By Charles Igbo
The family of late Head of State, Sani Abacha, has put a lie to the assertion by his former Chief Security Officer, CSO, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha that the billions of US dollars, popular as the Abacha loot, being repatriated to Nigeria, do not belong to him, Abacha.
Al-Mustapha had, a couple of days ago, stirred the hornet’s nest when he told the Voice of Nigeria, VOA, Hausa Service, that those who succeeded Abacha in the Villa, immediately after his sudden death, looted the monies, and stashed them away in foreign lands, using Abacha’s name, just to rubbish the late Head of State. Mustapha had dismissed Abacha’s successors as thieves and corrupt.
But the Abacha family says: Not true, thus, presenting Al-Mustapha as a liar.
In an appeal filed at the Supreme Court by the scion of the family, Mohammed Abacha, the family seems to have dismissed Al-Mustapha as ignorant of the financial dealings of the late Head of State and his family.
In the appeal, the Abacha family had prayed the apex court to unfreeze the accounts of the late Abacha and members of his family. Such frozen accounts are held in banks in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Jersey Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg on behalf of the family.
The freezing of the accounts followed an agreement between Nigeria and the countries where such monies are domiciled. The moves which culminated in the freezing were initiated by the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Since then, hundreds of millions of dollars have been repatriated to Nigeria from the various countries where the monies were looted to. The most recent is the expected repatriation, to Nigeria, within a couple of weeks, of the sum of 320 million US Dollars from Jersey.
The Abacha family had been fighting to stop the processes.
The family lost the suits they filed at the lower courts, a Kano High Court, and the Court of Appeal in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Their appeal at the Supreme Court has, also, just been dismissed.
In a unanimous judgement read by the Hon. Justice Amina Augie, on behalf of the Hon. Justice Chima, the apex court said “It had no hesitation in affirming the concurrent decisions of the lower Courts”.
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