Jonathan Minister Approached Me With Offer To Return N50 Billion – El Rufai Tells New York Times
Elrufai, who spoke to internationally acclaimed publication, The New York Times, said the minister approached him wanting to return the loot. He however did not disclose the name of the minister.
His claims and other revelations about the effects the anti-corruption body language is having on the misguided political elite are contained in Saturday edition of the paper.
Read the article:
Private jets that used to crowd the airport here have been grounded, their wings clipped by the new government’s crackdown on corruption. Rolls-Royces, Range Rovers and Jaguars are gathering dust in the showroom of this capital’s top car dealer. Luxury villas are left unsold, as is the fine Italian marble used to bedeck the homes of Nigeria’s newly rich.
Since assuming power in May on a pledge to root out the graft that has long permeated Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari has squeezed the flow of public funds in an effort to clean up Africa’s biggest economy.
He has put many public projects on hold to review the contracts, and ordered many government ministries, departments and agencies to consolidate their bank accounts for closer monitoring of financial transactions. He has overhauled the management of the state oil company, while also moving to retrieve stolen money.
In recent days, the campaign escalated with the arrest of two high-profile figures: Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former oil minister whose five-year tenure was marred by recurring accusations of widespread theft; and the chairman of a Nigerian oil company. Both were held as part of inquiries into corruption and money laundering.
“Those actions will sustain the fear that the culture of impunity is over and government’s will to prosecute is strong,” said Adams Oshiomhole, a governor leading a national panel investigating federal graft. “There’s no more free money flowing because of the attempts by the president to block it, but also the fear that, ‘If I’m caught now, I’ll be prosecuted.’”
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is the continent’s top oil producer and one of the biggest producers in the world. Yet corruption has undermined the nation, helping to keep 68 percent of its population living on less than $1.25 a day and perpetuating instability, especially the long-running conflict with Boko Haram.
Whether Mr. Buhari can maintain the pressure against graft, much less transform a society where corruption thrives at all levels, is far from clear. Over the years, previous assaults on the problem have fizzled. Mr Buhari himself first rose to power in a military coup in the 1980s, waging a self-described “war against indiscipline” during his short reign as military ruler.
But this year, with national frustration boiling over corruption and the rampages of Boko Haram, the extremist group that has terrorized northern Nigeria, Mr. Buhari won the presidential election in March as the head of an opposition alliance that is tasting power for the first time. Now many politicians and businessmen say he is facing growing pressure to reward the faithful.
The widening anti-corruption drive has chilled the economy elsewhere in the country, but nowhere has its impact been felt as keenly as here in the capital.
At Coscharis, the leading dealer of luxury cars here, Happiness Adibe has been going through her worst year in her nine years as a saleswoman. Last year was her strongest: a record number of buyers, mostly businessmen and politicians, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying Range Rovers and Jaguars from her. Seventy percent of her customers paid cash.
“There’s no money now, no money,” Ms. Adibe said. “Contracts aren’t going on now, everything is standing still. When contracts are going on, people are getting contracts and doing their, you know, thing.”
At Royal Choice — a gated community of villas selling for up to $1.8 million each, some furnished according to a London, New York, Dubai or Shanghai theme — Joshua Bialonwu has not scored a single sale since the new government took over. Under the previous administration, customers often bought villas in cash.
On a tour through Royal Choice’s eerily deserted streets and inside several villas, each empty except for a guard and a cellphone charging from a wall, Mr. Bialonwu explained why sales had dried up.
“With the uncertainties of the government presently, nobody knows how much you might be asked to return,” Mr. Bialonwu said. “So you want to hold on to as much as you can.”
Negotiations over what to do with ill-gotten gains are taking place quietly.
Nasir El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna state and a member of the panel investigating graft, said that associates of one former minister had approached him with an offer to return $250 million.
“When you say you want to refund, it means you are admitting that you took what was not yours,” Mr. Rufai said. “I said, ‘I am a governor, I am not involved in this. I will pass on your message.’
[i][/i]
Many officials and businessmen said that graft under former President Goodluck Jonathan reached levels not seen since military rule ended in 1999. Billions of dollars are believed to have disappeared from activities related to the oil industry, the source of 80 percent of all government revenues.
Last year, after the governor of the country’s central bank asserted that billions of dollars in oil revenue owed to the treasury was missing from public coffers, he was removed from his post.
The missing funds could amount to “$10.8 billion or $12 billion or $19 billion or $21 billion — we do not know at this point,” the bank governor wrote to the Nigerian Senate before his dismissal, adding that the problem could “bring the entire economy to its knees.”
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the state oil company, spent half of what it collected on its own operations, Mr. Rufai said.
“The corrupt try to take money under the table,” he said. “Under Jonathan’s government, it is done so openly, with records. People actually document the diversion of funds. You just wonder, what is wrong with them.”
