Nigeria’s former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has revealed how she, former President Goodluck Jonathan and former Minister of Justice had a meeting and resolved to divert the sum of $322 which was the late General Sani Abacha’s loot that was returned to Nigeria, to the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd.) to prosecute the war against Boko Haram.
The fresh revelation which came in the form of statement by her media adviser, Paul Nwabuikwu, was a reaction to allegations that she illegally authorized the diversion of recently recovered Abacha loot during the administration of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, describing it as “part of a campaign of falsehood” to “tarnish her image.”
The former minister noted that the contents of a memo dated January 20, 2015 in which she responded to a request by the former NSA, Col. Dasuki for funds to prosecute the war against Boko Haram, was “distorted.”
Okonjo-Iweala who explained that the central responsibility of her ministry was to find sources of funding for the financing of approved national priorities such as security, job creation and infrastructure, recalled that throughout 2014, there were public complaints by the military hierarchy to President 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.
She said that a lot of the criticism was directed at her and that she 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. ormer 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.”
Okonjo-Iweala said that 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.”
She insisted that the attempt to link her 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.
It was alleged that Okonjo-Iweala had illegally approved the transfer of at least N61.4 billion ($300 million and £5.5 million) from funds recovered from late Sani Abacha, to the Office of the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, for “urgent security needs.” [myad]
