Showing posts with label Gen Sani Abacha loot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gen Sani Abacha loot. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Nigeria: From Looting To Sharing The ‘National Cake’

By Matthew Ozah
“Neighbour! How have you been? You seem a bit reserved these days. I hope there is nothing to worry about?”
“Hmm! There is so much to worry about in these perilous times. Even President Muhammadu Buhari is worried about 2019 elections especially with the way APC is metamorphosing. Well, as for me, my pocket is in recession and it is beginning to affect my blood pressure. Indeed, ignorance is a disease. You are here nursing agonizing distress while a scrum is receiving cash handout in your state from the Abacha’s recovered loot.”
*President Buhari 
“What are you talking about? That has got nothing to do with me and I feel let down for confiding in you about my discomfort?”
“Please pardon me jare! But how come you have not heard about the ‘Social Investment Programme,’ Buhari’s pet project to share the recently repatriated 322 million dollars Abacha loot among the poorest and most vulnerable households within 19 states in the country?” 

Friday, July 13, 2018

Burning Questions On Abacha’s Returned Loot

By Ayibakuro Matthew
Over the last week or so, there has been heightened interest amongst Nigerians about the use of the most recently repatriated $322.5 million Abacha loot.  The questions raised around the issue include the choice of using the money for the conditional cash transfer programme of the Federal Government, the choice of states benefitting from the programme, the usefulness of a monthly transfer of N5, 000 to poor Nigerians and concerns about the re-looting of the funds.
*Gen Sani Abacha 
It is significant to note at the onset that the concerns of most Nigerians about the use of the $322.5 million for the conditional cash transfer programme, instead of a legacy project with more visibility and impact, is both valid and understandable. However, the use of the funds for cash transfers is an outcome of months of negotiation that enabled the repatriation of the funds in the first place.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Paradoxica Nigeriana

By Dan Amor
Nigeria is a beautiful edifice built with bricks of contradictions. Somewhere between the idea and the reality hovers a huge geographical abstraction that beguiles the imagination. Situated at the Eastern end of the Gulf of Guinea, between the 4th and the 14th Parallels, Nigeria occupies a total area of 923,768 square kilometres, slightly more than the combined areas of France and Germany. From Lagos in the South-west to Maiduguri in the North-east is the distance between London and Warsaw.
*President Buhari 
Its population estimated at about 190 million, exceeds the combined population of all other countries in the West African sub-region of the Sahara. Endowed with enormous wealth, a dynamic population and an enviable talent for political compromise, Nigeria stood out in the 1960s as the potential leader of Africa, a continent in dire need of guidance. For, it was widely thought that Nigeria was immune from the wasteful diseases of tribalism, disunity and instability that remorselessly attacked so many other new African states. But when bursts of machine gunfire shattered the pre-dawn calm of Lagos its erstwhile Federal Capital in January 1966, it was now clear that Nigeria was no exception to Africa's common post-independence experience.