Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami has said that Nigeria has demonstrated the workability of application of returned looted assets for sustainable development.
Malami disclosed this in his remarks at a High-Level side event on ”Food Security Response: Combating Illicit Financial Flows and Securing Asset Returns for Sustainable Development’‘, on the margins of the 77th Session of the UN General Assembly.
The event was co-hosted by African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Malami said in 2017, the 322 million dollars recovered looted assets from Swissland laid the solid foundation of getting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.
He said it got millions out of poverty through the Social Investment Programmes that include National Homegrown School Feeding Programme, Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, N-Power job creation and youth empowerment programme and National Social Safety Net programme, amongst others.
Malami said that Food Security Response was placed on top of Africa’s 2022 agenda to align with the Global Sustainable Development Goal “to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” by 2030.
He noted that crisis experienced in the globe as well as onslaughts of terrorism and criminality continued to exacerbate challenges to world peace posed by starvation, malnutrition, diseases, climate change which he said continue to contribute to a worsening global economy.
“Indeed, these challenges are truly interlocking and have put our collective ability to devise innovative solutions to the test”.
