Daily Post / Nigeria: Following calls by eminent Nigerians that national assets should be sold due to the economic recession facing Nigeria, Human right lawyer, Femi Falana, has called on the Economic and Financial Crimes, EFCC, to probe two former governors of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Chukwuma Soludo and Lamido Sanusi for alleged diversion of public funds.
In a petition to the anti-graft agency, the Lagos based legal luminary also accused the Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, of not making moves to recover billions of dollars “either criminally diverted or illegally withheld,” from government account.
Charles Soludo
Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
Falana urged the anti-graft agency to act now given “the increasing pressures being mounted on the Federal Government by the parasitic faction of the ruling class to auction the remaining assets of the nation”.
Recall that some eminent Nigerians like Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote among others had called on the Federal Government to sell off some national assets like the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas company, NLNG, and other dormant but huge capital-generating sectors in the country.
Dangote had advised the Federal Government to reinvest the proceeds into the country’s economy as a means of rescuing the nation out of the current recession.
However, the activist lawyer offered to “provide all relevant documents to facilitate your investigation of the serious economic and financial crimes disclosed in this petition”.
Giving reasons why the anti-graft agency needs to go after the two former CBN governors, Falana said, “By a letter dated January 27, 2016 the National Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) disclosed to us that from five cycles of independent audit reports covering 1999-2012 it had confirmed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, some oil companies and certain agencies of the Federal Government had withheld $20.2 billion from the Federation Account. Despite repeated requests of some civil society organizations the Federal Government has refused to recover the said sum of $20.2 billion.
