Nagging questions about Abacha’s endless loot
opera.comMay 7, 2020 9:44 AM
With the release from New Jersey bank in the United States, a total sum of $311 million dollars being the part of the money recovered by former head of state, late General Sanni Abacha was confirmed by Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General and Justice Minister.
The amount is the tenth tranche of the stolen money released by foreign banks since the demise of the former general. The first being a sum of $750 million dollars released in 1998 during the tenure of the man who took over from him, General Abdulsalam Abubakar.
It is also instructive to note that the return of the series of tranches of the stolen money now euphemistically referred to as’ Abacha loot, is the first ever in the history of repatriated money stolen by our former leaders.
Since the attainment of independence by the country in 1960, none of its former leaders have been probed or have their foreign assets confiscated by succeeding governments.
In spite of the virulent campaign mounted by late University don, Professor Ayodele Awojobi, who between the period 1978 and his demise in 1984, was always asking the nagging question, “where has our oil money gone to,” there have been no major effort since the second republic till the end of the eight years of General Ibrahim Babangida regime, to investigate allegation of stolen funds by present and former leaders.
However, under the 11 month regime of Gen Abdusalam, he made a difference by investigating and effecting the return of $750 million United States dollars.
Ironically, till today nobody has told Nigerians what he did with the money.
Even now since the first repatriation of the Abacha loot which the minister now wants us to regard as assets, it would appear the more new discoveries are made, the less information is provided on what have been done with the nine tranches recovered. What we have been told by succeeding governments is that it has either been shared among the three tiers of government which has also failed severally to explain to Nigerians what the money were used for.
But more importantly and curious too is the fact that nobody has told Nigerians how much was really stolen by the late General.
As at today, the total money recovered from him, including Monday’s $311 million stood at $3.624 billion, about half of the nation’s budget. Yet, nobody has told Nigerians how much money remains in the covers of foreign banks.
It will be necessary to know the total money actually stolen by the former Head of State.
Although, Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to President Buhari who has gotten two of the ten tranches returned said the money have been allocated for completion of three critical infrastructures including Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Kaduna-Kano road and Second Niger bridge, the question remains of what have been done with previous recoveries and how much remains to be discovered and recovered?
By Tunde Abatan
