Obasanjo won’t die, he must be alive to face probe for $16bn spent on power with no result —Oshiomhole

The new national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, on Tuesday faulted the alarm raised by a former president that his life is in danger.

He stated that the former president was only distracting the government and Nigerians from raising questions over how his administration allegedly spent about $16 billion on electricity generation, without results.

Oshiomhole stated this when he addressed party supporters after receiving handover notes from his predecessor, Chief Odigie-Oyegun, at the party’s national secretariat, in Abuja on Tuesday.

While he did not directly mention Obasanjo’s name, the events he alluded to made it clear that he was referring to no other than the former president.

“The man said they wanted to kill him. No! To kill is to prevent the investigation. He must be alive to account. That is a typical distraction”, he said.

He further called on President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to begin the process of recovering from former President Obasanjo, the $16 billion his government allegedly spent on power.

He said that should Buhari refuse to ensure that the $funds were not recovered from the former president that the claim by some Nigerians that the fight against corruption is not total “may begin to gain some currency”.

He also said, “As I was reflecting, I watched our President recently asking questions rhetorically, ‘you have spent $16bn on power under the PDP, to lay emphasis, he repeated, where is the power?’.

“Nigerians in their various homes, those who had power that day or generator, said, Mr. President, we don’t have. So, $16bn spent, the more dollars they spent, the more darkness the people suffered.

“Now the questions I had in my mind were: maybe because the President has not yet proceeded to now ask the follow-up questions that ‘since we don’t find the power, then, you must bring the $16bn that you spent.’ If he doesn’t do that, then the accusations of limited anti-corruption may begin to gain some currency.

“Our President needs to do the needful. After all, it is already on record what other presidents didn’t do, with regards to the issue of MKO Abiola, and the criminal manner by which the election was nullified, and people pretended that that was never an issue, the President showed courage.

“That same courage should not fail him, so that he can proceed to recover the $16bn and return it to the treasury from the man who superintended over the spending of that money. When he does that, people will say, yes, there is a difference because there are Nigerians who are saying so.

“That propelled Prof. Wole Soyinka to say that, if people had immunity as sitting presidents, when the immunity expires, should they transit from immunity to impunity? I think impunity is deadlier than immunity.

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“What we need to do as a party is to provide the support that our President needs and for the Nigerian people to provide those supports and then they want to distract our attention when they are in trouble and say, ‘Eh! they want to kill me,’” Oshiomhole said.

“I think all of us should be ready to do anything we can to help Nigerians not to forget in a hurry. Those who thought they can loot for 16 years, destroy the fabric of our growth system, and tender apology later, so, that they can be allowed to come back”, Oshiomhole stated.

 

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