The Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions on Friday, 3 December, lamented that efforts to recover the N4.4 trillion owed to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), were being frustrated by prominent Nigerians.
This was disclosed by the committee’s chairman, Senator Uba Sani (APC, Kaduna) at a stakeholders’ meeting “Consolidating the effectiveness of the asset recovery model adopted by AMCON” at Zuma Rock Resort, Niger State, Punch reports.
Sani said; ”The road has not always been smooth for AMCON. For a long time, AMCON has been at the receiving end of well-laid and orchestrated acts of economic sabotage.
“From the N4.4 trillion we are trying to recover, about 350 people in this country are responsible. This is about 83 percent of the debt.
“This is very worrisome. This means that powerful Nigerians are the ones not willing to pay these loans. They have been employing different strategies and tactics to stall the repayment of loans running into trillions of Naira.
“A lot of highly placed Nigerians are not willing to support AMCON because most of those people are the ones that have taken this money from the banks and of course you know the government came in to set up AMCON to keep banks safe from getting down.
“But unfortunately, from what is happening, AMCON is finding it very difficult because those people are highly placed Nigerians, they try to frustrate AMCON’s effort through the judiciary and that is what we are looking.”
He added: “It is taxpayers’ money which the government used to bail out banks, of course, to try to support the financial sector not to go down.
“Unfortunately, they are facing a lot of frustration. We will do our best in the interest of our country and protecting the economy of this country and to support AMCON to succeed.”
Speaking, the Managing Director of AMCON, Alhaji Ahmed Kuru commended President, Muhammadu Buhari for passing the AMCON 2021 Amendment Bill into law.
He said the development would further enhance the corporation’s recovery powers in many aspects.
He added that the corporation has so far recovered over N1.4 trillion from debtors.
He said details of the recovery included cash of N665bn; property forfeiture N278bn; disposed assets N141bn; share forfeiture N139bn and other strategic assets N207bn.
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