By AbdulGafar Alabelewe, Kaduna/ THE NATION

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has confirmed abduction of members of Anglican Church in Kaduna State.

The abductors, according to CAN, have already contacted the Church to demand N100 million ransom.

The Nation had reported female members of the Church were among 25 persons abducted during blockade of Kaduna-Kachia road in the early hours of Tuesday.

Confirming abduction of the Anglican Church members, Kaduna CAN chairman, Rev. Joseph Hayab, clarified that, of the 15 members of the Church on the journey, only four were whisked away by the kidnappers.

The CAN Chairman said other occupants of the bus fled into the bush during the attack and some of them sustained gun injuries in the process.

According to him: “My conversation with the Anglican church is they were 15 members in the bus but the others ran into the bush and others were shot and sustained injuries but the bandits took four persons; one old woman and three young ladies.

“They took a lot of people, they even contacted them (the Church) already asking for N100 million. That is what they said.

“It is a very sad thing nine people were killed and we are not sure of the number of persons kidnapped; that 28 that some people are quoting is an estimated number,” he said.

By Yusuf Alli, Abuja/ THE NATION

More than 130 choice assets have been bought with looted funds in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), by some ex-governors, ministers and senators.

These assets are among the over 800 traceable to Nigerians in the UAE, including top security and military officers.

Four areas have been identified through which the nation’s resources are looted.

These are Bribery and corruption, proceeds from commercial tax evasions, illicit activities engaged in by corporations and business ventures and proceeds derived from criminal activities.

The Nigeria’s oil and gas sector his belived to have contributed 92.9 per cent of the total amount in Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) .

But the chances of Nigeria recovering most of its looted cash are very low because of conditions attached to the release of such funds.

These highlights are part of a report on the “UAE component of the three country (Nigeria, UAE and the UK) comparative study of fixing Illicit Financial Flows,” which was submitted to the Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa last Wednesday in Abuja.

The report, which was commissioned by an anti-corruption group, Human and Environmental Development Agenda,(HEDA), but researched and compiled by Prof. Gbenga Oduntan of Kent University.

Although the report did not reveal the identity of the Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) with the assets in Dubai, Chairman of HEDA, Olanrewaju Suraj, who spoke with The Nation on the telephone last night, said: “We have left it to, EFCC to unravel them. It is so sad that our funds are being looted and stashed abroad. We are not even talking of assets in the UAE identified with some military officers.”

The report, which was obtained by our correspondent, claimed that Nigerian Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and other corrupt public officers taken advantage of UAE’s soft system to launder funds.

The report said: “The sheer recklessness of a system which allows Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) including 34 Nigerian ex-governors to own 71 properties, seven senators to own 33 properties, and thirteen Federal ministers to buy and own 26 properties is apparent. In the circumstances this is a case of res ipsaloquitor- the facts speak for itself.

“A 2012 report stated that Nigerians had invested up to $6 billion in real estate in Dubai over three years, including whole floors of apartment blocks.61 As bad as things are with respect to dirty money being funnelled into properties in the UK particularly in London, Dubai is qualitatively worse.”

The report attributed the rush to stash funds in the UAE by top Nigerians to the weak financial system and its openness to investors.

The report said: “The finding reached is that the shortcomings in the practices of financial and professional bodies of the UAE are deep, substantive and troubling.

“Corrupt Nigerian elite have managed to evade detection and massively invested into the UAE property market particularly in Dubai. As argued by Barnaby Pace, “We know that the criminal and corrupt set up bolt-holes around the world in which to stash their dirty cash, with Dubai being a favoured spot for many….”

“Dubai is also a preferred destination for trade-based money laundering (TBML –IFF) and political corruption money laundering from Nigeria, precisely because the city is seen as a soft touch for PEPs and their associates.

“There is deliberate orchestration to make Dubai an Eldorado for property investors looking for a place to store wealth considering that construction and real estate sectors in the UAE contributed 20% to GDP as of 2016.”

The report quoted a study as saying “There are not the same checks on the sources of money coming into Dubai as there are in London and elsewhere”

“The lack of qualitative and mandatory beneficial ownership reporting system exacerbates the UAE’s significant shortcomings in relation to the interaction between luxury property market and “Dubai and other Emirates in the UAE operate a more laissez faire philosophy and the UAE generally has shaped itself into a vast bohemian desert investment space.

