Daily Watch – Dozens arrested in terrorist finance crackdown, Senate asks governors to implement full judicial autonomy
20th April 2021
The Senate on Monday asked Nigeria’s 36 state governors to save the country’s democracy from collapsing by granting full Independence to the judicial arm of government. The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, stated this while reacting to the protest staged at the National Assembly by the Nigerian Bar Association on the issue. President Muhammadu Buhari had last year signed into law, Executive Order No 10 of 2020 cited as “the implementation of financial autonomy for state legislature and judiciary Order, 2020”. The order granted powers to the Accountant-General of the Federation to deduct from the allocations due to a state from the Federation Account, any sums appropriated for the legislature or judiciary of that state which the state fails to release to its legislature or judiciary as the case may be, and to pay the funds directly to the state’s legislature or judiciary concerned. Speaking with journalists, Bamidele said judicial autonomy was non-negotiable and that state governors should emulate the FG by granting independence to the arm of government. He said, “It is laughable that at this point, we are still grappling with the need to grant independence to the judiciary arm of government at the state level and at the local government levels. The National Assembly has been making laws that would guarantee full autonomy to the judiciary at the federal level. “The National Assembly does not make laws for the states, such power resides in the state Houses of Assembly. What is next is for the state Houses of Assembly to do what they are supposed to do. We cannot continue to call on the judiciary to give peace a chance when we know the conditions under which they work cannot guarantee a passionate and enhanced delivery of justice.”
Lagos has set up an anti-corruption agency to investigate government officials and curb public waste. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu signed a law creating the new body on Monday, several days after Lagos’ state parliament approved the bill, a spokesman said in an emailed statement to journalists. The organisation will be responsible for probing state government employees and contractors “for economic crimes and financial misappropriation” and prosecuting them in court if necessary, he said. Lagos is the largest city in sub-Saharan Africa, hosting headquarters of most large international and domestic businesses present in Africa’s largest economy. The agency will “complement” similar existing departments in the police and federal government, including the country’s main anti-graft body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the statement said.
Dozens of persons have been arrested by security agents in a nationwide crackdown on suspected financiers and collaborators of Boko Haram and other criminal groups in Nigeria, Daily Trust reports. This move comes five months after six Nigerians were imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates over allegations of terrorism financing. The paper said the ongoing inter-agency operation is being led by a top intelligence officer, with an army general leading a task team comprising military personnel and staff from intelligence services. Citing multiple unnamed sources, the Daily Trust said that the closely guarded operation is being coordinated by Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), in collaboration with the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). As part of the operation, billions of naira traced to businesses belonging to persons of interest have been blocked in banks in a series of “post no debit” letters sent out to banks by the CBN and NFIU. The regulator has also obtained court orders directing the freezing of dozens of accounts flagged for suspicious transactions. While officials expressed hope that the ongoing operation would be a “game-changer” in the lingering fight against Boko Haram insurgents and other criminal gangs, some analysts say the method may not provide the needed elixir as terrorists and bandits operate largely outside the financial system.
France was aware that a genocide was being prepared in Rwanda ahead of the 1994 killings and the French government bore significant responsibility for enabling it, the Rwandan government said in a report published on Monday. Between April and July of 1994, some 800,000 people were slaughtered, mainly from the ethnic Tutsi minority but also some Hutus. “The message of the Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister today is a key step in getting our two countries closer,” a French presidential advisor told reporters on Monday in response to the Rwandan report. Ever since the genocide, critics of France’s role have said that then-President Francois Mitterrand failed to prevent the massacres or even supported the Hutu-led government that orchestrated the killings. “The French Government bears significant responsibility for enabling a foreseeable genocide,” the Rwandan government wrote in its report published on its main website. The report was drafted by Robert F. Muse and the Washington, D.C., law firm Levy Firestone Muse LLP, which was hired by Rwanda to investigate France’s role in connection with the genocide. Rwanda’s report comes on the heels of a similar report by the French commission released in March which said France had been blinded by its colonial attitude to Africa to events leading up to the genocide and consequently bore “serious and overwhelming” responsibility. The commission cleared France of complicity in the genocide. The Rwandan report said while in the end the responsibility lay in those who actually carried out the genocide, the French government helped establish the institutions they eventually used to carry out the killings. Early this month, France said it will open the Rwanda archives of former French President Francois Mitterrand, as part of an effort to better understand the European country’s role in the African country during the genocide.