The chairman of the Presidential Committee on FATF, Mr. Steve Oronsaye, made the declaration in Abuja on Wednesday when he featured at a forum.
Oronsaye told all present that it was heart-warming, however, that the National Assembly and the Presidency were already taking concrete steps to avoid the blacklist.
The FATF is a body of 180 countries that have signed protocols in support of the fight against international money laundering and terrorism financing.
When a country is blacklisted, all other member countries of the FATF are advised to avoid dealing with the financial system of the affected country, just as it was done to Nigeria before it joined the FATF in 2002.
Also correspondent banks across the world cut off credit facilities to the blacklisted country while its citizens are humiliated at airports and international borders across the world.
Orosanye recalled that a statement issued by the FATF plenary session in June noted that Nigeria had not done much in mitigating its vulnerabilities to money laundering and terrorism financing risks.
``That statement was issued in June and what it simply states is that in spite of high political commitment to addressing the deficiencies in our laws, significant or strategic deficiencies still persist and these pose danger to the international financial economy or system.
``What this simply means is that they would advise jurisdictions, about 180 countries that they have oversight over, to take notice of the risk associated in dealing with countries with this sort of deficiencies.
``If for any reason we do not meet the deadline, because Nigeria is in what we call the targeted review group, which is an unenviable stage, they could, one, decide to escalate Nigeria to what they call the dark grey list which is a shame list.
``One or two things could happen, counter measures may be applied or they may give us additional time to address these deficiencies.’’
Oronsanye highlighted some of the major areas where Nigeria’s legal framework still fell short of the adequately criminalising terrorist financing by international standards.
``They are varied; the first one has to do with money laundering in the list of predicated offences, we find that the section that lists predicate offences excluded fraud.
``And I recall in one of our meetings, the people thought that removing fraud may have been deliberate, but we made it very clear that it was not deliberate.
``But they did say that in certain jurisdictions (countries), they actually found out that it was deliberate.
``I can confirm that the amendments that have been sent (to the National Assembly) have actually captured fraud and once that is passed, then, it should be okay.’’
Orosanye also noted that in the Terrorism Prevention Act, 2011, the criminalisation of offences ``is not robust enough’’.
``Not that the present law that we have does not criminalise, but in terms of the scope, it is very narrow and Nigeria is a member of United Nations.
``There are 16 UN Security Council Special Resolutions on Terrorism and every member country is expected to ratify.
``We do know that we have already ratified eight of these and eight are still outstanding.’’
On other deficiencies, the chairman of the presidential committee said the UN special resolution requires that terrorist financing offences should extend to any ``funds’’ as that term is defined in the Terrorism Financing Convention.
``Nigeria’s laws do not define the term ``funds’’ adequately,’’ he said.
``We also know that in our law today, we have not defined what `Funds’ are; there are specific definitions of `funds’, so that the world over will know what `funds’are.
``There is also the issue of who is a terrorist or terrorist organisation; in our present law, the definition is very narrow.’’
Oronsaye expressed confidence that the amendments of the Money Laundering Act 2011 and Terrorism Prevention Act 2011 would sufficiently address international requirements needed by Nigeria to protect its financial system from terrorism financing-related risks.
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