…US may not handover looted cash – Page

The United States may not hand over looted funds in cash to Nigeria but channel it into development programmes through funding, an International Affairs Fellow under the US Council of Foreign Affairs, Mathew T. Page, said yesterday.
He spoke at a lecture organized by Baze University in Abuja with the theme, “Improving USA Anti-corruption Policy in Nigeria.”
He said: “The desirable thing is to cut out the middle man to succeed. I think that is where things are heading right now. I don’t need to see the US handing some sort of ‘Ghana Must Go’ bags full of stolen loot back to the government.”
Page said there was a sense in Washington that they don’t want to hand the funds directly back to Nigeria.
“Sadly and this is much to the embarrassment of the US, the US has one of the most opaque and secretive corporate structures in the world. The US federation like the Nigerian federation, each of the states has its own set of different laws governing business transparency and incorporation laws,” he said.
In his remarks, the Pro Chancellor of the university, Senator Datti Baba Ahmed, said corruption accounts for why many were in the institution instead of going to public institutions.
He said people find it difficult to go to public institutions because of lack of infrastructure as money meant for it had been stolen by some individuals.
He, however, urged the government to take its anti corruption war to issues of procurement which account for more than 50 per cent of corruption in the country.