Sunday, June 30, 2024 - A former Chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property, Okoi Obono-Obla, has alleged that the loot recovered by his panel under former President Muhammadu Buhari was returned to the looters.
Obono-Obla,
who was appointed a presidential aide by Buhari, made the allegation while
speaking on the Mic On Podcast. He stated that the Buhari administration failed
to fight corruption, supposedly the bedrock of people’s trust in him.
SPIP was an independent investigative panel
set up by Buhari to recover stolen property and assets belonging to the
country.
According to Obono-Obla, his efforts to
bring many looters to justice in the country were frustrated by officials in
the same administration, including former Minister of Justice and Attorney
General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, whom he (Obono-Obla) described as
an ‘authoritarian’.
“Some of the things I recovered were
returned to the looters. For instance, there was this case of someone from whom
I recovered over 80 brand new X-class Mercedes Benz cars (armoured plated) from
in Jabi, Abuja.
I wrote to the DG, Customs to ask if the
person paid customs duties of the vehicles, he said ‘No’, they didn’t pay. I
wrote to the Federal Inland Revenue Services to know if the person paid tax on
the vehicles; he also said ‘No’ and that they don’t have the records. We went
to court to get an order of interim forfeiture, and it was granted pending the
hearing of the case. So, I sent a memo to Malami to brief him on what we were
doing, only for him to tell me that he never mandated me to do things I investigated,”
he said.
Speaking
further, he said;
“Another one is the case of a senator who
was then in his sitting status and later became the President of the Senate. I
found his story in the Panama Papers, which stated that he had property in
offshore islands; I didn’t have the power to investigate him because it was
overseas, so I went to the DG, NIA, and sought his help to work together. They
conducted an investigation and sent the report to me. The report confirmed that
this senator has over £200 million worth of property in the offshore islands; I
sent a copy to the president and one to the Attorney General. Till today,
nothing happened,” he added
While fielding questions on whether the
Buhari administration failed to fight corruption, Obono-Obla said;
“Yes, I would say so. We didn’t do well.
When Magu (former EFCC chairman) and I left, we didn’t hear anything again
about fighting corruption. Both of us had a similar fate; we were stepping on
toes and too stubborn. In fact, Malami’s close associate once told me, ‘you
—Obla and Magu— are very stubborn,’” he stressed.
Obono-Obla was served a letter of his
immediate suspension from office in 2019 over an investigation by the
anti-graft agency, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences
Commission, which found that he falsified his WAEC result to enrol at the
University of Jos, where he studied law in the 1980s. He was also accused of
attending the Nigerian Law school on the back of the fake high school records.
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