The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) has said its priority this year is aggressive debt recovery.

A statement from the corporation last week indicated that having achieved its 2011 objective of assisting with financial system stability by the recapitalisation of hitherto weak banks, and the de-risking of the books of Nigerian banks, AMCON now intends to focus on the most critical statutory imperative of recovering and realising debts owed it in consequence of its statutory acquisition of non performing loans (NPLs) from Nigerian banks.

The corporation urged all its debtors and other obligors to pay up, threatening to deploy its special statutory powers under the AMCON Act to recover all its debts including the accrued interests, stressing that those nursing the hope that they would not pay back their debts should have a re-think.

“Debtors and other connected obligors may wish to note that AMCON is under a mandatory statutory duty to realise and recover debts owed it. Accordingly, debtors and other connected obligors will be well-advised to disabuse their minds of any erroneous notions that such debt obligations will not be vigorously pursued and enforced by AMCON. For the avoidance of doubt and contrary to any such patently erroneous notions, AMCON shall discharge its statutory duty dispassionately, and exercise the full gamut of its statutory powers to ensure the recovery of all debts owed to it,” the statement read in part.

In realisation of this objective, AMCON last year engaged the services of professional valuers to determine the appropriate values of assets and properties of borrowers transferred to the bad-assets company through loan-purchase agreements with banks.

AMCON now has some 9,000 loans under its purview, and it has developed institutional capacity to manage these efficiently and in the best interest of the general public, whose funds formed the basis of establishment of the corporation.

It would be recalled that AMCON which was set up to buy bad debts in Nigerian banks has so far invested N3.14 trillion ($19.6billion) in the purchase of NPLs and recapitalisation of banks.