Accounts with looted funds to be frozen
Oil thieves, including former ministers and some prominent individuals, have been put on notice – the law is coming after them.
President Muhammadu Buhari did not name them, but he spoke of how they plundered Nigeria’s economy by stealing one million barrels of crude oil daily, selling the stuff overseas and lodging the proceeds in their personal accounts.
Buhari spoke on Tuesday at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington D.C., United States (U.S.) at a parley with members of Nigerians In Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) as part of his four-day visit to the U.S.
He told his audience – NIDO members in America and Canada – that his administration would recover “mind-boggling” sums of money stolen from the oil sector.
“250,000 barrels per day of Nigerian crude were being stolen and people sell and put the money into individual accounts,” he told NIDO members, according to a statement issued yesterday by the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media, Garba Shehu.
The statement reported Buhari as vowing to trace the accounts of individuals, who stashed away ill-gotten oil money, freeze such accounts, recover the loot and prosecute the culprits.
Buhari lamented that “corruption in Nigeria has virtually developed into a culture where honest people are abused”.
On the contentious fuel subsidy on which Nigeria spends billions of dollars in months, the President disclosed that if fuel subsidy was removed; transport, housing and food prices would go out of control and the average worker would suffer untold hardship.
He said the U.S. and other developed countries had agreed to assist in tracking the accounts where looted funds are deposited.
“We will ask that such accounts be frozen and their owners be prosecuted,”, he said.
Buhari told the NIDO members: “The amount involved is mind-boggling. Some former ministers were selling about one million barrels per day. I assure you that we will trace and repatriate such money and use the documents to prosecute them. A lot of damage has been done to the integrity of Nigeria, with individuals and institutions already compromised.”
Citing the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), President Buhari said unlike what obtained when he held the forte as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum in the military regime when the NNPC had only two traceable accounts before paying oil proceeds into the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), “now everybody is doing anyhow”.
Agreeing that the “economy is in an extremely bad shape”, Buhari said the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration would fulfill its three-pronged campaign manifesto of providing security, turning around the economy with a major focus on youth employment and fighting corruption.
When asked if the Federal Government will negotiate with Boko Haram to pave the way for the release of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls, the President said his administration would only negotiate if genuine and confirmed leaders of the militant sect came forward and convinced the government of the conditions of the girls, their location and the sect’s willingness to negotiate.
“Our objective is that we want the girls back, alive and returned to their families and rehabilitated. We are working with neighbouring countries, if they will help,” he said.
Buhari also said agriculture and mining would receive priority attention as faster job-creation avenues for the teeming unemployed youths, adding that some foreign investors had agreed to take advantage of the immense business opportunities in the country.
Speaking on when he would form his cabinet, the President jokingly observed that the question on the cabinet had been chasing him around the world even to the point that he had been nicknamed “Baba Go Slow at home.”
He, however, noted that not even the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during all the years it ruled the country ever formed a cabinet within the first four months.
“I am going to go slow and steady,” he said, calling for patience to allow the new administration “put some sense into governance and deal with corruption”.
The President promised that his administration would at the right time tap into the enormous talents available amongst members of NIDO, especially as consultants. Their requests for voting right in 2019, a Diaspora Commission and opening of new consulates in parts of the United States and Canada are to be considered.
The President had earlier met at the same venue with a group of young professionals in the U.S. and assured them of his administration’s resolve to fight corruption, remain steadfast and invest heavily in education which he said was the answer to taking the youth out of poverty and ignorance.
