The attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN has signed an agreement with the United States of America, USA for the repatriation of $23 million Abacha looted by the late dictator.
Malami on Tuesday signed the agreement with the US Ambassador to Nigeria, May Beth Leonard who signed on behalf of her country during a brief ceremony at the Federal Ministry of Justice Headquarters in Abuja.
The minister said the decision to return the stolen loot which he tagged as Abacha-5, was a product of a series of negotiations and meetings between Nigeria, the US Department of Justice, and the UK National Crime Agency, NCA.
According to him, “It is worthy to note that in line with the terms of this Agreement, Mr. President had already approved the funds to be utilized for the ongoing Presidential Development Infrastructural Funds, PIDF, projects namely; Abuja-Kano Road, Lagos-Ibadan Express Way and the Second Niger Bridge under the supervision of Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA
“The President’s mandate to my office is to ensure that all international recoveries are transparently invested and monitored by civil society organization to compete these three projects within the agreed timeline.”
A non-governmental organization, NGO tracking how the loots recovered from General Abacha, the African Network for Economic and Environment Justice, ANEEJ, had in June, revealed that the $322.5million stolen funds from former Military Head of State Gen Sani Abacha between 2018-2022 has been shared to 1.9million poor and vulnerable Nigerians.
Speaking on how the stolen fund was shared, Rev. David Ugolor, Executive Director, ANEEJ said the loot was shared without any political consideration to poor Nigerians.
He said, “No politically motivated data was used in selecting the beneficiaries; the National Social Register was used to determine those who will benefit and the register is updated regularly to remove those who have died.
“The Abacha loot that was recovered have been exhausted, we have a responsibility to inform Nigerians and then to make sure to tell them what the money was used for.
“It is a very controversial issue that people sit down at home and begin to point fingers that Abacha’s money has been stolen. What we have done with this monitoring is very ground breaking”.
