Nigeria’s finance minister has said her 83-year-old mother’s kidnapping was linked to the country’s subsidy payments for gasoline.<\/p>\n
Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday that her mother told her the kidnappers repeatedly talked to her about her decision not to pay some marketers for importing gasoline.<\/p>\n
Okonjo-Iweala declined to take questions from journalists.<\/p>\n
Okonjo-Iweala apparently drew the ire of marketers yet to be paid when she insisted\u00a0 that most of the claims were fraudulent, and until their authenticity are established no payment would be made .<\/p>\n
She had said “Nigerians made it clear that corruption has to be taken out of this subsidy payment and we focused all year on doing that. The presidential task force headed by Aig-Imoukhuede that verified slightly over a N3 trillion has come out with very detailed work.<\/p>\n
Of course, there was the work done in the National Assembly, but we went into it in details to be able to really determine what transaction had or had not been fraudulent. \u201cYou need forensic experts, examiners, forensic auditors we took 15 or 20 of them from Price Waterhouse and the Central Bank.”<\/p>\n
“They have been working for more than four months now on this detailed, painstaking transaction by transaction verification of independent marketers for over a N3 trillion. \u201cLast week, the work was submitted to Mr. President and of the amount verified, they have determined the N232 billion finally. You know they came out with N270 billion initially, now they are out with N232 billion claims of oil subsidy that are not substantiated or fraudulent. So, 50 marketers some of them are clean and there are some of them that are not clean.”<\/p>\n
“The report had been submitted, this had taken so much work and it has slowed down the pace on which we are making 2012 payments. It has enabled us to put in place a series of steps. We have fired auditors who were helping when we saw that they were not doing the work, we have new ones with very clear terms of reference on how they are to verify the oil being brought in to make sure it\u2019s really brought in.”<\/p>\n
“We have taken care to ensure that before we pay again and again to make sure that the payment we are making for 2012 are valid and did not support the problems of 2011. Yes, that slowed down the pace of payment, but it is because we are responding to what Nigerians want. Even if marketers who are not doing the right thing are crying about it, we will not yield, the government will not yield to those cries until we make sure we are doing the right thing.”<\/p>\n
She had said further ” \u201cNow of the N232 billion that had been put forward as \u201cfraudulent\u201d claims, some of those marketers say government owed them money, we are right now able to hold N29 billion of that. So, instead of paying them we are recovering what they owe us.<\/p>\n
So, my singular hope is that out of this we would have recovered eventually that amount of about of N29 billion and will be looking to recover the balance of the total. Some of those people are being chased and prosecuted and the EFCC and the ICPC are still investigating this. \u201cSo, this is one area where we have done thorough forensic work. It has yielded changes in the way we verify payments, slowed it down, though it is painful, but we have found out how many of such claims are fraudulent, we have clawed back some of the money now about N29 billion, we are prosecuting people and we have continued to pay marketers whose claims have been verified.”<\/p>\n
“We have never stopped paying because all these issues about queues and so on, of course, sometimes the marketers have said unless you pay us we are not going to bring in oil, but we have not yielded to any of that kind of stress or even blackmail, we have continued to do our work and we will continue to pay those who are clean.\u201d Okonjo-Iweala said.<\/p>\n
Her mother was held for five days by kidnappers before she was released. It is unclear if a ransom was paid.<\/p>\n
Nigeria has seen unrest and controversy trail its fuel subsidy program, which lawmakers have said is a multi-billion dollar scam.<\/p>\n
Okonjo-Iweala, is a respected economist who became Nigeria’s finance minister with extensive powers last year. She was also a possible candidate to head the World Bank before losing the position to U.S. nominee Jim Yong Kim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria’s finance minister has said her 83-year-old mother’s kidnapping was linked to the country’s subsidy payments for gasoline. Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday that her mother told her the kidnappers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n