VANGUARD
It may never be known whether the man, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would have gone ahead to contest in the 2023 presidential election if he had an idea of what had gone down under the eight-year rule of Muhammadu Buhari.
It may also never be known whether President Bola Tinubu would have acted differently and not be “possessed with courage”, had he seen the books and known how much of Nigeria’s commonwealth had been stolen by a few, fat cats in the Buhari administration, on Monday, May 29, 2023, when he announced the removal of subsidy on PMS.
Nigerians may not know whether Tinubu would still have gone ahead even if he had an idea of what had been stolen, just to fulfill a said messianic calling of rescuing Nigeria and charting a pathway for progress.
However, what is now known is that billions of dollars were “made away with by some players in the Buhari administration”, a presidency source disclosed to Saturday Vanguard last week.
What is also known, today, is that beyond the bravado and braggadocio President Tinubu puts up in public, he has a niggling headache about how to recover the quantum of funds stolen and what to do with the culprits.
Obaze’s Act
For security and intelligence gathering reasons, Saturday Vanguard was counselled by a very dependable Aso Rock source not to name names yet and to be careful in presenting details of an ongoing investigation into how billions of dollars disappeared.
This is because even Jim Obaze, the Special Investigator appointed by President Tinubu, has not been sitting pretty on the job as a result of constant meddling and needless interference from a few powerful players in the present administration.
But the source said “Obaze is undeterred. And Tinubu is backing him all the way in the investigation.
“Whatever you think you have heard before now would peter into insignificance in the face of what is being discovered”, the source said.
How it started
But it all first started as an unverified and unverifiable report that some powerful and influential operators close to President Buhari had become stupendously rich at the expense of Nigeria’s treasury.
Figures in the billions of dollars were said to have been traced to some of them. The figures were too high to be believed prompting one of the sources contacted to ask: “Is it that some of these people you are talking about were the ones to whom funds for the purchase of our crude oil were paid? Did they pay these people directly for crude oil sales or what?’
Billions of dollars traced to individuals
Well, after weeks of investigation, Saturday Vanguard can, indeed, confirm that billions of dollars have been traced to certain individuals.
A source privy to what is going on said that “some of the figures you get to hear are troubling. What does anybody want to do with $6 billion? What does anybody want to do with $8 billion? These figures are something else”.
But how did these disclosures come to light?
Weekend Vanguard discovered that President Tinubu gave Obaze the Magna Charter to dig into any and everything that had to do with how funds from Nigeria’s treasury disappeared or found their way into private hands.
Axes of financial malfeasances
It was in the course of pursuing leads at the CBN and the presidency that some authorised and unauthorised transfers and outright cash withdrawals were discovered.
From over-invoicing to forgeries, unauthorised releases, influence-peddling, funds diversion, arms deals, forex deals and other financial malfeasances, funds were traced and tracked to some influential operators in the last administration.
Saturday Vanguard was made to understand that monies printed using the instrumentality of ways and means, amounting to over N30 Trillion during the Buhari administration, suffered a series of alleged mishaps, leading to diversion and unaccountability.
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