PRESS RELEASE
As part of the campaign of falsehood against former Minister of
Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala by Edo Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, and other
powerful and corrupt interests, another baseless story has been published by
some online media.
*Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
To achieve their
evil propaganda objective of tarnishing her name, these evil elements have
distorted the contents of a memo dated January 20, 2015 in which the former
Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala responded to a request by the
former National Security Adviser, Col Ibrahim Dasuki (retired), for funds to
prosecute the terror war against Boko Haram.
Here are the facts:
· The central responsibility of
the Minister of Finance IS to find sources of funding for the financing of
approved national priorities such as security, job creation and
infrastructure.
· It will be recalled that
throughout 2014, there were public complaints by the military hierarchy to
President Goodluck Jonathan about the inadequacy of funds to fight the
anti-terror war in the North East, resulting in Boko Haram making gains and
even taking territories. A lot of the criticism was directed at the
Federal Ministry of Finance under Dr Okonjo-Iweala which was accused of not
doing enough to find funds for the operations.
*Sambo Dasuki
· In fact, the Ministry, on
several occasions, had to call press conferences to provide details of
budgetary spending on the military, to show, against the background of limited
resources and other urgent national priorities, that it was doing its best on
funding security.
· It was about this time that
some new Abacha funds of about $322m were returned with another $700m still
expected to be returned. (This is not to be confused with the Abacha funds
returned in 2005-2006 under the Obasanjo government whose use for developmental
purposes was monitored by the World Bank as earlier explained by Dr
Okonjo-Iweala).
· Former President Jonathan set
up a Committee comprising of the former Minister of Justice, former NSA and the
former Minister of Finance to determine how best to use both the returned
and expected funds for development.
· The NSA made a case for using
the returned funds for urgent security operations since, he noted, there cannot
be any development without peace and security. Based on this, a decision was
taken to deploy about $322m for the military operations, while the expected $700m
would be applied for development programmes as originally conceived.
· Following the discussions and
based on the urgency of the NSA’s memo, Dr Okonjo-Iweala requested the
President to approve the transfer of the requested amount to the NSA’s Office
for the specified purposes.
· But, as captured in the
memo, she insisted on three conditions:
(a). only a part, not the entire
Abacha funds would be spent on the arms; the rest would be invested in
developmental projects as originally conceived
(b). the money was to be treated as
borrowed funds which would be paid back as soon as possible
©. the NSA’s office was to account for
the spending to the President who was the Commander in Chief, given the fact
that the Minister of Finance is not part of the security architecture and does
not participate in the Security Council.
The attempt to link the former Minister’s name to any
misuse of these funds for any purpose other than security as far as she
understood it is totally false and cannot stand.
Paul C Nwabuikwu
Media Adviser to Dr Okonjo-Iweala
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The Memo By Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
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