… SAYS THIS LEVEL OF PERSECUTION AND HARRASSMENT UNPRECEDENTED, SIGNALS
DANGER OF FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN OFFICE
As part of the campaign of
falsehood against former Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala by Edo
Governor, Adams Oshiomhole and other powerful and corrupt interests, another
baseless story has been published by some online media.
To achieve their evil propaganda
objective of tarnishing her name, these evil elements have distorted the
contents of a memo dated January 20, 2015 in which the former Minister of
Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala responded to a request by the former National
Security Adviser, Col Ibrahim Dasuki (retired) for funds to prosecute the
terror war against Boko Haram.
Here are the facts:
· The central responsibility of the Minister of Finance IS to
find sources of funding for the financing of approved national priorities such
as security, job creation and infrastructure.
· It will be recalled that throughout 2014, there were public
complaints by the military hierarchy to President Goodluck Jonathan about the
inadequacy of funds to fight the anti-terror war in the North East, resulting
in Boko Haram making gains and even taking territories. A lot of the
criticism was directed at the Federal Ministry of Finance under Dr
Okonjo-Iweala which was accused of not doing enough to find funds for the
operations.
· In fact, the Ministry, on several occasions, had to call
press conferences to provide details of budgetary spending on the military, to
show, against the background of limited resources and other urgent national
priorities, that it was doing its best on funding security.
·
It was about this time that some new
Abacha funds of about $322m were returned with another $700m still expected to
be returned. (This is not to be confused with the Abacha funds returned in
2005-2006 under the Obasanjo government whose use for developmental purposes
was monitored by the World Bank as earlier explained by Dr Okonjo-Iweala).
· Former President Jonathan set up a Committee comprising of
the former Minister of Justice, former NSA and the former Minister of Finance
to determine how best to use both the returned and expected funds for
development.
· The NSA made a case for using the returned funds for urgent
security operations since, he noted, there cannot be any development without
peace and security. Based on this, a decision was taken to deploy about $322m
for the military operations, while the expected $700m would be applied for
development programmes as originally conceived.
· Following the discussions and based on the urgency of the
NSA’s memo, Dr Okonjo-Iweala requested the President to approve the transfer of
the requested amount to the NSA’s Office for the specified purposes.
· But, as captured in the memo, she insisted on three
conditions: a. only a part, not the entire Abacha funds would be spent on the
arms; the rest would be invested in developmental projects as originally
conceived b. the money was to be treated as borrowed funds which would be paid
back as soon as possible c. the NSA’s office was to account for the spending to
the President who was the Commander in Chief, given the fact that the Minister
of Finance is not part of the security architecture and does not participate in
the Security Council.
· The attempt to link the former Minister’s name to any misuse
of these funds for any purpose other than security as far as she understood it
is totally false and cannot stand.
Paul
C Nwabuikwu
Media
Adviser to Dr Okonjo-Iweala
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