President Muhammadu Buhari says late dictator, Sani Abacha, stole almost $1billion from the country.
Mr Buhari stated this in an article he wrote on Newsweek published today as he marks his five years in office as president.
Although, no name was mentioned in the article, he was actually referring to the former head of state who reportedly stole from the nation’s treasury.
“And we can now move forward with road, rail and power station construction—in part, under own resources—thanks to close to a billion dollars of funds stolen from the people of Nigeria under a previous, undemocratic junta in the 1990s that have now been returned to our country from the U.S., U.K. and Switzerland,” he wrote.
“That these friendly nations agreed to return these funds after so long is testament to the fact that, thanks to our governance reforms, Nigeria is rightly seen as an increasingly stable and beneficial place to transact and invest,” the article partly read.
Hundreds of millions of dollars stolen by the late Abacha and kept in foreign accounts have since been recovered by various Nigerian governments.
In 1998, General Abubakar Abdulsalami recovered $750m from the Abacha family; in 2000, General Olusegun Obasanjo recovered $64m from Switzerland; still in 2002, Obasanjo got another $1.2bn from a deal with the Abacha family and another $160m in 2003 from Jersey, British Island. Obasanjo got another $88m in 2003, $461m in 2005 and $44 in 2006, all from Switzerland.
On his part, former President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan retrieved $227m from Liechtenstein while President Buhari got $322 in 2018 and the last $311 in 2020.
