By Eric Elezuo
Listening to the Chip Whip of the 10th Senate, who is representing Borno South senatorial zone, Senator Ali Ndume, during a live interview on Friday, one cannot help but reminisce on the colossal looting that was reported during the eight inglorious years of former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Ndume, also a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), had in no hidden terms alluded to the ineptitude that existed while Buhari held sway as president, stressing that the country was run aground, even as the president showed little or no supervisory role, as result of the massive corruption and thievery of commonwealth, which became rampant among public officers and their cronies, and unchecked.
Speaking on the live TV show, Ndume claimed that the Buhari administration was replete with men and women, who were kleptomaniacs in nature.
He said, while making an attempt to defend the present hardship under President Bola Tinubu, “The President here is in charge. He takes charge, unlike our former President. That President will just give you an assignment, he will not look over you,”
He added, “That is where the problem is and he (Buhari) knows that. That was the mistake President Buhari made. He ended up confessing these days that he had more kleptocrats in his government. I said it before, and now he admitted it that there were some kinds of people that took over power to themselves.”
Ndume, however, is not the only APC stalwart that has criticised the administration of Buhari, regarding it as a failed venture. Earlier in November, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, said the past administration, led by Buhari bankrupted the nation.
Ribadu spoke during the Chief of Defence Intelligence annual conference, saying that the incumbent government inherited a “bankrupt country”, adding that the federal government is “paying back what was taken” by Buhari and officials, their cronies and family members.
Buhari had been foisted on Nigerians following the 2015 general election as a saint; glorious, incorruptible, above board and disciplined. However, the former military ruler, who was making a comeback to the Nigerian seat of power, practically frittered all the goodwill and integrity away in an eight years, many stakeholders have described as clueless, topsy-turvy and devoid of administration mechanism.
While Buhari came as the one, who was supposedly going to fix alleged maladministration of the 16 years of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rule, reports available to The Boss shows that massive corruption and looting took root in the government with members of the first having a substantial dose of the inanities.
In 2018, it was reported that a scandal brewed.within the household of Buhari, when the Aide De Camp of Buhari’s wife Aisha Buhari, was accused of fraud to the tune of N2.5 billion
Mrs. Buhari alleged that her ADC, Sani Baba-Inna, a Chief Superintendent of Police, received huge donations from politicians and business people on her behalf and then kept the cash to himself, and went ahead to request the then Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to arrest and compel him to refund the money. The officer in question however, denied the allegation.
Immediately the police received the petition from Mrs Buhari, the ADC was arrested on Friday last week and investigation launched.
The IG said the matter must be investigated immediately and the house of the ADC was raided,” one of our sources said.
“Shockingly, investigators only found N1,200 cash in the House. His bank account was also investigated and had only a balance of N30,000 while the transaction records showed that most credits to the account were his salaries and allowances.”
The police, it was gathered, concluded that Mrs Buhari must have been wrongly informed as there was nothing to show or prove that such huge sums of money was in the custody of Mr Baba-Inna.
An associate of Mr. Baba-Inna said the police contacted those named as donors of the controversial funds but that they all denied making the donations attributed to them.
“For instance, one of those named was the IG of Police himself,” the source said. “But the IG said he has never passed any money through Baba-Inna.”
When Mrs Buhari was informed of the outcome of police investigation, the source said the first lady flared up and accused the police of colluding “to protect one of their own”.
She then reportedly asked the State Security Service (SSS) to take over the case and get her money back”.
A stakeholder told the Boss that that was corruption worked as at the time with stringent alibis, supported by some law enforcement agencies.
The case of Buhari’s nephew, Sadie Yisuf, also know as Tunde Idiagbon, who is the son of Mamman Daura’s immediate younger sister, Hajia Halima, who died in 2018, was also widely reported regarding his ‘looting’ tendencies.
Known as billionaire (some even refer to him as a trillionaire, Yusuf was said to be previously a recharge card seller before his uncle hit limelight in Aso Rock.
According to reports, the youngman, who is in his 30s, quietly retired to the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA) supposedly with the biggest retirement benefit from loot said to run into billions of dollars.
According to SaharaReporters, Yusuf, said to be the youngest wealthiest men, secured a form of diplomatic immunity from prosecution through his appointment to the National Intelligence Agency, according to sources in the Presidency, an appointment he got despite not attending the compulsory training for cadets.
