The government source said that some of the politicians who got wind of the move by the President had become jittery and had commenced moves to return some of the funds in a bid to avoid being humiliated.

However, the source could not give the exact amount of money believed to have been recovered so far in the course of the efforts by Buhari to recover stolen Nigerian assets.

The source said, “Let me make it clear that no anti-graft agency is involved in the ongoing efforts to recover stolen funds.

“The fact is that nobody is sure of what the President wants to do or which security agency he intends to rely on in the bid to recover some of these funds.

“What we know is that he reached out to some foreign countries where some of these former government officials have gone to hide the funds and these countries are cooperating with him. They have promised to assist him to recover them.

“Some of those involved who got wind of the President’s move have started returning some of the stolen money.”

Most of the missing funds in Nigeria are believed to have been lodged in secret bank accounts in the U.S., UK, Switzerland and other European countries.

The President had indicated his resolve to trace and recover all such stolen funds on his resumption at the Presidential Villa on June 27, 2015.

The President, who raised the alarm that he met an empty treasury, said that billions of dollars stashed away in foreign accounts could be recovered in the next three months.

Adesina had told Saturday PUNCH that the Federal Government had the intention of engaging foreign private investigators to assist the country in tracing the looted funds.

The President, who raised the alarm that he met an empty treasury, said that billions of dollars stashed away in foreign accounts could be recovered in the next three months.

He added that Buhari’s reliance on outsiders had started yielding positive results and that the
President was currently in possession of
incriminating information about individuals and
institutions suspected to be culpable in looting
the nation’s treasury.
He added that the information was not made available to Buhari by the anti-graft agencies but by concerned individuals and groups.

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