The controversial statement of President Muhammadu Buhari that $16 billion was spent on power and there was no electricity under the watch of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and the subsequent demand by certain activists for the investigation of the former President and others, has provoked revelations on the genuine amount disbursed by the federal government during the years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and how the $16 billion figure was fictional by Obasanjo’s antagonists.
National Daily investigation revealed that A Presidential Panel of Inquiry headed by the then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan set up by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua conjectures a lie to the power project transactions after the same administration dismissed Engr F. Somolu, Secretary of NIPP, who first raised alarm to the falsehood that $16 had been spent on power project.
The Panel of Inquiry which officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had discovered that only $3.7 billion was disbursed from the $10 billion budgeted for the project while the balance of $6.3 billion was deposited in an escrow account at the CBN.
National Daily gathered that the CBN confirmed the deposited balance to the panel and it was published.
Thereafter, Tanimu Yakubu then Economic Adviser to President Yar’Adua, was discovered to have commenced propaganda of blackmail against former President Obasanjo and Engr. Somolu. However, late President Yar’Adua wrote a secret memo from the State House to correct the wrong information about $10 billion spent on power project.
National Daily further gathered that former Speaker Dimeji Bankole of the House of Representatives, engaged in deeper propaganda that more $6 billion was spent on the controversial power project; that was how the $16 billion expenditure came into public discourse. The Investigative Panel did confirm that Engr. Somolu earlier attested to the genuine figure.
It was said that this record is in the Ministry of Power, the Presidency and CBN; ironically, Google still retains the record of $16 earlier propagated.
Perhaps, President Buhari either did not request for official records on the power project or deliberate finds solace in using the false information for political blackmail of the former President, Dr. Obasanjo.
A stakeholder in the Nigerian project had admonished: “before you forward this piece of falsehood and propaganda, find out through intensive research! Obasanjo didn’t spend $16 billion on Power Project. Tanimu and Bankole sexed up the figures to de-market Obasanjo at the time. And that was the beginning of a two-year wait for power project in Nigeria.”