The African
Development Bank (AfDB) yesterday said Nigeria has lost about US$83.3 billion to
illicit financial outflow. Its Country Director, Dr. Ousmane Dore who spoke
at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD’s) Multi-Stakeholders meeting
on Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) out of Nigeria, in Abuja, said the loss
accounted for 5.6 per cent of total goods traded without proper invoicing in
the last 51 years starting from 1960 to 2011. The AfDB chief added that the recent Global Financial
Integrity Report also ranked Nigeria seventh among top 10 highest illicit
capital outflows in the developing world and first in Africa.
The Nation report continues:
According to him, Nigeria in many decades
experienced a very serious problem with trade misinvoicing, in the form of
over-invoicing of imports and under-invoicing of exports for the purpose of
shifting money out of the country.
He said: “Between 1960 and 2011, Nigeria
experienced cumulative illicit financial out flows totalling US$83.3 billion or
5.6 per cent of a total goods trade through trade through misinvoicing only.
“Export under-invoicing takes the larger share of
US$44 billion while the balance of 39.3billion was due to import overinvoicing.
“In the literature, exchange controls have been
identified as a basic driver of trade and misinvoicing in developing countries,
especially Nigeria, because they tend to create black markets in foreign
exchange where foreign currencies can be bought and sold at a premium over
official rates.
“For many in Africa, this has been a reality for
decades. Depots, corrupt government officials and corrupt heads of state move
billions of dollars from government coffers into lucrative, opaque bank.
“Others are illegal activities such as bribery,
drug trafficking and similar illegal activities.”
Earlier, CDD Director, Idayat Hassan said the
nation has sufficient resources to meet its developmental needs.
She said the illicit funds could be used to
provide about 870,000 school, 400,000 hospitals among others.
However, she attributed widespread illegal
financial flows to governance challenges in the sense of weak institutions and
inadequate regulatory environment, lack of transparency and accountability.
According to her, the situation, for many years
has strained capacities of the governments in various ways and discourages
wealth creation to implement development policies.
She said if the nation had judiciously used its
resources, Nigeria would have achieved the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
as the country prepares to transit to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“What has become obvious is
that we have to redirect our efforts to fighting IFFS in Nigeria….for every US$1
of foreign borrowing, on the average, more than US$0.50 leaves the borrower
country in the same year,” she added.
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