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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has replied President Mohammadu Buhari
saying he is ready for probe over the $16b Power Project.
Obasanjo said it is ignorance for President Buhari to make such wild
allegation without proper checks
He made this known in a statement by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi.
It has come to the attention of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that a statement
credited to President Muhammadu Buhari, apparently without correct
information and based on ignorance, suggested that $16 billion was wasted
on power projects by “a former President”. We believe that the President
was re-echoing the unsubstantiated allegation against Chief Obasanjo by
his own predecessor but one.
While it is doubtful that a President with proper understanding of the
issue would utter such, it should be pointed out that records from the
National Assembly had exculpated President Obasanjo of any wrong-doing
concerning the power sector and has proved the allegations as false.
For the records, Chief Obasanjo has addressed the issues of the power
sector and the allegations against him on many occasions and platforms,
including in his widely publicised book, My Watch in which he exhaustively
stated the facts and reproduced various reports by both the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which conducted a clinical
investigation into the allegations against Chief Obasanjo, and the Ad-Hoc
Committee on the Review of the Recommendations in the Report of the
Committee on Power on the Investigation into how the Huge Sums Of Money
was Spent on Power Generation, Transmission And Distribution between June
1999 and May 2007 without Commensurate Result.
We recommend that the President and his co-travellers should read Chapters
41, 42, 43 and 47 of My Watch for Chief Obasanjo’s insights and
perspectives on the power sector and indeed what transpired when the
allegation of $16 billion on power projects was previously made. If he
cannot read the three-volume book, he should detail his aides to do so and
summarise the chapters in a language that he will easily understand.
In the same statement credited to the President, it was alleged that there
was some bragging by Chief Obasanjo over $16 billion spent on power. To
inform the uninformed, the so-called $16 billion power expenditure was an
allegation against Chief Obasanjo’s administration and not his claim. The
President also queried where the power generated is. The answer is simple:
The power is in the seven National Integrated Power Projects and eighteen
gas turbines that Chief Obasanjo’s successor who originally made the
allegation of $16 billion did not clear from the ports for over a year and
the civil works done on the sites.
Chief Obasanjo challenges, and in fact encourages, anybody to set up
another enquiry if in doubt and unsatisfied with the EFCC report and that
of the Hon. Aminu Tambuwal-led ad-hoc committee.