Okonjo Iweala on Wednesday said she had
paid former National Security Adviser to the
President, Col Sambo Dasuki $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
Minister of Justice, the former NSA and
herself to determine how best to use both the
returned and expected funds for
development.
Okonjo-Iweala said when the committee met,
the NSA made a case for using the returned
funds for urgent security operations arguing
that there could not be any development
without peace and security.
“Based on this, a decision was taken to
deploy about $322m for the military
operations, while the expected $700m would
be applied for development programmes as
originally conceived.
“Following the discussions and based on the
urgency of the NSA’s memo, Dr Okonjo-
Iweala requested the president to approve
the transfer of the requested amount to the
NSA’s office for the specified purposes,” the
minister said.
However, Okonjo-Iweala said as captured in
the memo, she insisted on three conditions:
A. only a part, not the entire Abacha funds,
would be spent on the arms; the rest would
be invested in development projects as
originally conceived.
B. the money was to be treated as borrowed
funds which would be paid back as soon as
possible.
C. the NSA’s office was to account for the
spending to the president who was the
Commander in Chief, given the fact that the
Minister of Finance is not part of the security
architecture and does not participate in the
security council.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala’s memo to the president,
seen by PREMIUM TIMES, showed that 50 per
cent of the recently recovered Abacha loot
was allotted for “urgent security need” such
as the procurement of arms and ammunition
while the other half was set aside to be used
for development purposes.
The letter, dated January 20, 2015, which
was addressed to Mr Jonathan, revealed that
the money was transferred following a
January 12, 2015 request by the office of the
NSA under Mr Dasuki for funds for the
procurement of arms and ammunition as well
as intelligence equipment.
“Please find a request by the National
Security Adviser (NSA) for the transfer of
$300 million and £5.5 million of the
recovered Abacha funds to an ONSA [Office of
the National Security Adviser] operations
account,” the letter read.
“The NSA has explained that this is to enable
the purchase of ammunition, security, and
other intelligence equipment for the security
agencies in order to enable them fully
confront the ongoing Boko Haram threat.
“His request is sequel to the meeting you
chaired with the committee on the use of
recovered funds where the decision was
made that recovered Abacha funds would be
split 50-50 between urgent security needs to
confront Boko Haram and development need
(including a portion for the Future
Generations window of the Sovereign Wealth
Fund),” Mrs Okojo-Iweala wrote.
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