Examining the Jurisdictional Scope of Nigeria's Anti Money Laundering Regime

One of the primary responsibilities of government is to ensure the security of lives and property of its citizenry. To this end, governments criminalizes certain conducts that are seen to be obnoxious to the general public good. Such conducts includes the way and manner of creating wealth as well as the interrogation of the purpose for which monies earned legitimately are utilized. The Nigeria’s Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011, (as amended) prohibits illicit earnings and criminally induced investments in and out of Nigeria. However, the law in defining the scope of conducts that constitute offences ended up criminalizing all unlawful conducts, whether or not it has anything to do with money or property or the financial institutions. The Act also seems silence on the investment of legitimate earnings on illegal and criminal purpose, such as terrorism and cultism. It is the position of this paper that the definitional scope of the Act is not ambiguous but lopsided. The paper recommends that the Act be amended to focus on the original purpose for global anti- money laundering regimes