The loss of oil revenues has left many of Nigeria’s 36 states bankrupt or nearly bankrupt, unable to pay salaries.Private jets that used to crowd the airport here have been grounded, their wings clipped by the new government’s crackdown on corruption. Rolls-Royces, Range Rovers and Jaguars are gathering dust in the showroom of this capital’s top car dealer. Luxury villas are left unsold, as is the fine Italian marble used to bedeck the homes of Nigeria’s newly rich.
Since assuming power in May on a pledge to root out the graft that has long permeated Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari has squeezed the flow of public funds in an effort to clean up Africa’s biggest economy.
He has put many public projects on hold to review the contracts, and ordered many government ministries, departments and agencies to consolidate their bank accounts for closer monitoring of financial transactions. He has overhauled the management of the state oil company, while also moving to retrieve stolen money.
In recent days, the campaign escalated with the arrest of two high-profile figures: Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former oil minister whose five-year tenure was marred by recurring accusations of widespread theft; and the chairman of a Nigerian oil company. Both were held as part of inquiries into corruption and money laundering.
“Those actions will sustain the fear that the culture of impunity is over and government’s will to prosecute is strong,” said Adams Oshiomhole, a governor leading a national panel investigating federal graft. “There’s no more free money flowing because of the attempts by the president to block it, but also the fear that, ‘If I’m caught now, I’ll be prosecuted.’”
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is the continent’s top oil producer and one of the biggest producers in the world. Yet corruption has undermined the nation, helping to keep 68 percent of its population living on less than $1.25 a day and perpetuating instability, especially the long-running conflict with Boko Haram.
Whether Mr. Buhari can maintain the pressure against graft, much less transform a society where corruption thrives at all levels, is far from clear. Over the years, previous assaults on the problem have fizzled. Mr Buhari himself first rose to power in a military coup in the 1980s, waging a self-described “war against indiscipline” during his short reign as military ruler.
But this year, with national frustration boiling over corruption and the rampages of Boko Haram, the extremist group that has terrorized northern Nigeria, Mr. Buhari won the presidential election in March as the head of an opposition alliance that is tasting power for the first time. Now many politicians and businessmen say he is facing growing pressure to reward the faithful.
The widening anti-corruption drive has chilled the economy elsewhere in the country, but nowhere has its impact been felt as keenly as here in the capital.
At Coscharis, the leading dealer of luxury cars here, Happiness Adibe has been going through her worst year in her nine years as a saleswoman. Last year was her strongest: a record number of buyers, mostly businessmen and politicians, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying Range Rovers and Jaguars from her. Seventy percent of her customers paid cash.
“There’s no money now, no money,” Ms. Adibe said. “Contracts aren’t going on now, everything is standing still. When contracts are going on, people are getting contracts and doing their, you know, thing.”
At Royal Choice — a gated community of villas selling for up to $1.8 million each, some furnished according to a London, New York, Dubai or Shanghai theme — Joshua Bialonwu has not scored a single sale since the new government took over. Under the previous administration, customers often bought villas in cash.
On a tour through Royal Choice’s eerily deserted streets and inside several villas, each empty except for a guard and a cellphone charging from a wall, Mr. Bialonwu explained why sales had dried up.
“With the uncertainties of the government presently, nobody knows how much you might be asked to return,” Mr. Bialonwu said. “So you want to hold on to as much as you can.”
Negotiations over what to do with ill-gotten gains are taking place quietly.
Nasir El-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna state and a member of the panel investigating graft, said that associates of one former minister had approached him with an offer to return $250 million.
“When you say you want to refund, it means you are admitting that you took what was not yours,” Mr. Rufai said. “I said, ‘I am a governor, I am not involved in this. I will pass on your message.’
[i][/i]
Many officials and businessmen said that graft under former President Goodluck Jonathan reached levels not seen since military rule ended in 1999. Billions of dollars are believed to have disappeared from activities related to the oil industry, the source of 80 percent of all government revenues.
Last year, after the governor of the country’s central bank asserted that billions of dollars in oil revenue owed to the treasury was missing from public coffers, he was removed from his post.
The missing funds could amount to “$10.8 billion or $12 billion or $19 billion or $21 billion — we do not know at this point,” the bank governor wrote to the Nigerian Senate before his dismissal, adding that the problem could “bring the entire economy to its knees.”
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the state oil company, spent half of what it collected on its own operations, Mr. Rufai said.
“The corrupt try to take money under the table,” he said. “Under Jonathan’s government, it is done so openly, with records. People actually document the diversion of funds. You just wonder, what is wrong with them.”
The loss of oil revenues has left many of Nigeria’s 36 states bankrupt or nearly bankrupt, unable to pay salaries.
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