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Power: Recover $16bn from Obasanjo, Oshiomhole tells Buhari



The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Adams Oshiomhole, has re-echoed President Muhammadu Buhari’s allegations that ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration spent $16bn on the power sector without tangible results.
Oshiomhole said this while addressing party supporters after receiving handover notes from his predecessor, Chief Odigie-Oyegun, at the APC National Secretariat, in Abuja, on Tuesday.

Although the new party chairman did not mention ex-President Obasanjo by name, events he talked about took place while Obasanjo held sway as Nigeria’s President (1999-2007).
Oshiomhole also faulted the alarm raised by the former President that there were plans to kill him.

The APC chairman said, “As I was reflecting, I watched our President recently asking questions rhetorically, ‘you have spent $16bn on power under the PDP, to lay emphasis, he repeated, where is the power?’.
“Nigerians in their various homes, those who had power that day or generator, said, Mr. President, we don’t have. So, $16bn spent, the more dollars they spent, the more darkness the people suffered.

“Now the questions I had in my mind were: maybe because the President has not yet proceeded to now ask the follow-up questions that ‘since we don’t find the power, then, you must bring the $16bn that you spent.’ If he doesn’t do that, then the accusations of limited anti-corruption may begin to gain some currency.

“Our President needs to do the needful. After all, it is already on record what other presidents didn’t do, with regards to the issue of MKO Abiola, and the criminal manner by which the election was nullified, and people pretended that that was never an issue, the President showed courage.

“That same courage should not fail him, so that he can proceed to recover the $16bn and return it to the treasury from the man who superintended over the spending of that money.

“When he does that, people will say, yes, there is a difference because there are Nigerians who are saying so.

“That propelled Prof. Wole Soyinka to say that, if people had immunity as sitting presidents, when the immunity expires, should they transit from immunity to impunity? I think impunity is deadlier than immunity.

“What we need to do as a party is to provide the support that our President needs and for the Nigerian people to provide those supports and then they want to distract our attention when they are in trouble and say, ‘Eh! they want to kill me.’”

While faulting claims by the former President that he was being targeted for elimination, Oshiomhole said, it was on record that no politician of note had been killed under President Buhari’s watch unlike what happened in the past.
He said, “The man said they wanted to kill him. No! To kill is to prevent the investigation. He must be alive to account. That is a typical distraction.

“I think all of us should be ready to do anything we can to help Nigerians not to forget in a hurry. Those who thought they can loot for 16 years, destroy the fabric of our growth system, and tender apology later, so, that they can be allowed to come back.”
Earlier, in his address, the former APC National Chairman, Odigie-Oyegun, prayed for the success of the new party leadership, describing their victory at the just concluded national convention as a victory for the party.

Copyright PUNCH.

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