The Federal Government on Tuesday disclosed that it would take all legal and diplomatic steps to remove Nigeria from the grey list of the global Financial Action Task Force (FATF) before the May 2025 deadline.
The Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu and former speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, gave this assurance during a fact-finding visit to the office of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) in Abuja.
The grey list, also known as the ‘Jurisdiction under Increased Monitoring List’, comprised countries identified by the FATF as having a high risk of money laundering and terrorism financing.
While promising that the Federal Government would frontally address the deficiencies in the political economy that led to the listing of Nigeria in the FATF grey list, Gbajabiamila assured the Director and Chief Executive Officer of the NFIU, Hafsat Bakare, of the readiness of the government to meet the implementation deadline of the FATF Action Plan.
The President’s Chief of Staff noted the progress made so far by the NFIU with the implementation of 30% of the Action Plan targeted at addressing the identified deficiencies of Nigeria, stressed the need to fast-track the implementation process in order to meet the May 2025 deadline.
He said: “I am a firm believer that no matter how much you achieve, one thing can destroy everything you have achieved. One rotten egg can spoil the whole basket.
“We have nine months left to exit the Grey List, and even being on that list is bad enough. That is not what we want for our country, Therefore, we will do everything we need to do because May 2025 is around the corner.
“You must furnish us with the information and the boxes that we need to tick. We do not want a fire brigade approach because May is around the corner. This is a high priority”, Gbajabiamila stressed.
He also assured the NFIU’s management of continued collaboration with the Unit by his office to protect Nigeria’s financial system against terrorism financing and by so doing, remove the country from the FATF grey list as planned.
It would be recalled that Nigeria was placed on the FATF Grey List on February 24, 2023 following rising capital inflows into the nation’s economy from suspicious sources and inability of the Nigerian government to frontally tackling the menace of money laundering, terrorism and arms financing.
Nigeria and other countries on the FATF Grey List have committed to addressing issues that made them to be listed on the grey list within some timelines and are usually subjected to intensified monitoring by the FATF, which always update such countries from time to time, based on their performance on their action plans.
