By Alltimepost.com
Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) has tasked stakeholders at the up-coming Regional Security Summit in Abuja to strengthen financial systems in the West African Sub-region so as to prevent terrorists from exploiting the weak anti-money laundering machineries in the region.
The regional summit to be hosted by President Mohammadu Buhari on Saturday May 14, 2016 is second in two years, following the one hosted by French President Francois Hollande in France on May 17, 2014.
The summit is in furtherance of the ongoing efforts by President Buhari’s administration towards enhancing the security of lives, properties and investments in Nigeria and neighboring countries.
ANEEJ Executive Director, Rev. David Ugolor, on Wednesday urged stakeholders at the summit to take concrete steps to sanitize financial institutions and systems in sub-Sahara Africa to rid it of dirty money which fuels insurgency.
He noted that most Sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, and Benin Republic have high rates of actual and perceived indexes of corruption which cripple governance systems, a lack of resources to control their financial systems and a dearth of public financial transparency.
This, according to him, terrorists latch on, to form coalitions and exploit these weak institutions to perpetrate violence which ultimately corrodes human rights, leads to further impoverishment of the region and entrenchment of corruption.
“The Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index report 2015 has shown that most of the West Africa Countries performed poorly in all the indicators which clearly confirm that there is urgent need for a global action to strengthen the Anti-Money Laundering regimes in the West Africa,” Ugolor noted.
He said that Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Lebanon, ISIL, and other terrorist groups are able to use the weak financial systems in Sub-Saharan Africa to move resources around easily to commit acts of terror.
“From 2014 when the terror group Boko Haram gained a foothold in North-East Nigeria, it captured territories in Nigeria and extended a lot of its terror network around the region into Cameroon, Mali and Niger Republic. Subsequently, it declared allegiance to ISIL, and has continued to receive logistics and financial support from the major terror networks around the world.”
ANEEJ, Ugolor continued, is convinced that a much more rigorous monitoring of financial institutions and laws regulating financial flows can cripple the ease with which terror organizations, drug cartels and grand corruption is being perpetrated in Europe and Africa.
“The failures of former security summits notwithstanding, we believe that African states must jettison their monetary and colonial differences, and work to ensure that banks within the region must develop and share common data gathering strategies akin to the Consumer Due Diligence, CDD, policy which helps to check money laundering and terrorist financing,” he posited.
This kind of collaborative effort, according to him will help to dismantle the terror networks in the Sub-region and strengthen the capacity of governments to deal with terrorists and drug cartels.
Apart from President Francois Hollande and President Paul Biya of Cameroon, others leaders scheduled to arrive Abuja on Friday for the summit include the Presidents of Niger Republic, Chad and Benin Republic.
Also, representatives of the United States, Britain, Equatorial Guinea, the European Union, ECOWAS, the Economic Community of Central African States and the Gulf of Guinea Commission are expected at the summit.
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