Former head of Nigerian oil company under investigation

LAGOS, Tuesday

A former head of Nigeria’s state-run oil company is under investigation after almost 10 million United States dollars (USD) in cash was found at a property he owns.

The anti-corruption agency Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it had seized USD9.8 million from a house belonging to Mr Andrew Yakubu.

A further 74,000 British pounds was found at the property in the northern city of Kaduna.

Images of the money, stacked in neat bundles and allegedly discovered in a safe, have featured prominently in the country’s media for several days.

Nigeria is currently in recession and desperately in need of cash, having been hit hard by the slump in global oil prices since mid-2014 that has squeezed revenue and pushed up inflation.

Politics watchers have pointed out the money could have financed a string of much-needed conventional and renewable power projects outlined in the 2017 federal budget.

EFCC spokesman Wilson Uwujaren refused to be drawn on what would happen next. “We are still investigating the matter,” he told AFP. “At the end of our investigation we shall decide on our next line of action... Nothing is ruled out.”

In his defence, Yakubu has denied any wrongdoing. He admitted the money belonged to him but said it was a gift from friends.

MANAGING DIRECTOR

Yakubu was the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) from 2012 to 2014, having been appointed by then president Goodluck Jonathan.

In early 2014, Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, outraged Mr Jonathan and his government claiming the NNPC had failed to remit USD20 billion in revenue.

The allegation of corruption cost Mr Sanusi his job, officially on charges of “financial recklessness and misconduct”, but his supporters saw the dismissal as politically motivated.

Mr Jonathan and his oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke repeatedly maintained that nothing like USD20 billion was missing.

Yakubu was dismissed in 2014. Critics said he did little to clean up the NNPC’s reputation as one of the world’s most opaque and corrupt state oil companies.

Since coming to power in May, 2015, Mr Jonathan’s successor, Mr Muhammadu Buhari, has made it his mission to reclaim what he says were “mind-boggling” sums of looted public cash.

One of his first moves as president was to overhaul the NNPC, by trying to introduce greater transparency and efficiency.

Ms Alison-Madueke has been caught up in the anti-corruption drive.

She is currently facing fraud charges in Nigeria and the prospect of having to forfeit USD153 million to the government on suspicion of the sum having been obtained illegally.

ALLEGEDLY SIPHONED

A court in Lagos was told on January 6 that the cash was allegedly siphoned from the NNPC and stashed in three bank accounts. Ms Alison-Madueke has rejected the claim. The former president of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has been on police bail in London since October, 2015 after being arrested in connection with a British investigation into international corruption and money laundering.

Mr Buhari’s information minister Lai Mohammed on Sunday announced that some USD151 million and eight billion naira in stolen state funds had been recovered from just three people.

The USD9.8 million found at Yakubu’s house was not part of the new recoveries, he said.

Mr Debo Adeniran, from the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders lobby group, said those responsible should be made an example of and “not go scot-free”.

“They should be put in special cells with their names and former offices boldly written on their prison uniforms so that the young ones can see those responsible for their problems,” he said.

“There should be no sacred cows,” he said.