THE senator representing Abia North in the National Assembly, Orji Uzor Kalu, recently made a proposal that deserves serious consideration, even if its implementation must be carefully situated within Nigeria’s existing laws. Speaking on News Central TV’s 60 Minutes With Mr Kay, the senator urged President Bola Tinubu to give Nigerians who had looted public funds since independence a two-year window to return the money in exchange for pardon. According to him, substantial amounts of money are being kept outside the banking system and could, if recovered, be put to productive use in the economy.
Kalu said: ‘I would like President Tinubu to give a window of two years and say, no matter from 1960, no matter where you keep the money, return it to Nigeria, nobody will touch you. You are pardoned.’ His essential argument is that recovering stolen public wealth may sometimes be more beneficial to the country than spending years pursuing offenders through a notoriously slow judicial process. There is some practical sense in that argument. Nigeria has lost enormous amounts of public money to corruption over the decades, while the recovery of stolen assets has often been difficult, expensive and painfully protracted. However, the senator’s proposal raises important questions. Are there actually former or serving public officials who possess stolen wealth and are now willing to return it? Kalu’s intervention would be considerably more useful if it is informed by knowledge that some people are prepared to make restitution but fear prosecution once they disclose themselves and their assets.
As a former governor and highly placed political figure who has operated within Nigeria’s political establishment for decades, the senator may know considerably more than the ordinary Nigerian about the disposition of former public office holders. His proposal presumably did not come out of the blues. If he knows of people who genuinely want to return stolen public wealth, he should encourage them to come forward.Nigeria should certainly not discourage anyone from returning stolen money. If an elderly former official who stole public funds decades ago is troubled by his conscience and wishes to make restitution before his death, the state should facilitate the recovery. The same should apply to anyone else who voluntarily decides that public wealth illegally acquired ought to be returned. Society is not governed by criminal law alone. Conscience, remorse, morality and restitution also have important places in maintaining the ethical foundations of society. If guilty consciences can return billions of naira to the Nigerian treasury, the country should welcome the money.
But pardon should not necessarily follow automatically. Nigeria already has a legal mechanism through which restitution, cooperation and remorse can be recognised: plea bargaining. Section 270 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act provides for plea agreements between prosecutors and defendants and expressly allows factors including restitution, cooperation, remorse, the public interest, the likelihood of conviction, and the expense and delay of prosecution to be considered. In other words, Nigerian law already provides considerable room for someone who has taken public money to admit wrongdoing, return proceeds and seek a negotiated resolution of the criminal case. This is preferable to establishing a general principle that anyone who returns stolen money must automatically escape legal consequences. Returning stolen property is, fundamentally, restitution; it is not, by itself, punishment. Public officials hold public resources in trust. Someone who appropriates billions of naira belonging to Nigerians and returns the money years later has done something desirable by making restitution, but has not thereby erased the original abuse of public trust. The courts should therefore retain a role in determining what consequences, if any, should accompany the restitution, taking account of the circumstances of each case.
There is nevertheless a larger problem that Kalu’s proposal inadvertently exposes. What incentive does a Nigerian looter presently have to surrender his loot voluntarily? An effective anti-corruption system should create such a credible prospect of detection, prosecution, asset forfeiture and punishment that an offender may conclude that voluntary disclosure, restitution and cooperation offer a better outcome than continuing to conceal stolen wealth. Unfortunately, Nigeria’s anti-corruption system does not consistently inspire that kind of fear or exhaustion. Cases can remain in court for years, sometimes decades, while defendants deploy every legal avenue available to them. The possibility that an accused person may eventually escape punishment because of procedural or technical issues further weakens deterrence.
This is why Kalu’s proposal should not simply be ridiculed or dismissed. Its useful component can be accommodated within the existing legal framework. The Federal Government, through the appropriate anti-corruption and prosecutorial agencies, can establish a transparent policy encouraging voluntary disclosure and restitution, while making clear that each case will be handled according to law. Those who voluntarily disclose stolen assets, return them substantially or completely, cooperate with investigators and demonstrate genuine remorse can receive the benefits permissible under plea-bargain arrangements. The courts can then determine the appropriate legal consequences.Such an arrangement would have advantages. It could shorten investigations and trials, reduce prosecution costs, improve asset recovery, and return badly needed capital to public use. It could also help investigators uncover networks through which public funds were stolen, transferred, concealed or invested.
But the process must be transparent and governed by clear rules. It must not become another avenue through which politically connected offenders negotiate privileged immunity while less influential Nigerians face the full weight of the criminal law. Kalu’s intervention ultimately presents Nigeria with an opportunity. If he knows individuals who are willing to return stolen public wealth, he should encourage them to do so. The government should equally make it clear that voluntary restitution will be recognised and appropriately rewarded within the law. But Nigeria does not need to choose between recovering its money and upholding justice. It can do both.
The world over, governments at specific periods have used certain forms of amnesty or negotiated settlement to recover hidden or stolen money. In 2003, the government of South Africa unveiled a tax and asset-repatriation amnesty allowing people to disclose previously undeclared foreign assets, in exchange for reduced levies and protection from prosecution. In 2011, Kenya introduced a measure that allowed people who disclosed and surrendered illegally acquired assets to obtain protection from specified proceedings. While not exactly like the Kenya case, the governments of Argentina, Indonesia and Italy are on record as deploying broader tax/asset amnesties that offered reduced liabilities or legal protections in return for declaring previously hidden wealth and, in some cases, repatriating it.
We therefore welcome any genuine effort capable of bringing stolen public wealth back to the Nigerian people, but such recovery should proceed through a credible legal framework. Let those troubled by their consciences return what belongs to the public. Let prosecutors recognise their cooperation and remorse. And let the courts, rather than a blanket amnesty, determine their fate. The objective should be simple: recover the loot, encourage restitution, and save the country needless years of litigation where possible, but preserve the principle that public office is a trust and that its violation cannot simply be wished away.