Lagos - Nigeria's anti-graft agency declared on Monday that a former minister who now lives in Britain is an official suspect over the embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds.

Nasir El-Rufai, the former minister for the federal capital Abuja, is "wanted" for allegedly misappropriating the massive sum of 32-billion naira (200-million euros, $246-million), the agency said in a statement.

Nigeria's Senate began to investigate the allocation of plots of land in and around Abuja by former president Olusegun Obasanjo and others close to him, including El-Rufai, back in April.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it had grown tired of waiting for El-Rufai to come foreward and answer its questions.

"The need to declare El-Rufai wanted became imperative following his failure to honour a simple invitation from the commission to respond to weighty allegations levelled against him in petitions being investigated by the Commission," the anti-graft agency said.

El-Rufai had ignored a November 28 deadline and a second ulimatum three weeks later, it said.

"Instead of seizing the opportunity to respond to the weighty allegations against him, he has resorted to a hide and seek game, and an appalling show of impunity on the pages of newspapers," according to the EFCC statement.

On Sunday several Nigerian dailies carried bold declarations by El-Rufai.

"Come and get me. In any case I have no intention of coming back to get my passport confiscated," one newspaper quoted him as saying.

The EFCC recently issued a report saying that Nigeria's past leaders siphoned off almost 400-billion dollars of state funds between independence in 1960 and 1999.

Transparency International still ranks Nigeria as one of most corrupt countries in the world. - AFP