By Adadareporters
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) alleges that the looted public funds recovered between 2016 and 2019 by the administration of former president Muhammadu Buhari have varnished from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
SERAP stated this via its verified X-page. The missing looted funds were discovered when the management of the CBN could not account for them, the group said, adding that the auditor-general of the Federation wants the CBN to account for the money.
Similarly, the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) had earlier disagreed with the Nigerian government on the amount of looted funds the latter said it recovered from 2015 to 2022.
Our correspondent reports that the Buhari-led government had claimed it recovered over one billion dollars allegedly looted by the administration within the period of seven and a half years.
The former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, who announced the figure while briefing journalists, said $1 billion in looted funds had so far been recovered by the Buhari-led administration.
Malami further said that the funds had been deployed to various sectors of the economy, including poverty alleviation.
But, Olanrewaju Suraju, Chairman of HEDA Resource Centre, said that the figure made public by the government was not accurate and completely false, stressing that the only thing that was correct about former President Buhari’s administration was the inconsistency in the stating and flaunting of figures, especially regarding asset recovery.
Suraju also lamented that the government’s asset recovery programme was not coordinated, adding that a serious government that values statistics and data could have been more constructive and responsible to provide data that covers international recoveries and local recoveries.
