Senate bill seeks proper regulation, supervision of AMCON

The Senate has initiated moves aimed at providing legislative framework for enhanced regulation of the AMCON.

The move followed the alleged misuse of N5.6 trillion injected into the company  the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)

The bill, which seeks to strengthen the existing enabling laws,  passed the critical on the floor of the Senate on Thursday. It was sponsored by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Bassey Otu, PDP, Cross River South.

Most contributors to the debate were positively disposed to the proposed changes, with most of them expressing concern that  that the N5.6 trillion which was meant to enable AMCON carry out its statutory functions, was misappropriated by those tasked with responsibility of its management..

The bill is titled,  'A Bill for an Act to amend AMCON  Act, 2010.'

They were all agreed that AMCON had failed to live up to its expectation  of recovering toxic debts owed some commercial banks.

The bill seeks to among others, establish a corporate entity with a well constituted Board of Trustees (BoT) drawn from CBN, eligible financial institutions, National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) and Ministry of Finance to make regulations for the supervision and management of the agency.

In his lead debate, Otuexplained that it also sought to prohibit any board member or an employee of AMCON from being directly or indirectly involved in the purchase of assets acquired by the corporation.

Otu further explained that the bill was aimed at enhancing the work of AMCON to acquire assets that were already subject of litigation if there was no valid court order restraining it from carrying out such function.

Meanwhile, the committee had been mandated to find out the exact amount so far released to AMCON by the CBN; how the corporation made use of it and how much it really recovered.