The Senate on Wednesday summoned the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to brief it on measures put in place to curb revenue leakages through tax evasion and money laundering activities by international oil companies , proceeds of corruption and other criminal activities involving illicit financial flows.
The lawmakers also mandated its designated Committees to come up with a “holistic legislative framework on how to repatriate lost revenue due to illicit financial flows, mitigate such future unabated flows and provide an efficiency strategy for the reinvestment of repatriated resources into the Nigerian economy.”
Bassey expressed worry at further findings by the Tax Justice Network and the International Monetary Fund which claimed “that developing countries, including Nigeria, have lost over US$200 billion per year to illicit financial flows as multinational corporations neglect, fail and/or refuse to pay taxes in these countries where they generate substantial amounts of profit.”
“IFFs continue to pose serious obstacles to development, as approximately five percent of the IFFs from Africa can be attributed to corruption, while 95 percent of IFFs come commercial and criminal activities. “For example, the net official development aid received by Nigeria in 2017 was US$3,358,790,000. Additionally, the United States Agency for International Development has donated over US$526.7 million in humanitarian assistance to Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin, since 2017. Neither of the above figures match the estimated US$15 and US$18 billion Nigeria loses to IFFs annually”, Bassey added.