panic-stricken former President Goodluck
Jonathan has sent former Commonwealth
Secretary General, Emeka Anyaoku, to
plead with President Muhammadu Buhari not to
launch an official probe of his administration.
Emeka Anyaoku and former President
Goodluck Jonathan
Several sources in Abuja, including aides of
President Buhari, briefed SaharaReporters
exclusively about former President Jonathan’s
dispatch of Mr. Anyaoku as an emissary to his
successor.
One of our sources said Mr. Jonathan moved
quickly to send powerful intercessors to the
Presidency after the Buhari administration began
to question massive last-minute withdrawals
and disappearance of more than $20 billion in
government funds orchestrated by former
President Jonathan as well as his closest
ministers and aides.
One source familiar with Mr. Anyaoku’s
desperate mission to President Buhari revealed
that the former Commonwealth chief executive
urged the new president to remember that Mr.
Jonathan voluntarily decided not to contest the
results of the March 28, 2015 presidential
election, won by Mr. Buhari, on the
understanding that he and his administration
would not be subjected to a probe.
Our sources disclosed that Mr. Anyaoku spent a
little more than two hours in a close-door
meeting yesterday where he sought to prevail on
President Buhari to halt the ongoing probe of
what happened to billions of public funds during
the last few months of the Jonathan
government.
Before imploring Mr. Anyaoku to plead with
President Buhari, Mr. Jonathan had also asked
former military head of state, Abdulsalam
Abubakar, to speak to the current president and
suggest a suspension of all ongoing probes. Mr.
Buhari has put in place several investigative
committees to probe the illicit withdrawal and
disbursement of public funds by the Jonathan
administration. The presidential committees are
charged with advising the administration on
strategies for retrieving any public assets stolen
by officials and cohorts of the Jonathan
Presidency.
One of the committees has already discovered
that Mr. Jonathan and some members of his
cabinet apparently colluded in the dying days of
the previous government to loot billions of
dollars. The funds were looted via the Central
Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC), the Ministry of Finance, the
Nigerian Maritime Authority, the Federal Capital
Territory, and several other departments. A
source within the investigative committee
revealed that Mr. Jonathan and his closest aides
and political appointees made illegal withdrawals
of funds to finance his failed bid for re-election.
Former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
has stated that former President Jonathan asked
her to withdraw more than $1.2 billion from the
excess crude account. Even though Mrs. Okonji-
Iweala continues to maintain publicly that she
did nothing wrong during her tenure, a source
told SaharaReporters that the former minister,
who coordinated economic affairs during the
former president’s tenure, has been quietly
cooperative with the Buhari administration.
According to the source, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has
offered what amounts to a dossier of corrupt
deals authorized by the former president.
In an attempt to curry favor with the new
government, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala recently
directed officials of her polling agency, NOI Polls,
to give President Buhari a 70% approval rating
among Nigerians. “The polling results were
simply cooked up,” a professional pollster told
SaharaReporters. Prior to the 2015 general
elections, the former minister’s fake polling
organization kept repeating that Mr. Jonathan
approval rating was up even as his political
fortune plummeted.
SaharaReporters also learned that former
Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-
Madueke, is also actively cooperating with the
Buhari administration. As earlier revealed by us,
Mrs. Alison-Madueke had struck a deal with the
new government to submit a document to the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) exposing her collaborators at the NNPC.
The former Petroleum minister, who was one of
the closest cabinet members to Mr. Jonathan—
and the mastermind of numerous money
laundering deals on behalf of the former
president—currently shuttles between the UK and
Switzerland. A source close to Mrs. Alison-
Madueke said the former minister was receiving
treatment in the UK related to breast cancer.
After emerging from his marathon meeting with
Mr. Buhari yesterday, Mr. Anyaoku claimed that
he had visited to offer “advice” to the president
regarding his forthcoming official trip to the US.
Mr. Buhari is scheduled to start his US trip on
Sunday.
A source at the Presidency told SaharaReporters
that Mr. Anyaoku had misrepresented the
purpose of his visit. “The elder statesman
[Anyaoku] did not come to advise Mr. President
about the trip to the US. The plans for the trip
were already concluded a while ago, with all
logistics and programming support,” the source
added.
Former President Jonathan is currently in Abuja
where he remains in constant touch with
Abdulsalam Abubakar and other political players
to prevail on President Buhari to halt the probe
of his administration.
One source at the Presidency revealed that Mr.
Buhari was not receptive to Mr. Anyaoku’s pleas.
According to the source, the president told the
former Commonwealth chief executive that the
massive theft of funds by officials of the previous
administration had robbed him of funds to start
meeting his promises to the Nigerian people.
“The president’s concern is for everybody who
stole funds, including the former president, to
disclose their willingness to return their loot to
the Nigerian people,” the source added.
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