‘We can’t keep quiet about arms deal fraud,’ President says

President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his government can’t overlook the alleged $2 billion arms deal fraud which occurred during the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

Buhari made the comments on Wednesday, December 9, 2015, adding that the fraud was “an abuse of trust”, The Nation reports.

“Unfortunately for us as a people, we uncovered that billions of Naira and hundreds of millions of dollars were expended by the previous government to acquire good equipment and ammunition so that the military can use, but unfortunately, there was abuse of trust at various levels that cost Nigeria a lot of lives and goodwill,” the president said at a dinner for members of the House of Representatives at the old Banquet Hall of the State House in Abuja.

“We cannot keep quiet about it and facts are coming out gradually. It is very unfortunate. It is a known fact that Nigeria earned its respect from Burma to Zaire to Liberia to Sierra Leone. But it reached a stage where the Nigerian military could not secure 14 local governments out of the 774 local governments.

“As I have always said, how has the mighty fallen? We are doing our best and I hope our best will be good enough,” he added.

Corruption under Jonathan’s government has been a major subject of discussion in recent times after it was alleged that officials misappropriated funds meant for Nigeria’s waragainst Boko Haram.

The discovery was made by a special panel constituted by Buhari to investigate arms purchases in the country from 2007-2015.

Former National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki is at the fore of the investigations and is alleged to have supervised the alleged laundering of the funds meant for the procurement of arms.

He was arrested by the Department of State Services (DSS) on December 1, 2015 and handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) the day after.

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The former NSA is reported to have implicated several prominent persons in the deal including former governors, ex-ministers and members of Jonathan’s party, Peoples Democratic Party(PDP).

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Dasuki’s lawyer however denied the report that his client had become an informant.

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Jonathan has also denied authorizing the release of the stated funds despite the former NSA’s claim that he got the necessary presidential approval for the transactions.

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