Following reactions from the Nigerian Governors Forum on the ban on cash withdrawals by the federal, state and local governments and their agencies, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) has said the agency acted within the law and its function.
Chief media analyst of the NFIU, Ahmed Dikko, said in a statement that the director, Modibbo Hamman Tukur, said they were ready to partner the Governors’ Forum committee in order to enlighten them.
“First of all, we are ready to partner the six-man committee they set up. We will enlighten them. Secondly, we acted within our functions and the law. We issued the guidelines to control the barrage of investigations that we saw coming. Our guidelines were meant to help the governors, not to fight them or any public servant.
“We reached a stage that if we allowed the present scenario to continue, all public institutions will drift into structured cash withdrawals of certain amounts of money which by law, standards and best practices must be investigated continuously which is neither desirable nor reasonable.
“We feel communities must move on by accommodating changes and adjusting to new developments. Last time we issued the local government guidelines, we were taken to court but we won the case.
“But more importantly we need to understand that in the recent past United States FIU and United Kingdom FIU penalised Nigerian banks with fines of millions of US dollars due to non- compliance. Internally, non-compliance with sections cited in the recent guidelines comes with heavy penalties on financial institutions. We did, on gentlemanly pretext, avoid until this moment putting a fine to financial institutions expecting, gradual learning and adjustments.
“But to eternally guarantee this kind gesture is to automatically keep abusing our laws,” he said.
The NFIU director further said, “We want every stake holder to appreciate that we cooperated for too far and long. We held deep breath while defending these deficiencies internationally, just to continue to remain in the international pay points and competing with others.
“Finally, we also clearly stated in the preceding advisory, that the entire financial system suffered excess liquidity and liquidity ratio infringements which put hedging pressure of demand for foreign currency and gradually destroying the value of the Naira and above all creating wide room for money laundering and terrorism affecting significantly the rural populace on top of general inflation in the open market place.
“We are in support of working together to stop these challenges and in most progressive manner.”
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