- Say repatriated loot near $4bn but ‘nothing’ to show for it
- CSOs, analysts want Tinubu to come clean on recovered proceeds of corruption
BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
As France is set to repatriate $150 million stolen from Nigeria by former Head of State, late General Sani Abacha, Nigerians have raised questions and expressed deep worry over how successive governments allegedly shrouded the spending of past proceeds of corruption in secrecy.
Abacha ruled Nigeria from 1993 until his death in 1998. Transparency International had estimated that he stole up to $5 billion from the nation’s coffers during those years.
For the past 25 years since Abacha died in controversial circumstances, the late head of state has been featuring notoriously but infamously in the media following pockets of recovery of his stolen funds by successive governments in the country. More have been said to be waiting in the wings.
According to United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Leonard, the amount of money stolen by Abacha and his cronies which have been repatriated to Nigeria by the U.S has hit over $334.7 million.
However, Transparency International put the total amount recovered since the death of the late military dictator at $3.65 billion, as of 2022.
According to findings by The Point, these recoveries were made by four administrations from four countries namely: Switzerland, Jersey Island (UK), United States and Liechtenstein.
$23m, $311m, OTHER ABACHA LOOT RECOVERED SO FAR
The Point gathered that in 1998, Abubakar Abdulsalami, former military head of state who took over from Abacha, recovered $750 million from the Abacha family.
In 2000, former President Olusegun Obasanjo recovered $64 million looted funds from Switzerland, $1.2 billion from the Abacha family in 2002; $88 million from Switzerland in 2003, and another $160 million from Jersey, British Island in 2003 — all linked to Abacha.
Obasanjo, in 2005, recovered another tranche of $461 million of the Abacha loot deposited in Switzerland. By the following year, 2006, $44 million was recovered from the same country.
In 2014, during the administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria recovered $227 million of the Abacha loot from Liechtenstein, a country in Europe.
The administration also recovered $322 million from Switzerland, but the fund was repatriated during former president Muhammadu Buhari’s first term in 2018.
In 2020, during Buhari’s second term, Nigeria repatriated $311 million Abacha loot from the United States and the Bailiwick of Jersey.
The litigation process for the return of the most recent assets entitled “Abacha III” commenced in 2014 while the diplomatic process that culminated in the signing of the asset return agreement on February 3, 2020 by the governments of Nigeria, US and the Bailiwick of Jersey, commenced in 2018.
AS TINUBU JOINS LIST OF BENEFICIARIES
Meanwhile, the administration of President Bola Tinubu is about to have a taste of the stolen funds as it expects a whooping sum of $150 million Abacha loot from France.
This was announced by presidential spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, following a meeting between Tinubu and Catherine Colonna, the French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs recently.
“Thank you for the good news on the return of Abacha loot,” Ngelale quoted President Tinubu as thanking France for the planned return of the loot.
“We appreciate your effective cooperation concerning the return of Nigeria’s money. It will be judiciously applied in attaining our development objectives,” the president assured.
Tinubu emphasized the need for stronger collaboration on both political and economic fronts, and welcomed the growing cooperation between the two countries in areas of mutual interest, such as climate change, economic integration, education, and culture.
NIGERIANS ANGRY, YET TO FEEL IMPACTS OF RECOVERED LOOT
As the repatriated Abacha loots to the country since 1998 near $4billion, many Nigerians have expressed worry over their worsening hardship despite reports of the recoveries.
They accused the governments of Abdulsalami, Obasanjo, Jonathan and Buhari of re-looting the recovered Abacha money and called on President Tinubu to probe his predecessors.
In their separate interviews with The Point, these Nigerians and leaders of civil society organisations, asked Tinubu to come clean on the exact amount of stolen money recovered so far and how previous administrations expended them.
While bemoaning the abandonment of investigations on those who conspired with Abacha to launder the nation’s treasury, some analysts charged Tinubu to investigate the alleged role of the current Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu.
Bagudu, who previously served as a state governor and senator, was accused of helping Abacha loot billions of dollars from the country.
According to the United States Department of Justice, the minister played an “instrumental role” in Abacha’s plundering of the country from 1993 to 1998.
The DOJ accused Abacha, Bagudu and other associates of “systematically” embezzling billions of dollars of public funds from Nigeria in the 1990s, siphoning the money out of the country via a network of offshore companies.
Over the past decade the DOJ, citing its jurisdiction over the U.S. banking system used in allegedly illegal transfers, has tried to seize offshore assets held in trust for Bagudu and his family under what the U.S. calls its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.
The U.S. programme has received limited help from Nigeria, which argues that its hands are tied as a result of a 20-year-old agreement it reached with Bagudu
An activist, Funsho Babarinde, canvased for a re-visit of the case of Bagudu and others fingered in the Abacha loot.
He accused Obasanjo, Buhari and other past nation’s leaders of refusing to disclose the details of how the recovered loot were spent and the specific projects that purportedly gulped the funds.
He said, “Almost every administration at one time or the other has taken this Abacha money and one thing Nigerians are not talking about, probably they didn’t remember is the fact that the current Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, was one of the those that was fingered then among the people that helped General Sani Abacha laundered some of these monies. Nobody knows how the cases went with the EFCC up till today.
“All along, no government has been bold enough to come and say, yes, we took so much and channeled it to so many things. At the end of the day, the money will come into the system and fizzle into the system without having any impacts on the people or targets. These monies have been going down the drain and nobody is held accountable.”
