SERAP TO BUHARI: Abacha stole far more than the $1bn you claim he looted

Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s claim on the amount looted by late General Sani Abacha.

Buhari had claimed in a statement that Abacha, a former head of state, “stole close to $1billion”.

But responding in a post on its Twitter handle, @SERAPNigeria, on Saturday, the organisation said Abacha looted far more than what Buhari claimed he did.

It referred to a Transparency International report which claimed that Abacha supposedly stolen between $3 billion and $5 billion in public money.

The group wrote, “In response to reported statement by President Buhari that former dictator Abacha ‘stole close to $1bn’; we wish to say that Abacha stole far more than $1bn. @anticorruption reports show that Abacha may have stolen between $3bn and $5bn in public money.

READ ALSO: SERAP TO BUHARI: Respect rule of law, enforce court judgments

“We urge @MBuhari to:
1. clarify this statement
2. immediately enforce the judgment by Justice M. Idris ordering his government to publish spending details on recovered assets by governments since 1999
3. instruct AGF Malami to properly respond to our FoI request on Abacha loot.”

Buhari had made the claim in a recent article he wrote about post-coronavirus and Africa’s manufacturing moment, where he said that “Nigeria can now move forward with road, rail and power station construction in part, under own resources-thanks to close to a billion dollars of funds stolen from the people of Nigeria under a previous, undemocratic junta in the 1990s that have now been returned to our country from the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland.”

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