#BBB NEWS| Switzerland To Return Confiscated Abacha Funds To Nigeria

Switzerland will soon return $321m confiscated from Sani Abacha’s clan to the Nigerian government.

The Swiss head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Didier Burkhalter, will be meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari tomorrow in Abuja to discuss the restitution of these funds.

A coalition of Nigerian and Swiss civil society organizations have called on the governments of both countries to ensure that the returned assets are used to benefit the Nigerian population and that the process of restitution is as transparent as possible.

“These funds must be allocated to projects of public interest, and use a transparent process involving Swiss and Nigerian NGOs to do so,” the coalition stated in its letter addressed to the concerned authorities.

#BBB NEWS| Abacha Loot: SERAP Appeals World Bank’s Decision On Spending

The Socio-Economic Rights Accountability Project (SERAP) has released a press statement detailing their appeal of what they have termed the “patently insufficient information on the spending of recovered stolen funds by the late General Sani Abacha” provided by the World Bank.

Read the press release in its entirety below:

#BBB NEWS| Abacha Loot: Nigerian Activists Demand Prosecution Of Ex-Minister, Okonjo-Iweala

One of Nigeria’s most prominent anti-corruption coalitions, the Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC), has urged the chairman, Code of Conduct Bureau to immediately prosecute the immediate past Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for “abuse of office and contravention of institutionalised procedures for public office holders while in office”.

In a petition to the Bureau, signed by its chairman, Olanrewaju Suraju, the coalition criticised the illegal manner the former coordinating minister of the economy allegedly disbursed funds recovered from late Sanni Abacha.

The group also accused the former minister of having misled Nigerians with false information on the utilization of the said fund.

“In the past weeks, Nigerians have been inundated with revelations of how the former National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki misappropriated the sum of $300million and £5.5 million which was meant for the purchase of arms and ammunition to enable the military combat the insurgency orchestrated by Boko Haram,” Mr. Suraju said.

#BBB NEWS| Ex-Nigeria Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala Confesses: I Paid Dasuki $322m From Abacha Loot

Former Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo Iweala yesterday said she had paid former National Security Adviser to the President, Col Sambo Dasuki (rtd) $322m (about N63billion) from recovered Abacha funds to finance military operations.

She was reacting to online media reports that accused her of illegally diverting the Abacha funds to the office of the former NSA. The money was returned to Nigeria in January 2015.

The statement signed by her Media Adviser, Paul C Nwabuikwu, said the attempt to link the former minister to any misuse of the funds for any purpose other than security was baseless.

She explained that  based on a request by Dasuki, former president Goodluck Jonathan set up a committee comprising of the former Minister of Justice, the former NSA and herself to determine how best to use both the returned and expected funds for development.

#BBB NEWS| Abacha Loot: Inside The Secret Deal Jonathan Authorized To Shield Ex-Dictator’s Family From Prosecution

For allegedly helping their father plunder Nigeria of an estimated $5 billion in the 1990s, Mohammed and Abba Abacha, and other relatives of the late dictator, Sani Abacha, have been rewarded by the Nigerian government.

A secret deal between the government and the Abachas, wants the family to return part of the loot, in exchange for perpetual immunity against prosecution.

The deal, kept classified for months, was personally approved by President Goodluck Jonathan in July 2014, and jointly authored by the Attorney General, Mohammed Adoke.

The terms of the agreement, obtained by PREMIUM TIMES in March, have alarmed anti-corruption activists.

“The agreement is (also) a tragic triumph of impunity,” said The Berne Declaration, a Swiss nongovernmental organization, which for years has monitored efforts by the Nigerian government to recover hundreds of millions of dollars stashed by the former military ruler, and his family, in bank accounts across Europe, and America.