Former Chairman of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), Okoi Obono-Obla, has alleged that looted property discovered under former President Muhammadu Buhari was eventually returned to looters.
Obono-Obla, who stated this during an interview with Nigerian journalist, Seun Okinbaloye on Mic On Podcast, said all his efforts to bring many looters to justice in the country were thwarted by the former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and other officials of the Buhari administration.
He said: “Some of the items I found were returned to the looters.
“There was a case where I recovered more than 80 new Mercedes Benz X class cars (armored) from Jabi, Abuja.
“I wrote to the Director General, Customs and the Federal Internal Revenue Service to ask whether the person paid import duties and taxes on the vehicle; they said No.
“We got a temporary seizure order from the court pending the hearing of the case. So, I sent a memo to Malami to inform him about what we were doing, but he said that he never ordered me to do the things that I was investigating.
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“Another case was a sitting senator who later became Senate President. I found his story in the Panama Papers, which stated that he had properties in offshore islands; I had no authority to investigate him because he was overseas, so I went to the NIA Directorate General and asked for his help to cooperate,” he said.
Obono-Obla also claimed that the anti-corruption campaign under Buhari failed due to the influence of Malami and others.
“We didn’t do well. When Magu, the former EFCC chairman and I left, we no longer heard anything about eradicating corruption. We both suffered a similar fate; we trample and are too stubborn. In fact, Malami’s close colleague once said to me, ‘you — Obla and Magu — are very stubborn.
“All the problems I had, Malami was behind it. The President wouldn’t have fired me without his input. He would joke to my wife that I had now gotten back the billions of dollars that I wanted to get back from the company that sent me.
“I was not dismissed, I was only temporarily dismissed and until now the temporary dismissal has not been revoked,” added the former investigator.
We found 80 Mercedes Benz S class cars; some of the items I recovered were returned to the people we recovered them from.
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