As President Muhammadu Buhari and a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, continue to engage in a war of words, PREMIUM TIMES has obtained a report by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission regarding corruption allegations against Mr Obasanjo.
The fresh clash between the president and one of his predecessors was triggered when Mr Buhari, while receiving a delegation of the Buhari Support Organisation at the Presidential Villa on May 22, indirectly accused Mr Obasanjo of wasting $16 billion on power projects with nothing to show for it.
Mr Obasanjo immediately fired back at the president describing his claims as ignorant and unsubstantiated.
The report, signed by the then EFCC’s Director of Operations, Ibrahim Lamorde, addressed allegations of conspiracy, fraudulent conversion of funds, abuse of office, foreign exchange conversion and money laundering against the former president.
The petitions
On August 22, 2005, the then governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu, submitted a petition alleging corrupt practices against Mr Obasanjo to the EFCC.
A second petition was delivered two years later – in November 2007 – by the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, a nongovernmental organisation headed by Debo Adeniran, a civil society activist.
The two petitions were consolidated into a single 12-point petition which dealt largely on allegations that Mr Obasanjo’s aides and some Senators connived and took huge sums of money in oil and commissions from Defence contracts.
The petition also alleged that the hostels and sports complex at Mr Obasanjo’s Bells Secondary School and University were constructed by Strabag Construction Company with taxpayers’ money, adding that the total assets value of the university – including ongoing constructions at the time – stood at about ₦40 billion.
It also accused the former president of, as the Petroleum Minister between 1999 and 2006, overseeing “a significant number of fraud” in crude oil sales and accrued commissions in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
Other allegations against Mr Obasanjo include the “evidence” that he owned foreign accounts, including a Platinum Credit Card, with which he siphoned money and made purchases abroad; that a “₦6.5 billion proceeds” realised from the appeal fund for the construction of Mr Obasanjo’s Presidential Library were diverted to private use; and that Mr Obasanjo used his presidential powers to approve a licence to Obasanjo Farms, which was in “shambles” while he was in prison, to be sole importer of grant parent stock of chicken.
The petition also included allegations that the federal government under Mr Obasanjo exceeded its spending on Ministries, Departments, and Agencies by about ₦133 billion in the 2005 budget and that ₦521 billion was sunk into the now defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria, and yet, Nigeria was in darkness.
From Premium Times