By Dayo Omoogun
The recently released sum of $311m by the United States and the Bailiwick of Jersey which is part of the Nigerian funds looted by the General Sani Abacha regime
and stashed abroad, now popularly known as “Abacha Loot” has generated a spat between the ruling All Progressives Congress and the leading opposition party the Peoples Democratic Party.
In a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, the party’s spokesman, , the PDP had among other things accused the APC Federal Government of having perfected plans of using fake subheads and duplicated projects to siphon the newly released funds.
In addition it demanded that the funds be surrendered to the National Assembly for proper statutory appropriation to prevent it from being frittered away.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in its reaction signed by its Publicity Secretary Lanre Issa Onilu, taunted the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, saying its statement showed that “that the party is salivating over Abacha loot, saddened by a missed opportunity to share the money as they used to”.
“Unfortunately, PDP is unable to rid corruption from its DNA and until the party has the courage to burn its corruption handbook to ashes, it would be difficult for it not to hallucinate over public funds”, it added.
“Of course, we understand PDP’s frustrations. Its unsuccessful and serial attempts to tar the APC government with the corruption toga in order to blur its own image as a party that personifies corruption in words and deeds has turned the party into a laughing stock” he added.
The ruling party reminded PDP “that the government that the APC runs is not about sharing public funds amongst the ruling class, but about using tax payers’ money to impact positively on the lives of the people”.
It questioned the moral ground of the PDP to pontificate on the matter when according to it, successive governments under the party were never transparent or accountable in their handling of similar recovered loots.
“Successive PDP governments strangely resisted widespread calls to periodically publish detailed information on the loot recovery exercise – the amounts recovered, those from whom they were recovered, sources or countries from where they were recovered”.
“More importantly, questions about how recouped funds were used were never addressed which led to lack of enthusiasm among host countries towards meeting Nigeria’s requests for the return of stolen assets, until now”.
On the other hand according to the party, its administration under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari has excelled in this area and thereby earned the trust of the countries hosting the looted funds.
“The recovery consolidates on President Muhammadu Buhari’s resolve to recover our stolen commonwealth and other proceeds of corruption – locally and internationally. Recall that this administration similarly recovered $322 million from Switzerland in 2018, as part of monies stolen by Abacha which has been transparently and judiciously deployed in the funding of social investment programmes, including the free school feeding scheme, stipends for millions of disadvantaged citizens, and grain grants for those in severe food hardship as specified in the agreement signed with the Switzerland and the World Bank”.
The party also referred the PDP to the 2020 Asset Return Agreement which requires the fund ($311m) to be transferred to a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Asset Recovery designated account and which would then be paid to the National Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) designated as the project management and execution authority within the next fourteen days.
It also restated the federal government’s avowed commitment to investing the assets in expediting the construction of major infrastructure projects across Nigeria, and particularly, this administration’s legacy projects, namely: Lagos – Ibadan Expressway; Abuja – Kaduna-Kano Expressway and the Second Niger Bridge as well as the Mambilla Power Project which, when completed, will provide electricity to some three million homes in Nigeria.