Stop Rehashing Lies Against VP Osinbajo, Account For $5bn Abacha Loot -BMO Tells PDP.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was never indicted by the House of Representative Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness in 2018, contrary to the impression the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is bent on creating, according to the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO)
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Mr. Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Mr. Cassidy Madueke, BMO said that the opposition party was rehashing the false claims in furtherance of its futile mission to tarnish the image of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and its top officials.
“Nigerians should by now be used to PDP’s penchant for making false, unverifiable claims, but it is surprising that it is again digging up one of its poorly researched allegations at a time President Buhari decided to name a new Director-General for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
“We tagged the claim surprising because there was nowhere in the report by the then House Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness that a single allegation of corruption was made against Professor Osinbajo. In fact, the Committee Chairman, Hon. Ali Isa who incidentally was a PDP representative from Gombe State, publicly admitted at plenary that the Vice President was not mentioned in the report.
“For the avoidance of doubt and the need to correct the false impression, the approval by the Vice President was not for the release of N33 billion. It was for the N5.8 billion Emergency Food Intervention Fund for the North-East and was within his powers, back then, as acting President.
“It needs reminding Nigerians and the PDP that Professor Osinbajo acted in response to the threat of hunger and starvation based on information received from the UN World Food Programme in April 2017, that it would be reducing its vital support to about 1.8 million IDPs by as much as 85%, due to the reduction in funding by donor countries.
“We also want to put it on record that contrary to the allegation that he approved funds for the emergency operations “without legislative consent and, expended without recourse to extant due process, procurement and contract rules”, the funds have since been proved to have come from budgeted funds, specifically the rice levy.
“Also, everything was done in line with Section 43 of the Public Procurement Act which makes provision for emergency procurement via direct contracting for goods, after which a report is expected to be filed with the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP). A ‘certificate of no objection’ was actually issued by BPP to NEMA on the emergency procurement so we wonder what the alleged breach of due process is all about!
“In addition, the then Acting President personally supervised the process from planning to distribution, during which he held several meetings on strategies for distribution, some of which were attended by representatives of the National Assembly, including Senator Abdulaziz Nyako.
“Professor Osinbajo was also accompanied by relevant stakeholders as he inspected the electronic truck-tracking unit established in Maiduguri for the purpose of monitoring the transportation and flagged off the food distribution on the 8th of June, 2017.
“Just like the Presidency said back then, we view this latest allegation against the Vice President as a feeble attempt by a party which is synonymous with large scale corruption to smear the Buhari administration with the dirt it is known for,” the group said.
BMO added that it sees the allegation as an attempt to divert attention from the repatriation of the latest tranche of Abacha assets in a way that Nigerians would not ask questions on what happened to previously repatriated funds
“We actually see the attack on Professor Osinbajo as a diversionary tactic, but it still won’t stop us from joining Nigerians to ask the PDP about the fate of $5 billion that was returned to Nigeria before 2015.
“It is on record that under the Obasanjo administration, $1.2bn was recovered in 2002, $149m in 2003, $500m in 2004 and another $458m in 2005. The Jonathan government received $1bn in 2012, $227m and $48m in 2014 and $380m in 2015, but surprisingly there is no official record of how these recovered funds were used in the PDP years of the locust.
“In saner climes, a party with such record of larceny would have been consigned to the dustbin of history but here, PDP is grandstanding even at a time that the whole world is applauding how President Buhari is using two tranches of recovered assets, which are not up to what Nigeria received in 2002 or 2012 for Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) and three visible infrastructural projects.
“So PDP’s case can easily be likened to crookedness seeking company -a party with a long history of brazen corruption, including embezzlement of funds raised for its own headquarters, seeking to dent the image of a properly transparent administration.”
It consequently urged Nigerians to ignore PDP’s attempt to sully the hard-earned reputation of Vice President Osinbajo after it had failed serially to smear that of his Principal.
