Francis Kadiri, Abuja
The Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay says there was massive looting of the country’s treasury even during the administration of presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan adding that all hands must be on deck to restore sanity to the Nigeria economy.
Sagay, a constitutional law expert and Senior Advocate of Nigeria noted that top government officials and businessmen illicitly enriched themselves with public funds amounting to 1.35 trillion naira, stating that the figure was captured in a study related to only six years from 2006 to 2013.
According to the human rights activist who was Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Benin, ‘fifty five public officials and businessmen under the administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo, Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan stole over N1.35trillion.”
The constitutional lawyer made the disclosure in Abuja, at the Conference on Promoting International Co-operation in Combating Illicit Financial Flows and Enhancing Asset Recovery to Foster Sustainable Development.
He said ‘the figure of looted funds in the period under review was much higher when fuel subsidy scam, billion arms purchase scam, hundreds of millions of dollars taken from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation by a former minister to bribe election officials in 2015, are taken into consideration,” adding that loot must be uncovered and recovered as a strategy to restore sanity to the country’s economy.
