The amendment bill of
Asset Management Corporation (AMCON) has passed the second reading at the Senate last week.
The bill is seeking to amend the AMCON Act 2010, as it failed to live up to its expectation of recovering toxic debt owed by some commercial banks.
Senators also noted and condemned the alleged ineffective use of the N5.6 trillion voted into the agency by Central Bank of Nigeria.
The bill, among others, seeks to establish a corporate entity with a well constituted Board of Trustees drawn from the CBN, eligible financial institutions, National Deposit Insurance Corporation and Ministry of Finance.
The body is expected to make regulations for the supervision and management AMCON fund.
The chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Mr. Bassey Otu, who sponsored the bill said it also sought to prohibit any board member or an employee of AMCON from being directly or indirectly involved in the purchase of assets acquired by the corporation.
He also said the amendment bill sought to empower AMCON acquire assets that are already subject of litigation if there is not valid court order restraining it from doing so.
The senators in their various contributions noted with concern that since AMCON was set up, it had failed to live up to its objective of recovering toxic debts owned by some commercial banks.
The Senate therefore asked its committee on banking to find out the exact amount put into AMCON by the CBN and also find out how it had made effective use of it as well as how much it had recovered.
Senator Ita Enang said the N5.6tr voted to AMCON exceeded Nigeria’s yearly budget and queried why the company, since it commenced operations, had failed to recover up to 15 per cent of the entire money.
As a result he advised the committee to examine the functions and operations of AMCON saying it is disheartening that the organization appeared to be failing because the amount committed to it by the CBN was not free money but rather a loan meant to be  paid back to the federation account.