$16bn Electricity Fund: Buhari Goes After Obasanjo

In the potential showdown, President Muhammadu Buhari has queried the $16 billion allegedly spent on power under former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Buhari raised the issue when he hosted the Buhari Support Organisation (BSO) led by Hameed Ali, Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service on Tuesday in Abuja.

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Recall that former President Obasanjo has in the past months written a letter and have consistently criticized Buhari for the poor handling of the economy and dividing Nigeria.

Speaking at the State House Tuesday, Buhari who did not mention Obasanjo’s name, asked, “Where was the power after a former president claimed to have spent $16 billion on the project?

“You know the rail was killed and one of the former heads of state was bragging that he spent more than 15 billion American dollars on power. Where is the power? Where is the power?”.

Recall that the House of Representatives had described the $16 billion spent on power by the Obasanjo administration as a waste, and even called for investigation on how the money was expended.

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The president’s comments comes a day after Obasanjo met with the leader of the Afenifere socio-political group in Akure, Osun State, where he urged the them to join hands with him to save Nigeria’s soul by throwing Buhari out from office.

Buhari continued: “Now, we have to pay debts. This year and last year’s budget had the highest in capital projects: more than 1.3 trillion naira. Let anybody come and confront me publicly in the National Assembly,” he said.

“What have they been doing? Some of them have been there for 10 years, what have they been doing? I said it about eight years ago that we have no other country than Nigeria. We should remain here and salvage it together no matter what you have outside. Now we get some of the people with houses here and maybe in Abuja or somewhere in America and Europe, they swear, some of them to God, that it doesn’t belong to them.

“But their accounts, through the banks, through their companies, it is their own. But they say it’s not their own. This is a terrible time and the people are saying what are we doing? Why can’t you lock them up? And again, I went on by telling them that when I was in uniform, younger and rather ruthless, I got from the president downward locked up.

“I said you’re guilty, except you prove yourselves innocent. I myself was locked up and those who misappropriated public funds were given back what they had taken away. Who did anything about it?

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“Then I decided to come again. I tried one, two, three four times. God agreed. And the third time I came and met a statesman outside the supreme court. My chief lawyer was Mike Ahamba, Roman Catholic and Igbo. He had witnessed in the box and asked the panel of judges that they should check on certain constituencies in certain states to bring us our register so that we can prove that the people that voted there were the people INEC submitted.

“They said ‘ah! We shall do it. They said no, you must write it. They wrote it. Whether to send to NEC or INEC refused them but when they came to give judgment, this issue was not raised. Another Igbo man, a Roman Catholic, he said that this is what happened. He was among the panel of the judges, he wrote a minority report in my favour. So, why this question of religion and ethnicity and so on. People are worshipping the dollars, the sterlings not to even talk of the naira.

“He wrote a minority report saying this is what we have decided. But the president of that court was my classmate for six years in secondary school; he is from my own state. So, please, we have nothing to regret. Absolutely nothing. Since we all believe that God works in our hearts not in our talking. God help us, God help our children and grandchildren. We will try as much as we can to work and bring this country back to its senses. God has given Nigeria everything; we are rich in human and material resources that let us keep praying to God that He should put people of conscience in charge at all levels.”

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