Former Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been given a clean bill of health by the Transition Committee Chairman, Ahmed Joda.
Mr. Joda said his panel did not find anything to believe that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was guilty of graft.
Ahmed Joda, disclosed this while speaking with journalists in Yola, Adamawa State. He said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission might never find Okonjo-Iweala guilty of any wrongdoing, despite the numerous allegations of Financial malfeasance linked to the Goodluck Jonathan Administration in which Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala served.
“Okonjo-Iweala is a professional and she guarded herself, if you look at what she did. Whenever, they said this happened she was able to produce papers to say, ‘look oh!’ We had a meeting, presided over by the President and attended by the National Security Adviser and others. And we agreed.
“And she would go back and write the President and say, ‘I have received a request to release so many billions in accordance with our minutes. Your Excellency, if you will approve.’ And His Excellency would approve it. So, she covered herself, thus you can’t pin anything on her.”
Ahmed Joda however chided President Goodluck Jonathan, who he said approved virtually all the demands of his aides.
Mr. Joda claimed that the recession in the county was not worse than what was envisaged, even as Nigeria has a “character of consuming without producing.”
“We were pretending, given our character as a consumer country, even the oil and gas we are not producing; if we are to tell ourselves the truth. We have four refineries. We can’t refine; we are importing. We don’t have enough facilities to import the quantity of fuel that we require. We are badly managing our affairs, we are destroying our economy.
“I’m not surprised that we are in this situation. I’m only surprised that we are not even worse.”
“When he (Buhari) was a military president, he could jail people and order people to queue up. But today he can’t; because he didn’t come through the bullet, he came through the ballot box. And this ballot box says okay, Mr. Buhari you are no longer a General, if you like you can call yourself Alhaji or Mallam. But here are the courts, here is the National Assembly and this is the way you are going. You cannot jail anybody or even lock them up for even one hour. You have to follow due process.”
– Authority