The paper also reported that Yusuf spent $100 million to help Kano-born oil billionaire Alhaji Auwalu Abdullahi Rano, the executive chairman and CEO of holding company A. A. Rano Group, start Rano Air.
Rano Air is a licensed airline, incorporated in 2021 with its operational base in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. When it started, it proposed to operate in Nigeria and beyond but start with eight local stations – Abuja, Kano, Lagos, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Kaduna, Yola and Asaba.
He is also said to be the proud owner of several mansions in Abuja, sources available to the paper confided.
In 2020, there allegations of high scale stealing by members of the Buhari family including Sabiu Yusuf.
Reports monitored on the media space said that authorities in the United States commenced investigations into the massive looting of Nigeria’s treasury by members of President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabal.
The report claimed that sources at the U.S State Department and the Department of Justice, DOJ, tracked money laundering activities of Buhari’s Personal Assistant and Private Secretary, Sabiu ‘Tunde’ Yusuf, Senior Special Assistant, Domestic, Sarki Abba, Mamman Daura, and Ismaila Isa and Abubakar Isa Funtua from 2016 to 2019 in the United Arab Emirate and the United Kingdom.
The embattled former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, has also been fingered as one of those who supervised looting of the economy under the watch of former President Buhari. His emergence as governor in 2014, according to a columnist, created a ‘powerful three-man cabal and it quickly designed a roundtripping scheme and made billions under President Buhari. Again, Emefiele was a willing tool in their hands because they too kept telling him that “the president is in the know and he is part of it”. It was a big bazaar!’
“All they did was roundtripping the dollars from one market to the other. Every morning, they would wake up with calculators to compute the billions of naira they were making in profit.” The columnist added that “these people were so wealthy that one of them bought a bank and a mobile telecommunications company without moving from his chair.”
Rumors had it that one of Buhari’s uncles, Mamman Daura, took ill immediately it was announced that Emefiele has been arrested by the DSS on June 14, 2023. It’s not hard to imagine as the so called member of the powerful Aso Rock cabal, was in cohort with the apex bank on the FX trade scandal.
Adding a new twist to the Emefiele and Buhari administration corruption scandal saga, aformer member of the house of representatives, representing the Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa, Yankwashi Constituency of Jigawa State, fingered 12 persons to be investigated in order to “recover Nigeria’s stolen money”.
As captured by TheCable, he described the former CBN governor is the most powerful person in the country, who could make anyone a billionaire within an hour.
“If he wants to make you a billionaire, you’ll be in less than 1hr; he’ll just give you $10m at the official rate and you sell at the black market,” he said.
“There are twelve people the president should investigate. The first person, if we want to bring back the economy of this country, we have to arrest and investigate CBN governor who is now under investigation.
“Thirdly, the GMD of the NNPC. Number four, the former minister of justice, Malami. Number five, Sabiu Tunde, who was the personal private secretary to former President Buhari.
“Number six, the chairman of FIRS. Then there is Jamoh, the NIMASA DG. Then there is Koko from the NPA, and Hadiza Bala, the former NPA chairman.
“All present CBN deputy governors that are working with Emefiele should come and open their eyes and mouths and tell what they know, if we are serious and want to restore the economy.
“Then number ten, we have to arrest and investigate Sadiya Umar Farouk, former minister of humanitarian affairs, because when you invite her, many of her colleagues will come into the investigation.
“Then the entire leaders of National Inter-bank Settlement System (NIBSS). The entire leaders and the ICT officers are supposed to be investigated because they are the ones who will tell you where all the bank charges and the stamp duty went. Because it’s from there the money goes to CBN.”
Kazaure also said the way corruption is fought in the country has become known to individuals who embezzle money.
Again, following the failed Air Nigeria project, a former Minister of Aviation, Hadi Srika, is said to pocketed a whopping N15.9 billion, for doing nothing. A wholesome others are also enameled in this odious cycle of kleptocracy.
A very sad development to the corruption saga involving the Buhari administration is that most of the public officers suspected to be enemies of the Nigerian economy are still walking free except for Emefiele. This is a story that does not only say that Buhari did not just made a second coming of proven kleptocracy, but everything is pointing to the fact that the present administration is looking like the third coming of Buhari.
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