The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has been mandated by President Bola Tinubu to lead the implementation of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) and Counter-Proliferation Financing (CPF) Data Management Platform project.
The project is aimed at removing Nigeria from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Grey List by 2025. Nigeria was included in the FATF Grey List in February 2023.
NITDA is expected to build better systems to manage financial data and compliance in Nigeria in collaboration with the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU).
Inaugural meeting on implementation
Speaking during the inaugural meeting for the project implementation on Friday, Kashifu Inuwa, Director-General of NITDA, said the project would address deficiencies identified in Nigeria’s Mutual Evaluation Report (MER).
Inuwa explained that FATF placed Nigeria on the grey list because of seven issues, which included the rising capital inflows, shortcomings in combating money laundry, shortcomings and inability to combat arms financing.
“We had shortcomings in combating terrorism financing, anti-money laundering regime, counter-terrorism financing regime, deficiency in our counter-proliferation financing regime.
“The main objective of building a better system is to help us with global compliance; to help Nigeria position itself as a key player in the global effort to combat financial terrorism and other crimes.
“This will help us to create visibility in Nigeria, as well as improve our global reputation and relationship in the financial market,” he said.
Improving national security
He said the project would also improve national security with the capacity to track illicit financial flow, disrupt criminal networks in the financial sector, strengthen law enforcement, and the economy and encourage investment.
- Inuwa emphasised Tinubu’s commitment to combating corruption and financial crime through innovation and technology.
- Rep. Stanley Adedeji, Chairman, of the House of Representatives Committee on ICT and Cyber security, at the meeting, emphasized the value of technology, saying that Nigeria deserved to lead in cutting-edge technologies.
- Adedeji assured that the National Assembly would ensure that projects as such gained the deserved funding.
“We are going to make sure that the right funding is put in place for this project without any doubt.
“We are also going to make sure that if there are any laws today that are going to impede or be a stumbling block to what this project stands to achieve; we have to go and amend those laws.
“If there are things that require executive orders so that we can quickly move forward, we will do whatever needs to be done,” he said.
Stakeholders’ collaboration
Also speaking, Hajiya Hafsat Bakari, Director-General of NFIU, called for more collaboration among stakeholders to sustain the gains of exiting the grey list.
According to Bakari, the grey list is not just a one-off project, but a continuous project.
“The next cycle of evaluation will be done in 2027 and we do not want a situation where after exiting the grey list, we still find ourselves in the next evaluation.
“This is why we have decided that the use of technology will give credibility to every statistics that we have, not just to our domestic stakeholders, but also to our international partners.
“Everything should be done in real-time–accessible, credible and factual; that is the project that we are doing today,” she said.
What you should know
On Feb. 24, 2023, Nigeria was placed on the FATF Grey List. This was due to rising capital inflows and shortcomings in combating money laundering, terrorism and arms financing.
- The FATF is an independent intergovernmental organization that promotes policies to protect the global financial system.
- The FATF places countries on the grey list to warn the financial community that the country is not doing enough to fight financial crime.
- The FATF also wants to encourage countries to improve their anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) regimes.
- Countries on the grey list have committed to fixing any issues within a set timeframe and are subject to increased monitoring by the FATF. The FATF frequently updates the list based on the countries’ performance.
