The Senate on Friday lamented that the efforts to recover the N4.5trn owed the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria were being frustrated by 350 prominent Nigerians.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions, Senator Uba Sani, stated this at a stakeholders’ symposium titled, ‘Consolidating the effectiveness of the asset recovery model adopted by AMCON,’ in Abuja.

Sani said, “The road has not always been smooth for AMCON. For a long time, AMCON has been at the receiving end of well-laid and orchestrated acts of economic sabotage.

“Of the N4.4trn we are trying to recover, about 350 people in this country are responsible. This is about 83 per cent of the debt. This is very worrisome. This means that powerful Nigerians are the ones not willing to pay these loans.”

“They have been employing different strategies and tactics to stall the repayment of loans running into trillions of Naira. A lot of highly placed Nigerians are not willing to support AMCON because most of those people are the ones that took this money from the banks and of course you know the government came in to set up AMCON to save banks from going down.”

Sani assured the agency that the committee and other relevant committees of the Senate would do everything within their power to assist AMCON in recovering the N4.4trn owed the company.