The Federal Government, yesterday, reeled out the achievements it recorded in the justice sector of the economy, with a confirmation that it recovered N59.9 billion and another $666,676 within its first two years in office.
Within the period under review, the Muhammadu Buhari administration sealed memoranda of understanding, MoUs, with no fewer than six countries to enable it to track and recover funds looted from the country. The countries are United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Italy. The government said it was vigorously pursuing the recovery of looted funds from the United States of America, Ireland, Island of Jersey and France. This information is contained in a document released last night by the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Ministry of Justice, showcasing the feat recorded by the Buhari administration since inception in 2015.
The 19-page document showed that of the recovered amount, N90 million was voluntarily returned by looters, N50 billion paid as fine by MTN, while N7 billion, $10 million were recovered from private residences in the country. The same report indicated that $250 million was seized from oil bunkering entities through interim forfeiture, $270 million from commercial banks, while $136.6 was awaiting actual remittance to the government. “Within the same period, the Ministry of Justice was able to conclude 125 court cases of which 17 are appellate matters, 24 through out-of-court settlements (ADR) while others are still pending in various courts. “Most of the concluded matters are decided in favour of the Federal Government and the ministry was able to save about N38,088,836,935.50 in claims against the government,” the office of the AGF said.
The Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, which also supervises National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, revealed that the agency made tremendous success in its effort to control the spread and consumption of illicit drugs in the country with many arrests, seizures and destruction of banned substances. According to the document, a total of 1,153,956.31 kilogrammes of hard drugs were seized within the last two years, while no fewer than 17,000 drug suspects were arrested within the same period. In the same vein, NDLEA prosecuted a total of 9,890 suspects and successfully convicted a total of 4,984 and destroyed a total of 109,590 hectares of drug farms in the country.
