Former President Goodluck Jonathan, on Thursday, revisited claims that over $49billion oil money was missing from the government coffers under his watch in 2014, noting that the narrative was not true.
Jonathan made the assertion during the launch of a book, ‘Public Policy And Agent Interests:
Perspectives From The Emerging World’, co-authored by a former minister of Finance, Dr. Shamshudeen Usman, who served as minister of planning under his administration.
The allegation about the missing money was made by the then Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) now Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, who incidentally is a contributor to the book.
In the book, Emir Sanusi apparently made reference to the saga, which he claimed led to his sack as CBN governor by President Jonathan.
But, Jonathan, who chaired the book launch event, in his opening remark, said as much as he agreed with the concept of the book and recommended it for research and policy framing, he disagreed with Sanusi’s claim on the missing $49bn.
The former president, who said Sanusi was not sacked but suspended, said there was no way such a huge amount of money would be stolen in Nigeria and the impact won’t be felt.
He said that for a country whose budget was about $32bn at the time, it was impossible for the $49bn to have been stolen from the country’s treasury.
Jonathan also recounted how he was confronted by the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, over the matter and that he explained that such money couldn’t have been stolen from a struggling country.
He, however, said he was vindicated about the porosity of the claims after the former CBN governor began to change the narrative from $49bn to $20bn and later $12bn.
“Let mention that I did not agree completely with some issues raised by one of the contributors. But I don’t intend to join issues because he is our royal father. And he is here.
“The one he raised that he was sacked because he blew a whistle that the Federal Government lost $49.8billion is not quite correct. He was not sacked, he was suspended because the Financial Reporting Council queried the expenditure of CBN. And there were serious infractions that needed to be looked at. That was the reason. But somehow, the time was short. So before we finished, his tenure elapsed. Probably, he would have been called back.
“On the issue of $49.8billion, till today I am not convinced that the Federal Government lost $49.8 billion,” the former President stated.
Jonathan further added that PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PWC), which investigated the matter, revealed that no such amount was stolen but that $1.48bn could not be accounted for by the NNPC at the time.
He also recalled that the then Senate Committee on Finance, led by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, investigated the issue and didn’t find the claims to be true.
LEADERSHIP reports that Emir Sanusi II, who is currently present at the occasion, might respond to former President Jonathan’s remark afterwards.
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