The federal government has
announced plans to profile non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the
country.
Francis Usani, director of the
Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), said the profiling is to ensure
compliance with regulations against money laundering and terrorist financing.
He was speaking at a regional
workshop on money laundering organised by the Inter-Governmental Action Group
Against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA) on Wednesday, in Abuja.
This comes months after a similar
measure was introduced at the national assembly via the NGO Regulatory
Commission bill.
The bill, which seeks to
supervise, monitor and coordinate the activities of civil society organisations
(CSOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs), was condemned by many
Nigerians, and got zero support at a house of representatives public hearing.
Usani said profiling the NGOs in
the country would address some “deficient” ones among them.
“Recently, the budget office is
doing something to address some deficient NGOs and also engaging the NFIU to
profile some NGOs in the country,” he said.
“This is going to be a continuous
exercise to profile and see the NGOs that are actually committed to their main
cause and those not committed to any cause; these will probably be delisted and
maybe their registrations be removed.
“There has been this
misunderstanding by some NGOs who had come out to oppose the regulations put in
place by the government but these are for international best practices. We
cannot just let NGOs run around the streets of Nigeria unmonitored (sic) or
uncoordinated otherwise this will lead to serious problems.”
He added that the workshop would
make NGOs better acquainted with the anti-money laundering/combating the
financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations.
“It is just very crucial that
NGOs need to be sensitised because most of them do not really understand their
obligations under the AML/ CFT regulations and laws,” Usani said.
“Like obligations to report
transactions to the relevant authorities, to keep record of their transactions,
to conduct due diligence on their sponsors.
“These are necessary because they
could ignorantly receive donor funds from people whose aims are basically to
finance terrorism or maybe cause some kind of mayhem.”
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