The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Hafsat Abubakar Bakari, on Wednesday disclosed that the unit received over 60,000 suspicious transactions in 2023.

Bakari, who made this disclosure in Abuja at the NFIU-Law Enforcement Agencies Summit, added that the unit also received over 15 million currency transaction reports in the same year under review.

According to her, the volume of data that the NFIU receives and analyses is huge and will only continue to grow in the future as financial inclusion, decentralised finance, and other emerging technologies shift transactions into the electronic space.

She explained: “Aligned to this is the use of new technologies which provide a layer of anonymity and complexity to transactions. From cryptocurrency to agency banking, the link between the owner of the funds and the transaction itself is becoming more opaque.

“This also ties to our third challenge: the increasingly transparent borders—not in the physical sense, but the electronic sense. Funds, money, and transactions move rapidly across financial institutions, digital platforms, and through underground banking systems.

“However, our systems for international cooperation are still subject to the frictions put in place by national borders, information silos, and non-cooperative jurisdictions.”

To address these challenges, the NFIU boss urged security agencies to step up their efforts and proposed a number of strategic priorities to be considered.

“First, there needs to be a concerted effort to improve the utilisation of technology tools across all competent authorities.

“While I recognise that many agencies have made significant investments in procuring and establishing databases and other platforms, interconnectivity remains a challenge.

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“To become more effective, we should ensure that all our databases and platforms are built to common standards and shared protocols, which will allow for seamless integration and connectivity.

“We should also prioritise the integration of various identity databases to enable us to link financial flows with communication data and case records.

“Building these integrated systems and deploying new tools, utilising artificial intelligence and machine learning, has the potential to transform the speed at which we can intercept and disrupt criminal networks.

“We should also develop a national financial crimes database that holds information on investigations, prosecutions, convictions, as well as sentences and proceeds of crime.

“This will enable us to make better policy decisions in response to changes in crime typologies.

“Second, we should encourage the creation of fusion cells and joint investigation teams targeting the highest-risk offenses and the most serious crime networks.

“With the benefit of sitting in the NFIU and having an overview of the various requests for information we receive from different authorities, it is clear that multiple agencies often target and investigate the same individuals and networks. This can lead to a duplication of effort and inefficient use of resources.

“By working together, we can utilise the comparative advantage of each authority more efficiently.

“We should also prioritise international cooperation. As I noted earlier, many of the crimes we combat are transnational in nature. It may be that the commission of the act occurs in other jurisdictions, the perpetrators are not within our borders, or the proceeds are transferred as illicit financial flows.

“Through networks such as the Egmont Group of FIUs, INTERPOL, and other informal channels, information is available to support investigative activities and identify assets that can be repatriated.”