Nigeria is estimated to have lost over $157 billion between 2003 and 2012 to Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) as revealed by Global Financial Integrity.

‎The urge to focus on the flows was informed by the fact that estimates may have varied and opened to contest as there is the general consensus that the IFFs from Africa surpass aid flows and foreign investment to the continent and by volumes. 

‎Also, the Thabo Mbeki High Level Panel (HLP) report of African countries where cumulative IFFs are the highest over the 2000-2010 period, 92.9% of IFFs out flows were said to be from Nigeria’s oil sector.

This revelation came to fore on Monday during the public presentation of ‎a book titled ‘Economic Diplomacy and Nigeria’s Foreign Policy’ written by the erstwhile chairman, Board of Trustees of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Dr Musa Babayo.

He said to underline the importance of addressing the issue of IFFs which had been estimated that between 2000 and 2008, ‎Nigeria received $40.7 billion and during the same period, profits transferred were pegged at $51.9 billion.

“In other words, for each new dollar invested in Nigeria during the period, 1.27 dollar was transferred abroad in the form of profits, for an extraction rate of 127%.”

He also revealed that “going by the HLP report which estimates that IFFs from commercial activities(including tax evasion/avoidance and trade mis-invoicing) constitutes 65% of IFFs while criminal activities (including trafficking of people, drugs and arms‎ to smuggling, money laundering etc) represents 35% and IFFs from corruption at approximately 5%. This implies that resources lost to commercial IFFs far outstrips money lost to corruption in Nigeria.”

Babayo said while there was less gain in stating that economic diplomacy would continue to feature as part of a mixed foreign policy which the country in her quest for socio-economic development and goal ‎to be among the developed economies globally, a number of realities would have to be taken by foreign policy formulators in the current dispensation.