Senate Passes Amended AMCON Bill, Okays Seizure Of Debtors’ Assets

The Senate has passed the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) Amendment Bill.

This followed the adoption of the report of Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions at plenary on Wednesday.

Presenting the report, Senator Uba Sani, Chairman of the Committee, said the committee engaged stakeholders including AMCON, Ministries of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) and Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) before arriving at its conclusion.

He said the stakeholders in their submissions suggested that AMCON be empowered to take possession, manage, sell, transfer, assign property used as security for eligible bank assets among others.

This, he said would provide for a quicker, easier and legitimate process of assets disposal.

Deputy President of Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege at the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill sought clarification on some provisions.

“The essence of collateral, is that in the event of default, you lose that asset. What I am reading here is that in addition to seizing that asset, AMCON want to go beyond that to every other asset or property that is traceable to the debtor, I think I need some clarifications to that,” he said.

President of Senate, Ahmad Lawan, however, called for voting on the bill, which was adopted by majority of the lawmakers.

However, Senator Bassey Akpan and Senator Chukwuka Utazi, while relying on a Point of Order contested the ruling of the Senate President by requesting for a division.

But the Senate President overruled them.

“When we come to legislate, we all come here with very clear mind, that we are doing this for our country, we don’t have any interest but the national interest. And when majority of our colleagues here in their judgement feel that this is the right thing to do, that’s the majority view, unless we have any cause to reverse ourselves.

“If the majority of Senators say that this is what they feel should be done to remedy a situation that requires our attention, I think we should allow that. Besides, I believe we had explanations from the Committee members who went through all the processes, so, I believe that we should let it go,” he said.

Lawan added: “Let the people go to court to test it, but our hope and desire is for AMCON to be able to recover huge sums of money, trillions that people have taken and now is on the head of Nigerians. And, it is criminal, really. People will consciously take money, I will advise that we stick to our decision”.

The bill empowered AMCON to among others, take possession, manage or sell property traced to debtors, whether or not such asset or property was used as collateral for obtaining loan.