Former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, on Wednesday gave insights into how $322 mil­lion recovered last year from the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Aba­cha’s loot, was spent.

Okonjo-Iweala, who denied the alleged diversion of the mon­ey, disclosed that it was given as a loan for arms purchase to the of­fice of the former National Secu­rity Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki as loan.

She explained that the cen­tral responsibility of the Minis­ter of Finance is to find sources of funding for approved national priorities such as security, job cre­ation and infrastructure.

The former minister main­tained that part of the recovered Abacha loot given to Dasuki was on loan with some conditions in order to equip the military in the fight against Boko Haram insur­gents.

The three conditions for the release of the funds requested by Dasuki, according to her, were: "that 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.
"The money was to be treated as borrowed funds which would be paid back as soon as possible.

"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."

She recalled that throughout 2014, there were public complaints by the military hierarchy to former 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 statement by her Media Ad­viser, Paul Nwabuikwu, explained that a lot of the criticisms were di­rected at the Federal Ministry of Finance under Dr. Okonjo-Iwea­la which was accused of not doing enough to find funds for the oper­ations.

According to the statement, "It was about this time that some new Abacha funds of about $322 million were returned with another $700 million still expected to be returned. (This is not to be confused with the Abacha funds returned in 2005-2006 under the Olusegun 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 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 $322 million for the military operations, while the expected $700 million 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 former President to approve the transfer of the request­ed amount to the NSA’s office for the specified purposes," he said.

http://www.authorityngr.com/2015/12/-Recovered-$322m-Abacha-loot-was-given-to-Dasuki-as-loan-/

Jonah looting recovered looted funds,how on earth did we get into this mess called Jonathanmi think this man committed more atrocities than BH.

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