₦airaland Forum

[b]Dr. Okonjo-Iweala also claimed that my petition against her to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) “were lacking in credibility”, without any substantiation of what this means or specific rebuttal of the allegations contained in that petition. She has however not denied the accuracy of the claims in my petition. Whereas the former Finance Minister had insisted that only $500 million was recovered from the Abacha loot my petition detailed the recovery of $4 billion. As she could not challenge my claim Dr. Okonjo-Iweala now says that the $500 million was the amount recovered while she was the Minister of Finance under President Obasanjo. In making that claim she did not take cognizance of her recent statement that while she gave out $322 million to Col. Dasuki the sum of $700 million had been set aside for development. From her own account, over $1 billion was recovered from the loot under the Jonathan regime when she was coordinating the economy.

Dr. Okonjo-Iweala should have also provided further explanations as to why a substantial part of the Abacha loot was criminally diverted under her watch, especially in light of her confessional statement that she transferred $322m from the Abacha loot to former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, to prosecute the war on terror. Apart from the said $322m, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala also released £5.5m to Dasuki. Even on this ground alone, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala cannot plausibly claim not to have anything to do with the arms procurement scandal. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s excuse that the said $322m was released due to the urgency of the crisis in the North-East region is untenable having regard to the fact that former President Jonathan had sought the approval of the National Assembly to take a loan of $1bn to equip the armed forces to fight insurgency. Therefore, her self-induced urgency is not a justification for spending public funds without appropriation.
In the course of my defending several military officers and soldiers who were charged before court-martial for demanding weapons to fight the terrorists I confirmed that the $1 billion loan for arms procurement. I was compelled to request Dr. Okonjo-Iweala for an inventory of the military equipment purchased with the $1 billion loan. The requested inventory was made available to me as the weapons were not purchased.
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I am speechless. Where do we go from here.