Muhammadu Sanusi 11, the Emir of Kano, has revealed that Diezani Alison-Madueke, former minister of petroleum resources, was untouchable as she was the most powerful minister in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. He said no one had a confrontation with her and survived such effrontery.
He said: “I knew that taking on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was taking on the most powerful minister in Jonathan’s government, and nobody who had touched Diezani had survived. It was not a question of what would happen; I just didn’t care at that time. I did not want to go down in history as having seen this and kept quiet. After the first round of reconciliation, there was $29 billion that was explained. And how was that explained? Crude that was shipped by NNPC did not entirely belong to NNPC.”
According to the emir, some oil companies paid taxes and royalties in oil, and the NNPC sold this oil on behalf of FIRS, meaning FIRS got the money and not necessarily the federal government. “No reasonable explanation for $20 billion, $6 billion was with NPDC that had not gotten to the federation account till date.”
The former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, also said that Jonathan threatened him for writing a letter to inform Jonathan that $49 billion was missing from the account of the NNPC. According to Sanusi, the former president said that he (Jonathan) would rather resign than allow Sanusi to remain CBN governor.
Sanusi said when he wrote the letter to Jonathan in August 2013, the ex-President did nothing about it. He explained that it was when former President Olusegun Obasanjo made reference to his letter four months later that Jonathan got angry and decided to take action. He said unfortunately, Jonathan was more concerned with the fact that the letter leaked rather than sanction the people under whose watch the money went missing.
“In the middle of all these, the President called me and said I should see him at 3pm. I turned up at 3pm and the entire place had been swept. There was no one apart from security services. I got to his office; it was just me and him. It was as if everybody had been asked to go. And so he says to me, he’s calling me because he is surprised that the letter I wrote to him got to Obasanjo, I said I’m surprised too. He said he was convinced that the letter went from the CBN to Obasanjo, and I had 24 hours to find who leaked the letter or sack somebody; the director who prepared the letter or my secretary and if I did not sack them, it was proof that I leaked the letter and therefore, I should resign. I said to him that I’m surprised that I’m being asked to resign for raising an alarm over missing funds and the minister in charge of the portfolio is not being asked to resign,” said the former CBN governor.
Continuing, he said, “From then I knew I had signed my equivalent of a death warrant. But I said I was not resigning. He got very angry and said whether you like it or not, you’re going to leave that office, I cannot continue to work with you, either you or I will leave government.”
Sanusi, however, revealed that Rotimi Amaechi, former governor of Rivers State, had confessed to leaking the letter. Sanusi traced the current economic crisis to the stealing and lack of accountability, which characterised the Jonathan administration. He claimed that he had warned Jonathan that there would be inflation, unemployment and currency instability if leakages were jot plugged but sadly, nothing was done about it.