Some Nigerians abroad launder money for corrupt politicians, says US-based activist

A Nigerian civil rights activist based in the United States of America, Mr. Smart Ajaja, yes­terday, revealed how some Ni­gerians abroad serve as conduit pipe through which treasury looters starch their ill-gotten wealth abroad.

He said although some vol­unteers in the diaspora were willing to assist President Mu­hammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to identify and recover some of the looted funds, the government should do a lot more to block move­ment of physical cash out of the country.

Ajaja, while responding to questions from journalists in Abuja on whether there was anything Nigerians living abroad were willing to do in order to assist government’s efforts in recovering the looted funds, stated that except such exit route was blocked, stolen funds would continue to find their ways abroad.

“For the ones that were al­ready returned, it was some of the Nigerians in the diaspora who gave the government the lead to identify those funds but there are still a lot to be done because most of these people who steal money, they have cronies among us in the dias­pora that they use as fronts for money laundering,” he said.

The activist noted that the corrupt persons could not have transferred most of the looted monies abroad without the help of some Nigerian in the dias­pora but observed that the Bank Verification Number (BVN) policy introduced by the Cenral Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to a great extent, assisted in identi­fying the looted funds.

He urged the Federal Gov­ernment to create access to opportunities for the citizens to whip up patriotism and reduce the current incidents of terror­ism in the country.

He said: “If the government can’t monitor the movement of physical cash out of Nige­ria, there is nothing we can do from there because what they do is they have agents they use to transfer these monies out, to put them in banks.

“They have special banks where they put the money but one good thing about the USA which is lacking here is that every human being is a secu­rity agent because they put the country first before any thing

“Here, we are very unwill­ing to give information. One, because of sentiment tied to friendship, bond of brother­hood and association as well as ethnic sentiment but until we abandon that and accept competence as the only tribe in Nigeria, we will not move forward.

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