NFIU director advocates unity for risk assessment

The Director, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Francis Usani, has charged all regulatory and law enforcement agencies in the country to work together towards achieving the set objective of the National Risks Assessment (NRA) project initiated in 2013.

He also urged them to understand the attendant challenges, while making concerted efforts to surmount them within the 18-months time line.

Usani stated this on Tuesday, August 11, 2015 during a one-day sensitization workshop for select regulatory and law enforcement agencies in Nigeria at the Chelsea Hotel, Abuja.

In his welcome address, he said the workshop was organized to afford the various regulatory agencies the opportunity to assess the current parameters used for the conduct of Mutual Evaluation Exercise, UME.

‎According to him, there is a need to sensitize the various regulatory agencies in the NRA project on data collection and research methodologies, so as to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant data.


He said: "This workshop could not be timelier than now, especially when the NRA project is geared towards the second phase, that is, data collection and self- evaluation stage. There is, therefore, the need to remind ourselves of our expectations; and to this end, we must take an overview of the Nigerian financial system within the perspective of the 2008 Mutual Evaluation Report, MER, of Nigeria and the implication of the report on the country's AML/CFT regime."

The event, which featured presentation of papers by several participants, was attended by some regulatory and law enforcement bodies, including the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA; the State Security Service, SSS; the Nigeria Customs; the Security and Exchange Commission, SEC; the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering, SCUML and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, among others.