In a June 23, 2020, article titled “Sabiu Yusuf’s Fats Financial institution Accounts that Shocked CBN Governor” the place I revealed that Muhammadu Buhari’s relative Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf had salted away a lot cash in banks that even former CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, was so alarmed that he suggested him to divvy up the cash into completely different accounts, I stated, “The stench bomb of fetid corruption that can explode after Buhari leaves workplace could be so unprecedentedly malodorous it might deaden Nigeria’s collective nasal sensibility for a very long time.”
On the time, some folks thought I used to be merely being hyperbolic for literary impact. However isn’t that what is occurring now? Every single day, we’re regaled with tales of senseless, freewheeling theft of our public wealth by officers and relations of Muhammadu Buhari. And what we’ve realized to date is only a tip of the iceberg.
All that occurred throughout Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year reign was unstrained, stratospheric, eye watering corruption the size of which Nigeria had by no means skilled. It was a raucous, brazen, cheerfully irresponsible kleptocratic bazaar. Whereas occurred, governance took the backseat, main me to characterize Buhari’s reign because the period of “ungovernance.”
The Central Financial institution of Nigeria underneath Emefiele and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Catastrophe Administration and Social Growth underneath Sadiya Umar Farouq are competing for frontrunner standing as outposts of probably the most decadent kleptocratic predation.
Emefiele, whom I described in a Might 14, 2022, column as an “infernally incompetent, exceptionally corrupt, mind-blowingly self-serving, incomprehensibly clueless, overweeningly formidable, and cruelly insensitive” clown, turned the conduit for unmentionable monetary crimes towards Nigeria involving Buhari’s relations, shut associates, and associates. Whereas feathering his personal nest, he was a dutiful poodle of the consciencelessly thieving, ill-famed Aso Rock cabal, which humored him by telling him he would succeed Buhari in 2023.
“If somebody wrote a tragicomic drama script about Godwin Emefiele’s scandal-ridden reign as a central financial institution governor and his ludicrously insane makes an attempt to run for president utilizing the monetary and symbolic sources of the central financial institution whereas nonetheless a central financial institution governor who hurls consequence-free insults and desires dying upon critics for calling consideration to the manifest battle of curiosity that his presidential run represents, literary critics would pillory the script for its implausible plot,” I wrote about Emefiele in my Might 14, 2022 column titled “Emefiele: A Corrupt, Inept, Coronary heart-Assault-Loving Presidential Wannabe.”
Sadiya Umar Farouq’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Catastrophe Administration and Social Growth has additionally turned out to be probably the most putrid morasses of venality and fraud in the course of the Buhari years. She is now predictably dodging the EFCC utilizing the favourite tactic of Nigerian elites entwined within the internet of accounting for his or her corruption: pretense of sick well being.
Once I learn that the EFCC was inviting her to account for greater than N37 billion that she allegedly laundered, I used to be shocked by the “smallness” of the quantity in mild of what I do know concerning the magnitude of pillaging she perpetrated on the ministry. I used to be relieved after I learn a January 4th EFCC assertion saying, “We’re nonetheless tracing all of the transactions, therefore we can not put a determine to all the things now because the investigation remains to be ongoing.”
We’re speaking right here of a girl who spent greater than N500 million to feed non-existent schoolkids of their properties in Lagos, Ogun, and the FCT whereas faculties had been closed throughout COVID in 2020, a girl underneath whom, a 2017 Each day Nigerian report stated, dabinos price tens of millions of naira donated to IDPs by Saudi Arabia had been stolen throughout Ramadan (which she hasn’t denied) whereas she was Federal Commissioner answerable for the Nationwide Fee for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Individuals.
In a June 15, 2023, look on the Brekete Household radio present in Abuja, Muhammed Kazaure Gudaji, a member of the Home of Representatives representing the Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa, Yankwashi Constituency of Jigawa State who is legendary for his brutal forthrightness, verbal directness, and fewer than good English articulation, stated what most of us know.
A rock-ribbed Muhammadu Buhari partisan, Gudaji nonetheless identified that big theft of public sources befell in the course of the Buhari regime, and that if the federal government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu needed to be taken critically, it should examine 12 high-profile personages of the Buhari regime.
He gave their names as Godwin Emefiele; former EFCC chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa (and Magu, too); Group Managing Director of NNPC Mele Kolo Kyari; Former Justice Minister and Lawyer Common of the Federation Abubakar Malami; former FIRS chairman Muhammad Mamman Nami; Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf; DG of NIMSA Bashir Jamoh; Mohammed Bello-Koko of the Nigerian Ports Authority; Hadiza Bala Usman additionally previously of NPA; all CBN deputy governors who served with Emefiele; and the “total leaders of the Nationwide Inter-Financial institution Settlement System.”
I’ve no data of the corrupt dealings of everybody on Gudaji’s checklist— or whether or not, the truth is, he has a foundation to accuse them of colossal corruption—however I’ve realized to not dismiss the person with a wave of the hand due to his rhetorical unsophistication. And the truth that Emefiele, Bawa, Sadiya, and a few CBN deputy governors are underneath probe months after his plea to Tinubu ought to inform us that he isn’t a flippant blabbermouth.
After all, Buhari is conscious of the huge corruption that befell in his authorities. I do know for a truth, for instance, that he was conscious of Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf’s ill-gotten wealth. I’ve additionally been reliably knowledgeable that he helped cowl the corruption of relations who had been caught overseas with unusually massive quantities of money.
Two weeks in the past, as an illustration, somebody near the Buhari household shared with me a disturbing story of the last-minute monkey enterprise that the Buhari household perpetrated with Buhari’s personal lively connivance.
He wrote: “The son of a really distinguished Nigerian (he held no official position, however was probably the most highly effective Nigerian after PMB) within the earlier authorities was arrested and detained for two days in England for bringing into the nation money price tens of millions of {dollars}/kilos.
“The Nigerian authorities, with direct intervention of the previous president Buhari, intervened and used the Nigerian embassy in London to rescue the son who’s in his 30s and associated to PMB. This occurred when PMB was in Saudi Arabia for the lesser hajj so you’ll be able to guess the interval it occurred.
“The cash was seized by the UK authorities initially, however the Nigerian excessive fee in London insisted that the cash was meant for ‘safety’. They bought the cash again and handed it over to the younger man who stashed it away in London in preparation for them leaving energy.”
Though I’ve not independently verified the authenticity of this disturbing story, I’ve chosen to share it publicly as a result of it’s in step with a sample I’m deeply aware of. The approaching days will reveal the monetary crimes Buhari, his household, and associates dedicated towards Nigeria.
Sadly, a number of the crimes Buhari’s folks dedicated in his eight-year reign are reappearing now. It has now come to mild, for instance, that Betta Chimaobim Edu, the successor to Sadiya Umar Farouq has began the identical sample of her predecessor.
In a leaked December 20, 2023, memo to the Accountant-Common of the Federation, Edu instructed that cash designated for “Weak Teams in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Ogun and Lagos,” which amounted to greater than N500 million, needs to be paid into the personal UBA account of a Bridget Mojisola Oniyelu in violation of Nigeria’s public sector monetary regulation regulation.
The regulation says public cash mustn’t, underneath any circumstance, be paid into personal financial institution accounts. “Any officer who pays public cash into a personal checking account is deemed to have carried out so with fraudulent intentions,” part 713 of the Act says.
This can be a momentous second for Tinubu. If he doesn’t hearth Edu forthwith and convey her to justice, he has already misplaced the ethical excessive floor to strive Buhari’s corrupt honchos.
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