The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of trying sweep under the carpet allegations that $322 Abacha loot repatriated from Switzerland was being abused.
Recall that the federal government had said the money would be shared among the poor households in selected 19 states of the federation.
In a statement made available to National Daily, Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary of the PDP wondered why the government had not acted on the report by the House of Reps which implicated the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Abubakar Malami in some fraudulent deals during the recovery of the money.
It would be recalled that office of Malami had been alleged that he re-engaged two lawyers to “help” with the repatriation of money stolen by Abacha.
National Daily gathered the lawyers were to be paid $17 million (over N6 billion) for their services, an amount nearly thrice more than what was already paid to Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, for the same job which he was yet to complete before Nigeria mysteriously decided to engage another set of lawyers.
Malami was reported to have suddenly appointed Oladipo Okpeseyi, a senior advocate, and Temitope Isaac Adebayo, in 2016 apparently to duplicate the job of the Swiss lawyer.

Incidentally, Okpeseyi and Adebayo were lawyers to the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the legacy party of Buhari. Malami was legal adviser to the party.

Ologbondiyan challenged Buhari to order Malami to reveal the owners of the consulting firm that was reportedly paid billions of naira to “share” the fund.

He said the process did not pass through the constitutionally required approval of the national assembly, challenging the President to publish publish names of the beneficiaries of the repatriated $322m (approximately N116bn) loot.

“President Buhari needs to note that Nigerians are utterly dismayed that having hitherto postured as a man of integrity, he has taken no steps against this bare-faced atrocity where over 90 percent of supposed beneficiaries of the repatriated fund are phony names supplied by fraudulent officials of his government,” the statement read.

“Nigerians are completely at a loss on why President Buhari always fail to take bold steps to expose and deal with corrupt and sharp practices by his appointees and leaders of his APC, even when such nefarious acts are directly against the less-privileged citizens already suffering the harsh economic realities of his administration.

“Since this issue was raised and the PDP called for a legislative scrutiny, the federal government and the APC have kept mum, perhaps, thinking that by their silence, it will be swept under the carpet like others in the past.”