Probe Babangida, Obasanjo, others, Sani tells Buhari

Leke Baiyewu, Abuja

A member of the Senate representing Kaduna South Senatorial District, Shehu Sani, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to extend his anti-corruption war to the governments before the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration.

The probe, he said, should be extended to both former presidents and ex-military rulers of the country.

According to him, in an interview with journalists on Friday, Nigeria had earned over $3tn from crude oil sales over the last 56 years “but there is hardly 25 per cent of that funds to show for the realisation of that kind of large sum of money.”

 The senator, who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, stated that catching both “the new and the old thieves” in the current war against corruption would not only help in recovering loot to boost the economy but would rekindle the failing hope of the masses in their country.

He stated that one of the ways of fighting recession was for the Buhari-led administration to enlarge the scope of its anti-corruption war beyond the Jonathan administration to others before it, with the sole purpose of recovering the nation’s stolen wealth by corrupt-minded past administrators.

Sani said, “The fight against corruption, as it is now, is about recovery and arrest.

“If the government says the money recovered under (the administration of Goodluck) Jonathan is not enough to service the economy, then, we should move to (the late Umaru) Yar’Adua and (Olusegun) Obasanjo administrations too; move to (Abubakar) Abdulsalami, (the late Sani) Abacha, (Ibrahim) Babangida and Buhari himself as a military ruler then; and to Shehu Shagari of the Second Republic.

“We must go after the old thieves irrespective of the political parties they belong to now, as the government is going after the most recent ones. For example, there was a Senate committee that probed the Independent Power Project where it was said that over $16bn was looted and we have not seen anything done to the revelations made by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria,  who is now the Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, over the $20bn allegedly missing from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation accounts under Jonathan, etc.”