BRI's £4.2m Loots: Did Commissioner for Works, Finance, Approve Looting of Delta State's Treasury?

Editorial

BRI's £4.2m Loots: Did Commissioner for Works, Finance, Approve Looting of Delta State's Treasury?

N215 billion flying under Governor Okowa for roads inherited from previous administration

Pursuant to the British Government’s resolve to return to Nigeria £4.2million (about N2.2 billion) funds recovered from friends and family members of the former governor of Delta State Chief James Ibori, it will appear reasonable to know about the approval that gave room for the looting of Delta state.

Some key men may have also played some roles behind the scene, pulling the strings of corporate legal fraud of awarding questionable contracts and approval of funds during Ibori's administration.

Two commissioners during Ibori's administration should not be far away from a conspiracy that facilitated the laundering of funds from the oil-rich Delta State and substantive accounts.

Records show how Chief Ibori had about 17 bank accounts linked to him in different locations across the world where large sums of money went into. Ibori never explained the sources of money in his accounts. Does his silence prove that his commissioners did not play any role in terms of generating and moving the money? There is a need for some of his then cabinet members to come clean and explain to Deltans.

in 2004, Delta State Government officials were used to write cheques, which they subsequently cashed and then deposited into accounts linked to Ibori. These monies were later siphoned out of the local accounts to those of his associates that operated in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

The question is, who was the Commissioner of Finance that approved the movement of money from government coffers?

In June 1999, a Commissioner for Finance and Economic Planning was appointed; he served till 2003 and his tenure ended.

In 2015, he was again re-appointed as Commissioner of Finance. For the third time he occupied that position until May 2019. Nothing has been said about how billions left Delta state and out of the country.

Delta state is richly blessed with loyal politicians and power seekers who give no hoot of who did the looting but are more interested in the political benefit and proceeds of corruption despite the economic gloom, unemployment, business collapses, industrial death that now pervades the state. 

More to be bothered about is the plundering and exploitation of Delta state by politicians who live in affluence by taking the resources of the common man. It is a fact that over 108 of the ongoing roads projects, for which contracts have been awarded since 2015 were inherited from the Governors James Ibori and Emmanuel Uduaghan administrations.

Many could be justified to think that the Commissioner of works during Ibori's administration may have approved fake contracts to fool Deltans and created a means by which misappropriation was normalised.

Currently in Governor Okowa's Administration, Deltans are not economically better of but billions are flying again; road projects at the cost of over N112 billion between May 2015 and March 2018;

those inherited from the previous administration is put at over N215 billion and involving 208 roads, all of these were confirmed by the State Commissioner for Works, Chief James Augoye.

Delta state must be liberated from the economic killers, looters and Job-Men who lack consideration of the fact that Delta state is a state to invest the money they have collected from it through various means.

Deltans should hold its leaders accountable to invest in the state, not outside. Those without investment in Delta state should not be taken seriously in 2023.