The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama has disclosed that the Federal Government is determined to repatriate public funds stashed in the United Arab Emirates, UAE.
Speaking with journalists in Abuja yesterday, Onyeama said “There are Mutual Legal Assistance Agreements signed by UAE and other countries to facilitate dealing with stolen funds. UAE is one of the areas we are clearly looking at in terms of repatriating Nigeria’s resources, but how much are we looking at? We don’t have any figure in respect of that, but hopefully, it would be significant because we really need it, oil prices being where they are, we really need to get as much of our stolen funds back as possible.”
Noting that the present government has been engaging countries in a bid to repatriate stolen funds, he added that all the countries were willing to assist Nigeria.
Onyeama, while reacting to the frequent foreign trips of President Muhammadu Buhari, said such trips were meant to achieve support and cooperation of other Presidents.
He stated that the President’s visits to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among others, were meant to stabilise the downward slide of oil prices.
The Minister however denied reports that Nigeria has joined the Islamic alliance against terrorism saying he did not sign any agreement relating to such.
“Nigeria is facing an existential threat and there is a need to join a global coalition to combat terrorism, so we support the objectives of the Islamic alliance against terrorism, but this ministry has not signed any agreement to be part of them,” Onyeama averred.
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