“Bribery, corruption, illegal resource exploitation, and tax evasion are the main channels of IFFs especially in relation to Nigeria- UK relationship in the country’s extractive industries. Much more damage is done to Nigeria’s financial interest by other countries as well.

“Indeed Nigeria’s oil and gas sector contributes 92.9 per cent of the total amount of IFFs the country records yearly through companies and persons operating in the highly porous yet important sector.

“In stolen crude oil deals alone Nigeria suffered more than $12 billion in losses to the US between 2011 and 2014. Another $3 billion was lost to China and $839.5 million to Norway in the same period.

“The damage done from within by bureaucratic mischief is very significant as well. Unfortunately, there is also under-reporting of production volumes and oil lifting by the NNPC and Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).

“For instance, it has for long been known that the effective lobbying by oil companies is a large aspect of the stalled progress of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) for nearly 20 years now because “the oil majors have been particularly vocal on potentially losing tax exemptions as a result of this law”.

The report made some recommendations including a generation of PEPs annually by the Federal Government with their data shared with some international agencies and development partners.

On February 5, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released a circular addressed to banks and other financial institutions with the directive that transactions in cryptocurrencies and facilitating payment for cryptocurrency exchanges were prohibited.

The CBN further instructed all banks and other financial institutions to identify individuals or entities that transact in cryptocurrency or operate cryptocurrency exchanges and close their accounts.

That CBN letter elicited varied reactions from the Nigerian public with many expressing concern about the potential negative effect it could have on the country’s growing cryptocurrency market and innovation in financial technology.

Some stakeholders supported the ban while others questioned the goals of the policy, which they saw as stifling the livelihood of young Nigerians using cryptocurrencies to escape poverty and unemployment.

The memo, however, created interest in some Nigerians who were hitherto unaware of the existence or workings of cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency is described as a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange where individual coin ownership records are stored in a ledger existing in a form of computerised database.

It usually does not exist in physical form like paper money and is not issued by a central monetary authority. It uses decentralised control as opposed to centralised digital and central banking systems.

The first decentralised cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in 2009 by presumably pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. In April 2011, Namecoin was created and in October 2011, Litecoin was released.

The most popular cryptocurrency transacted in Nigeria is Bitcoin, but others like Dogcoin and Ethereum are also dominant while more cryptocurrencies continue to be created from time to time.

Many youths in Nigeria have found transactions in cryptocurrencies profitable and rewarding, thus increasing its popularity.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are unregulated in many countries and their legal status is unclear. This implies that financial safety is really not guaranteed.

Converting local currencies to and from bitcoin, for instance, relies on informal brokers. Prices are usually volatile, and buying and selling are a complex processes that demand technical knowledge.

In 2017, the CBN had earlier warned that cryptocurrencies were not legal tender, and that investors were unprotected.

Findings reveal that Nigeria has accounted for crypto transaction worth N566 million dollars in the last five years.

According to the estimates, out of the top 10 countries for trading volumes Nigeria ranked third after USA and Russia in 2020, generating more than 400 million dollars worth of transactions.

Some stakeholders have urged the apex bank to revisit the ban on cryptocurrency transactions and see digital currencies as another tool for economic growth.

The Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) advised the CBN to carry out a comprehensive study on the workings of cryptocurrencies to check its excesses.

According to Laoye Jaiyeola, Chief Executive Officer of the NESG, though checking excesses in its transaction was a challenge that people were grappling with across the world, cryptocurrency has come to stay.

“Cryptocurrency transaction is a challenge that people grapple with all over the world. While we institute the ban, we should undertake a comprehensive study to understand how it works.

“We have been told that they can easily be deployed to fund criminal activities, but it has come to stay, and if we are going to allow it in future, we should start learning about it now,” he advised.

In July 2020, popular Nigerian social media celebrities, Ramon Abbas (Hushppuppi) and Olalekan Ponle (Woodberry) were arrested in Dubai by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on charges of fraud and money laundering.

According to an affidavit by the FBI, criminal proceeds from both Woodberry and Hushpuppi were converted into bitcoin, and will most likely be untraceable.

This further emphasised how convenient it could be for criminals to hide their financial crimes using cryptocurremncies.

All around the world, the decentralised nature of cryptocurrency that has made it an attraction for some investors has also made it a nightmare for regulators.

CBN, in justifying the ban, explained that cryptocurrencies transaction was devoid of proper regulation and prone to financial crimes.

