By James Orji
Abukakar Malami, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, AGF knows how to court controversy. Just barely a month after he received knocks from prominent Nigerians over his comment on Southern Governors ban on open grazing, he is caught up in another storm for allegedly frustrating federal government’s efforts to recover $60 billion public funds stashed in the United states of America, USA.
The nation’s chief law officer was condemned by many Nigerians after he said Northern Governors could ban spare parts sellers in the North the same way 17 Southern Governors ban open grazing. The Southern Governor Forum as a measure to cub the incessant attacks on farmers by pastoralists who killed and rape women.
Recently too, he said the federal government will not return $4 million seized from James Ibori by the United Kingdom to Delta State, insisting that the recovered funds will be used to fund critical infrastructure across the country. Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has threatened to drag the federal government to court over the issue.
But while appearing on Tuesday before the House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee on the Probe of Recovered Looted Funds and Assets of Government, the Prosecutor, Special Presidential Panel on Asset Recovery, SPPAR, Tosin Ojaomo, said Malami has frustrated her team from recovering the looted funds from the USA.
According to the prosecutor, the fund was lodged abroad by some officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.
He lamented that the AGF seized the files his team needed to prosecute the case and it has been difficult retrieving the files from him, noting that the “minister requested for the case files and never returned them.”
“There was an intelligence given to the panel that the sum of $60 billion belonging to the Nigerian government is currently being domiciled at Texas in the United States of America, which the panel has started working on, sir. All this has been taken over by the attorney-general of the federation,” he stated.
Ojaomo said, “the Auditor-General of the Federation (AuGF) at a point withdrew N10 billion in two tranches from the coffers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) with the AGF, again, frustrating investigation by sitting on the case files.”
Meanwhile, Malami in a statement by his media aide, Dr Umar Gwandu, on Thursday denied the allegation, challenging anybody with any shred of evidence to prove it. Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and stashed away in Texas, United States.
According to him “We challenge anybody, who says the attorney general received any amount, we challenge such person to bring evidence forward.
“The AGF has a record of facilitating the repatriation of funds from the United States of America, the U.K., Island of Jersey and other territories across the globe. He has never had any history of standing as an encumbrance or preventing the recovery of any looted Nigerian asset.”
