Till now, authority over the management of seized and forfeited assets has been divided among agencies responsible for detecting and investigating crimes. According to the 2022 Act, these include 18 agencies, such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission, the police, the customs service, and others. Each of these agencies was required to establish its own unit to manage proceeds of crime and maintain records of the assets under its control.

According to the authors of the initiative, such a system leads to duplication of functions, insufficient coordination, and weakened oversight. The bill aims to separate the investigation and prosecution of crimes from the direct management of recovered assets. Law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies will continue to identify and seize property, while the authority to preserve, account for, and dispose of such assets will be transferred to a specialized agency.

The new agency will be granted legal entity status and will be responsible for the recovery, preservation, management, and disposal of property for which there are reasonable grounds to believe it was obtained through unlawful activities. The agency is expected to establish uniform rules for handling such assets and to create an automated, centralized database for their accounting and tracking.

During the debate on the initiative, some senators expressed concerns that creating yet another agency could lead to additional bureaucratic overlap. Supporters of the bill, on the other hand, pointed out that it is precisely the current decentralized system that hinders control over recovered assets and creates risks of abuse.

Following Senate approval, the bill must be sent to the House of Representatives for consideration. It will then be submitted to the President of Nigeria for his signature.

------

*At the time of writing, the text of the bill in the version approved by the Senate, incorporating amendments from the relevant committee, had not been published in open sources. However, an earlier version of the bill, submitted for public hearings, is available for review.