“Where are the audit findings?” – Sowore challenges Okonjo-Iweala over $2.4bn subsidy fraud claim

Activist and African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore has questioned World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s account of an alleged $2.4 billion fuel subsidy fraud in Nigeria, demanding that audit findings and investigation records be released, Sahara Reporters reports.

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua, Okonjo-Iweala again said her efforts to uncover the alleged fraud led to threats against her and the December 2012 kidnapping of her mother, Professor Kamene Okonjo. She said the abductors demanded that she resign as finance minister and leave the country.

In a post on X on Sunday, Sowore questioned the alleged link between the fraud and the abduction. “During her two terms at the center of Nigeria’s economic management (where she failed spectacularly), who exactly did she discover was responsible for this multibillion-dollar subsidy fraud?” he wrote.

He added: “Which companies and individuals were implicated? Where are the audit findings, investigation reports and records of prosecution?”

Sowore also criticised her book, “Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous,” saying it offered no sufficient evidence of who was responsible. He argued that the kidnapping should be examined separately from the fraud allegations unless evidence links the two.

Police investigations at the time, however, led to arrests. In April 2013, Lagos police announced the arrest of eight suspects who allegedly confessed to taking part in the kidnapping and collecting N13 million in ransom. A former palace guard at the family residence was named as a key suspect. These accounts do not establish whether the alleged subsidy fraud was connected to the crime.