Osita Nwanisobi, CBN Acting Director of Communications said that the directive was only a reminder of an earlier directive in 2017 banning cryptocurrency transactions.

He said that the anonymous nature of cryptocurrency, which made it prone to financial crimes, justified the ban.

“It is important to state that cryptocurrencies are digital or virtual currencies issued by largely anonymous entities and secured by cryptography.

“Cryptography is a method of encrypting and hiding codes that prevent oversight, accountability and regulation,” he said.

He clarified that the directive on cryptocurrency was not unique to Nigeria as countries like China, Canada, Taiwan, Indonesia, Egypt, Morocco, among others have instituted similar restrictions on its transactions.

He said that such currencies remained illegal in Nigeria because they were issued by entities that were neither licensed nor legal.

Sen. Tokunbo Abiru, representing Lagos East Senatorial District, support the ban in transaction of the Cryptocurrency in the country.

He, however, suggested that major stakeholders on cryptocurrency transaction be invited to a public hearing to appraise its advantages and its excesses.

At a joint session of relevant Senate committees on Feb. 23, Mr Godwin Emefiele, the CBN Governor further explained reasons for restricting financial institutions from engaging in crypto transactions.

Emefiele gave the assurance that the directive was not inimical to the development of technology-driven payment system in Nigeria.

He said that the Nigerian payment system had evolved significantly over the past decade, boosted by reforms driven by the CBN.

“Cryptocurrency has no place in our monetary system at this time, and cryptocurrency transactions should not be carried out through the Nigerian banking system,’’ he said.

However, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, speaking at a recent CBN Bankers Committee Economic Summit, called for the regulation of cryptocurrency transactions in Nigeria rather than an outright ban.

Osinbajo urged the apex bank to develop a robust regulatory system to check such transactions.

“Rather than adopt a policy that prohibits cryptocurrency operations in the Nigerian banking sector, we must act with knowledge and not fear and develop a robust regulatory regime that is thoughtful and knowledge-based.

“There is no question that blockchain technology generally and cryptocurrencies, in particular, will in the coming years challenge traditional banking, including Central banking, in ways that we cannot yet imagine.

“We need to be prepared for that seismic shift. And it may come sooner than later,” he said.

Meanwhile, speaking at the 30th seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editors in Abuja recently, CBN Deputy Governor, Adamu Lamtek, said the bank did not ban cryptocurrency activity in the country.

Lamtek said that CBN only prohibited transactions on cryptocurrencies in the Nigerian banking sector.

He said: “the CBN did not place restrictions from use of cryptocurrencies, and we are not discouraging people from trading in them. What we have done was to prohibit transactions on cryptocurrencies in the banking sector.”

The inauguration will mark the first-ever transition between elected presidents in Niger’s six decades of independence from France — a historic moment that has been widely praised.

But the Sahel country’s instability and insecurity have been deeply underscored in the runup to Friday’s ceremony.

In the early hours of Wednesday, after gunfire broke out near the presidency in the capital Niamey, the government announced an “attempted coup” had been thwarted — a “cowardly and regressive act which sought to threaten democracy and the state of law”.

The alleged coup leader is an air force officer in charge of security at Niamey’s air base and is being “actively sought”, a source within Niger’s security services told AFP on Wednesday.

Another security source said “a few members of the army” had been behind the coup but had been prevented from approaching the presidential palace by the elite Presidential Guard.

“Some arrests” were made, the source said.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was among worried foreign leaders, calling the armed forces “to strictly abide by their constitutional obligations”.

World’s poorest country
Bazoum, 60, is a former interior minister and right-hand man of outgoing president Mahamadou Issoufou, 68, who has voluntarily stepped down after two five-year terms.

Bazoum won a runoff vote for the presidency in February with 55.6 percent of the ballot, according to official results contested by his opponent, Mahamane Ousmane.

But his most formidable rival, former premier Hama Amadou, was banned from running because of a conviction for baby trafficking — a charge he has branded politically motivated.

Niger is the poorest country in the world, according to the benchmark of the UN’s 189-nation Human Development Index (HDI).

The West African nation has suffered four coups in its history, most recently a February 2010 putsch that toppled then-president Mamadou Tandja.

It has also been ravaged by repeated jihadist attacks, from insurgents who have advanced from Mali in the west and Nigeria in the southeast.

More than 300 people have been killed in three attacks in the west since the start of the year.