Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said he left in the national treasury over N287bn, made up of $2bn, £100m and N10bn in cash and pr...
Former
President Olusegun Obasanjo said he left in the national treasury over N287bn,
made up of $2bn, £100m and N10bn in cash and property, being the loot recovered
from the late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha.Obasanjo
left office as President in 2007 after serving two terms of eight years and
handed over to the now late former President Umaru Yar’Adua.
The
N287bn figure was arrived at using an average exchange rate of N125.88 to a
dollar in 2007 and an average exchange rate of N247.99 to a pound in the same
year.
The
former President said the funds were paid into the treasury through the Central
Bank of Nigeria.
Obasanjo’s
revelation was contained in the Vol. II of his memoir, My Watch. His take on
the Abacha loot is slotted under the sub-heading “Recovery of looted funds” on
pages 494 and 495.
He
said, “In total, by the time I left government in May 2007, over $2bn and £100m
had been recovered from the Abacha family abroad, and well over N10bn in cash
and properties locally. All were paid to the public treasury through the
Central Bank.
“Enrico
(Monfrini, a Swiss lawyer) told me by the time I left government that if he
continued to get support for his work, there was still about $1bn he believed
he could still recover from the Abacha family and cronies.”
The
former President said that there was a time he got a report that £3m cash was
seized from an agent of the late military dictator by customs officials at an
airport in UK and that the British authorities asked the Nigerian government to
prove ownership of the money.
He
said the British government however refused to release the money to Nigeria
despite showing details that it was taken from the CBN.
“I
went to London to have a meeting on another important issue with (former
British Prime Minister) Tony Blair and I took the opportunity to raise the
issue of the £3m, using the Yoruba anecdote of the thief who stole palm oil
from the ceiling cupboard by getting somebody to help him so as not to spill
the red palm oil on himself or the floor. The man who assisted became an
accomplice. Tony got the message and the £3m was released to Nigeria the
following day,” Obasanjo stated.
A
former finance minister in the Obasanjo administration, Dr. Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, told stated last year through her Special Adviser on
Communication, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, that contrary to reports that the sum of
$2bn was recovered from the Abacha’s loot, only $500m was recovered under her
as Obasanjo’s finance minister.
The
minister made the clarification amid differing figures on the actual amount
recovered.
For
example, the pioneer Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, had in November 2006, in London, said Abacha looted over
$6bn from Nigeria and that $2bn of the loot had been recovered.
He
mentioned same figure in the same month during the 12th International
Anti-Corruption Conference in Guatemela and later in Dakar, Senegal, at the 2nd
Annual High Level Dialogue on Governance and Democracy in Africa.
