Abstract
Pervasive corruption is a global phenomenon which remains a major obstacle to development in various climes. The United Nations agenda 2030 recognizes the need to solve the problem of corruption as key to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In response to this problem, the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) was adopted in 2005 as an international instrument targeted at facilitating Mutual Legal Assistance in combating corruption, by aiding recovery of looted funds, seizure, confiscation and repatriation of stolen assets abroad. Nigeria has a history of leadership deficit and institutional failure accounting for numerous cases of corruption and siphoning of funds by the political class. To aid recovery of looted funds, Nigeria signed and ratified UNCAC, and signed into law the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act in 2019. Against this backdrop, this study will analyse the provisions of UNCAC in comparison to the provisions of the Nigerian MLA Act. The aims are to ascertain limitations in the UNCAC provisions which might prevent realization of its set objectives, determine the extent to which the Nigerian MLA Act incorporates the underlining principles of UNCAC and to identify the effectiveness of both laws in addressing the various challenges of recovering stolen assets and funds prior to their advent. The study was based on comparative case study and inductive method. It was found that UNCAC has several limitations which the Nigerian MLA Act failed to remedy. It was also found that the Nigerian MLA Act has a relatively narrow scope. It limits the scope of MLA crime generally without paying particular attention to corruption. Lastly, the Act failed to capture country specific challenges such as lack of political will and poor inter-agency coordination undermining domestic anticorruption efforts which might spread to the international level. The study therefore concludes that there is need for a review of the Nigerian MLA Act to affect obvious and necessary improvements that will mitigate the current challenges bedeviling it from producing the desired outcome in Nigeria.
Highlights
Contrary to the former prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK), David Cameron’s assertion in 2016 that Nigeria and some other developing nations are “fantastically corrupt” (Nwabughiogu, 2016), the global community is fantastically corrupt
Corruption is a major clog in the wheel of the global sustainable development goals of the UN because it channels cross border illicit flow of public assets and income from the treasury of developing nations where it is most needed to developed nations
Corrupt leaders from various parts of the world siphon funds and assets of staggering magnitude from their countries and this produces collateral damage economy, development driving poverty, unemployment and infrastructure decay which spans across generations. Efforts to recover these stolen assets and fund were often met by stiff challenges principal among which are legal and institutional. This necessitated a paradigm shift from the traditional anti-corruption efforts which focus on weak governance and other issues at the domestic level to adoption of legal framework which will aid Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) for cross border investigation, freezing and recovery of stolen assets and funds
Summary
Contrary to the former prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK), David Cameron’s assertion in 2016 that Nigeria and some other developing nations are “fantastically corrupt” (Nwabughiogu, 2016), the global community is fantastically corrupt. It took twelve years for Nigeria to have access to the money looted and deposited into n\an escrow account in the Philippine National bank and another six years before it became accessible in the national treasury It is against this backdrop that the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) assumed the force of law in 2005. Among the fundamental objectives of UNCAC is to drive inter-state cooperation and provision of Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) to facilitate tracing, freezing and recovery of looted assets and proceeds of corruption (Brunelle-Quraishi, 2011). The study will examine the challenges undermining MLA for recovery of looted assets at the international arena, alongside the limitations of anti-corruption efforts in Nigeria. The study will identify the potential challenges which the nation is likely to face in the implementation of the Act and suggest possible remedies
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