Special Adviser to President Buhari Muhammadu on Justice Reforms and Coordinator of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in Nigeria, Mrs Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu, has commended the Government of Liberia on its willingness to implement beneficial ownership transparency in their country, saying that it will help the country to tackle her resource curse and illicit financial flow.

During a presentation on Monday, in Liberia, at a peer learning workshop on beneficial ownership transparency, under the auspices of the OGP, she assured the country of Nigeria’s willingness to share experiences with them on the preventions.

According to her, “It is estimated that Africa loses 50 billion US Dollars annually to illicit financial flows and about 192 billion as a result of capital flight. Most of the illicit financial flows originate from natural resource rich countries like Liberia and Nigeria. I am here to share our experience with you on what we are doing to open a beneficial ownership register and prevent unscrupulous individuals from benefiting from their dirty money. Your country needs to take short, medium and long term actions like we are doing in Nigeria, to get this project off the ground.

“As I am sure, you are aware that the UK non-profit organisation – Global Witness – revealed in their report early this year, how logging companies here in Liberia are illegally hiding their owners and how they currently owe about 25 million US dollars in unpaid taxes. This amount is nearly five percent of the entire budget of this country. Such illegality is not likely to happen if you have an open beneficial ownership register.”

The Presidential aide, who was represented at the workshop by the Communications Adviser to Nigeria’s OGP Secretariat, Mr. Uche Igwe, further revealed that “from curbing illicit financial flows, opening the register will improve tax compliance and raise income through domestic revenue mobilisation.”

Also speaking at the event, the Liberian Minister of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism, Hon Lenn Eugene Nagbe, stated the resolve of the government and people of Liberia to continue to push the frontiers of transparency and accountability for the benefit of the people of Liberia.

According to Hon. Nagbe, “Our country has come a long way since 2011 with the Open Government Partnership Policy. We are aware of the benefits of opening a beneficial ownership register and you can be rest assured that the government will fully support it. We are also supporting progress in all our commitment areas to ensure that we do not miss any opportunity that OGP offers to take our country forward.

“I am happy that our friend from Nigeria who is an expert is here to speak to us. I urge participants to listen to the speech so that we can learn from their implementation experience. As usual, we will be happy to learn from you, the challenges you face and the progress you have made. Of course, the contextual-reality in Liberia is slightly different but whatever policy that will be used to fight the natural resource curse will receive our full support.”

The former Deputy Minister at MICAT and focal person for OGP implementation in Liberia, Andrew G. Tehmeh, thanked the representatives from Liberian government institutions, civil society and private sector who attended the workshop. He promised that he will do everything within his power to ensure that the task team takes off on their very important task.

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