The Special Adviser to President Mohammadu Buhari
» on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina » , has revealed
plans by the Federal Government to recover looted funds by
past public officers with the help of the U.S government.
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In a recent interview with The Vanguard, Adesina disclosed
that Buhari had met with the American president during
the G7 Summit in Germany » and got the assurance of
Obama to help recover Nigeria's loot from all over the
world.
Adesina also hinted that though the president won't be
probing to deep into past administrations, he would
definitely be looking into the past administrations to probe
corrupt officials found guilty.
Let me take you back a little to the issue of allowing the
last government officials to travel. Does that mean that
he has hands on probity, assuming there was something
to probe?
He has said it that money in billions of dollars will be
recovered. But you know the world is too small a place for
anybody to hide if you are running from justice. The world is
too small a place to hide. You will be fished out. So, there is
no need that you say they should not be heading for jail if
eventually the law goes after them. Very few countries can
they hide in and how long will they hide? So, it doesn’t mean
that anybody that has ill gotten wealth will not regurgitate it.
They will. Remember when he went to Germany for the G7
summit, he met with President Obama and Obama told him
to just give us information on where the loot is hidden and
we will help you recover it and the government has been
working on that. So, that shows that looters will never go
free.
Is he going backwards? I mean where is he going to
start to probe?
He can’t afford to go too deep into the past or else it will be
destructive for his administration. There are some things
you can’t close your eyes to while you don’t want to shine
the torchlight into the dark recesses of our past; immediate
past where things are evident. The Yoruba have a saying
that the corpse we buried, the leg is sticking out and, if you
bury a corpse and the leg is sticking out, you can’t pretend.
When there are trails all over of the monies in billions and
trillions, then a responsible government can’t close its eyes
to that.