The federal government has
accused Switzerland of “robbing” Nigeria in the course of recovering funds
looted from the country.
Nigeria recently signed an
agreement with Switzerland for the release of $322 million said to have been
stolen by Sani Abacha, former military head of state.
This is just one of the previous
recoveries made by both current and past administrations of the said loot as
well as the others, usually through signed treaties.
But speaking at the second
International conference on combating illicit financial Flows (IFF) and
enhancing asset recovery for sustainable development in Abuja on Tuesday,
Geoffrey Onyema, minister of foreign affairs, said the difficulty in recovering
the loot is usually “mind-boggling.”
He said though developed
countries have been able to put in measures to help identify their citizens who
were transferring loot there, it is usually difficult for countries like
Nigeria.
“For developing countries as ourselves,
it’s so much more difficult – the kind of hurdles that we have to overcome,” he
said.
“Large sums of money have been
found in Jersey, for instance, and other countries are laying claim to it,
because in getting to Jersey, it passed through different jurisdictions. We
haven’t been able to get the money back.
“We got some money back from
Switzerland, but my God! When you look at the details, I was shocked and
extremely angry at the process of recovery. Percentages were paid out to all
kinds of institutions.
“To me, this is daylight robbery
that these countries are perpetrating, and of course playing on the fact that
we’re not the United States. So, it’s something we keep harping on, that these
countries have to do a lot more, because at the end of the day, they are
condoning huge theft and are accessories after the fact in fact.”
He added that when a country is
“making it difficult” for legitimate owners to recover looted funds, “then
you’re just as guilty of theft as those that transferred the money in the first
place. This is totally unacceptable and totally immoral.”
It is quite obvious that Buhari is a tribalistic person. Why does he often said that he has not seen anything that Abacha did wrong? It is either that he is one of the beneficial of the loots or tribalistic.
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