The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN has assured all agencies involved in the recovery of the looted funds that the regulations set in place will not take away their statutory powers.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr Malami’s Special Assistant on Media and Public Relations, Dr. Umar Gwandu quoted the AGF as saying while delivering his welcome address at the head of agencies sensitization on the implementation of the 2017 – 2021 National Anti-Corruption Strategy, NACS.

He said the issuance of the Asset Tracing, Recovery and Management Regulations 2019 on 29th October 2019 was aimed at consolidating the efforts, attaining synergy and encouraging record centralization.

“I wish to use this medium to reassure particularly our Law Enforcement Agencies that are directly involved with asset recovery that the essence of the Regulation is in no way intended to take away the statutory powers of any agencies but rather to consolidate these powers by encouraging synergy and also centralized records of proceeds of crime and ensure transparent disposal and management of assets in line with the vision of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR,” he said.

The AGF said the purpose of the meeting was to solicit cooperation and collaboration of the pilot MDAs in the implementation of the NACS.,

Mr Malami added that four cardinal measures were put in place to achieve the implementation objective.

According to him, all the agencies have been put on adequate notice in relation to the Regulations, adding that agencies shall be provided access to input inventories of all the assets recovered and status of these recovered assets.

Mr Malami said agencies shall be provided with a Standard Operating Procedures as a guide for the disposal and management of assets with each agency; and that the disposal process will be joint, transparent and open with collective input aimed at building the established database which will eventually establish institutional memory.

While calling for more political will from heads of agencies involved, the minister stated that the technical team under his supervision has attained milestone achievements.

He said meetings of Heads of Agencies shall be held quarterly with a view to consolidating on the gains and way forward in the fight against corruption.

Mr Malami also reiterated his commitment in the fight against corruption and the implementation of the NACS, while calling on all heads of agencies to add their might to the efforts of their various foot soldiers as encouragement for achieving the goals in the vision of having a Nigeria free of corruption for sustainable human development.