Okonjo Iweala denies diverting Abacha's loot.
Yesterday, Premium Times published an exclusive report stating
The immediate past Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, illegally approved the transfer of at least N61.4 billion ($300 million and £5.5 million) from funds recovered from late dictator, Sani Abacha, to the Office of the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, few weeks to the 2015 presidential election, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report today.The former Minister signed off on the transfer but then closed her eyes to how the funds were spent, requesting then President Goodluck Jonathan to directly demand accountability from Mr. Dasuki, according to documents seen by this newspaper.
Read the full statement.
As
part of the campaign of falsehood against former Minister of Finance,
Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala by Edo Governor, Adams Oshiomhole and other
powerful and corrupt interests, another baseless story has been
published by some online media. To achieve their evil propaganda
objective of tarnishing her name, these evil elements have distorted the
contents of a memo dated January 20, 2015 in which the former Minister
of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala responded to a request by the former
National Security Adviser, Col Ibrahim Dasuki (retired) for funds to
prosecute the terror war against Boko Haram.
Here are the facts:
· The central responsibility of the Minister of Finance IS to find sources of funding for the financing of approved national priorities such as security, job creation and infrastructure.
· The central responsibility of the Minister of Finance IS to find sources of funding for the financing of approved national priorities such as security, job creation and infrastructure.
·
It will be recalled that throughout 2014, there were public complaints
by the military hierarchy to President Goodluck Jonathan about the
inadequacy of funds to fight the anti-terror war in the North East,
resulting in Boko Haram making gains and even taking territories. A lot
of the criticism was directed at the Federal Ministry of Finance under
Dr Okonjo-Iweala which was accused of not doing enough to find funds for
the operations.
· In fact, the
Ministry, on several occasions, had to call press conferences to provide
details of budgetary spending on the military, to show, against the
background of limited resources and other urgent national priorities,
that it was doing its best on funding security.
·
It was about this time that some new Abacha funds of about $322m were
returned with another $700m still expected to be returned. (This is not
to be confused with the Abacha funds returned in 2005-2006 under the
Obasanjo government whose use for developmental purposes was monitored
by the World Bank as earlier explained by Dr Okonjo-Iweala).
·
Former President Jonathan set up a Committee comprising of the former
Minister of Justice, former NSA and the former Minister of Finance to
determine how best to use both the returned and expected funds for
development.
· The NSA made a case
for using the returned funds for urgent security operations since, he
noted, there cannot be any development without peace and security. Based
on this, a decision was taken to deploy about $322m for the military
operations, while the expected $700m would be applied for development
programmes as originally conceived.
·
Following the discussions and based on the urgency of the NSA’s memo,
Dr Okonjo-Iweala requested the President to approve the transfer of the
requested amount to the NSA’s Office for the specified purposes.
·
But, as captured in the memo, she insisted on three conditions: a. only
a part, not the entire Abacha funds would be spent on the arms; the
rest would be invested in developmental projects as originally conceived
b. the money was to be treated as borrowed funds which would be paid
back as soon as possible c. the NSA’s office was to account for the
spending to the President who was the Commander in Chief, given the fact
that the Minister of Finance is not part of the security architecture
and does not participate in the Security Council.
·
The attempt to link the former Minister’s name to any misuse of these
funds for any purpose other than security as far as she understood it is
totally false and cannot stand.
Comments
Post a Comment
Dont forget to drop a comment.