A political analyst, Mojeed Animashaun, also alleged that past governments at the centre have not been transparent in managing the recovered loot, pointing out that Nigerians have not benefited from the monies.
For him, “There have been some controversies as to the recovered Abacha loot and so many analysts have come to the conclusion that governments have not come clean to the Nigerian people about the recovered loot. In fact, some analysts are beginning to say that the loots that have been recovered have been re-looted again. This boils down to the fact that successive governments have not been transparent in managing the recovered loot. It is a bad phenomenon for a country to lose so much money to its former leaders after stealing the money; it was taken abroad; that means the Nigerian economy has been denied the opportunity of using that money for development; that is even if they used that money for development in the first instance.
“But, the point is that that money was taken away from our economy putting our economy into debt. But now that we have been lucky enough that countries where the monies are taken to are now magnanimous to reversing the money back to our economy, yet, Nigerians are not sure whether they are going to get benefits of that repatriation. So, the issue now is that over the last ten years, so much percentage of this money has been reverted back to Nigeria but can the government show us evidence of what they have used the money for?
“Except for under Buhari, when he came to tell the public that part of what was recovered from Abacha’s loot was used for infrastructure financing but yet, he didn’t show us in concrete terms what infrastructure was the money used for. So, the challenge today is that Nigerians have lost so much hope or faith in the government that even all the money that was stolen by Abacha and other past leaders of Nigeria were repatriated back to Nigeria today, ordinary Nigerians may not be able to feel the impacts of that repatriation.”
“As the repatriated Abacha loots to the country since 1998 near $4billion, many Nigerians have expressed worry over their worsening hardship despite reports of the recoveries”
With a charge on President Tinubu to come clean on the amounts recovered so far and how his predecessors spent the monies, the analyst stated, “The challenge for Tinubu’s government is to now take the initiative and show Nigeria, how much specifically has been repatriated to Nigeria and what has successive governments done with that money. Aside from Buhari, three or four repatriations have been made to Nigeria. The question is, what exactly have they done with that money? The one that was just announced, the $150 million, how do you ensure that when that money eventually comes back to Nigeria, Nigerians will be able to monitor how the money will be expended for public good.”
“But, who will do that? All the civil society organisations that are into budget monitoring and tracking, many of them have lost hope in the government so much so that they are not ready to track the public resources again except for SERAP. SERAP will come out to say we discovered this and that and even go to court but what has been the outcome of those actions? Nothing! Our servants have now become our masters. Nigerians are hapless and you cannot blame them. Somebody who has not eaten three square meals a day cannot be so much interested in how public resources are expended. So, our leaders now have the leeway to do whatever they want to do and that is not good for our democracy, because principally, democracy must serve the people. But in Nigeria, it is the people that are servicing democracy and that is not too good for us as a nation,” he added.
In his submission, a former General Secretary of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, Wale Oyeniyi “Lack of accountability is part of the leadership problem we are suffering in Nigeria. We will continue to ask them to account for this money. We should speak out and ask the past leaders to explain how they spent the past repatriated loot.”
Also calling for a probe of past leaders who received the recovered stolen funds, another analyst, Fatai Tijani, averred, “You cannot put the blame of this current hardship we are experiencing in this country on the administration of President Bola Tinubu alone. People have been in government and they have done very bad things that they have now gained momentum and everybody is aware of. Don’t forget that when they were in government, we didn’t have access to the internet and there was no easy access to information and others but today, the moment it happens in America, you can get the information needed. The loots that have been recovered, which of the past administrations has accounted for them? I know that it was since the inception of the fourth republic that we have been receiving the Abacha loot. Let every administration come back and tell us what they did with those monies.”
He added, “Insincerity has pervaded the entire nation and until good men come to power, we will remain like this.
And that is where I always ask: where are the good men in this country and when are they going to have the opportunity of occupying offices? Where are the people who know that when they close their eyes, they may not be able to open them again. The fear of God is taken away the moment people get into political offices. And until we have the people who are ready to manage themselves the way they were before coming into those offices, we will continue the way we are.
“We have recovered so much from the stolen funds and I ask, where are they and what have they been used for? Who is accounting and telling Nigerians where these monies are kept?”
HOW TINUBU SHOULD SPEND EXPECTED $150M
Animashaun advised President Tinubu to invest the $150 million France promised to repatriate on education and poverty alleviation.
“I will mention two things that I think President Tinubu should channel the expected $150 million to whenever it arrives. One is education and two is poverty alleviation. I just discovered that since schools resume back in college, so many parents have changed the schools of their children and when we asked questions, they said they could no longer meet up with the transport expenses, not to talk of the increasing school fees. So, if the government had invested so much money in public schools and people have some level of confidence in public schools, they would be able to take back their children to public schools, rather than be subjected to paying much to private schools.
“The government can use that money to enhance our educational system including making access to poor students to get loans and scholarships. Two, the government needs to do a lot of social assistance to the people, investing in mass public transport and production of electricity. If President Tinubu can do these, Nigerians will know that the government cares for them,” the lecturer at Fountain University said.
Meanwhile, former attorney-general of the federation under the administration of Buhari, Abubakar Malami, while speaking after Nigeria recovered the loot from the US and the Bailiwick of Jersey, had said the money would be used in expediting the construction of Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Abuja-Kano road, and the Second Niger
Bridge.
