It can be recalled that Premium Times on Wednesday exclusively
reported that former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala illegally
appropriated N61.4 billion Abacha loot to the office of the National
Security Adviser under former NSA Sambo Dasuki, she has now denied
having anything to do with the alleged misuse of the arms procurement
fund.
In a statement on Wednesday evening by her spokesperson, Paul
Nwabuikwu, the former minister said she disbursed the part of the Abacha
loot to the NSA office following the recommendation of a committee set
up by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
She explained the money was given to the NSA office as a form of a
loan to procure arms to fight Boko Haram insurgency after she was
accused by the military hierarchy of failing to release fund for the
prosecution of the war. She further stated that she had insisted that
part of the money should be used for developmental projects.
She accused unnamed people of desperately trying to link her to the
alleged misappropriation of the arms procurement funds, which she
insists she knows nothing about.
Read the full statement below:
Abuja, December 9, 2015
OKONJO-IWEALA DESCRIBES AS
BASELESS ALLEGATIONS OF “ILLEGAL DIVERSION” OF ABACHA FUNDS SAYS THIS
LEVEL OF PERSECUTION AND HARRASSMENT UNPRECEDENTED, SIGNALS DANGER OF
FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN OFFICE
As part of the campaign of falsehood against former Minister of
Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala by Edo Governor, Adams Oshiomhole and
other powerful and corrupt interests, another baseless story has been
published by some online media. To achieve their evil propaganda
objective of tarnishing her name, these evil elements have distorted the
contents of a memo dated January 20, 2015 in which the former Minister
of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala responded to a request by the former
National Security Adviser, Col Ibrahim Dasuki (retired) for funds to
prosecute the terror war against Boko Haram.
Here are the facts:
The central responsibility of the Minister of Finance is to find
sources of funding for the financing of approved national priorities
such as security, job creation and infrastructure.
It will be recalled that throughout 2014, there were public
complaints by the military hierarchy to 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 lot of the criticism was directed at the Federal Ministry of Finance
under Dr Okonjo-Iweala which 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. (This is
not to be confused with the Abacha funds returned in 2005-2006 under
the 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 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.
But, as captured in the memo, 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.
The attempt to link the former Minister’s 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.
Paul C Nwabuikwu,
Media Adviser to Dr Okonjo-Iweala.
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