Former President Goodluck Jonathan has sent former Commonwealth Secretary General, Emeka Anyaoku, to plead with President Muhammadu Buhari not to begin an official probe of his administration.
Via Sahara Reporters:
One of our sources said 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 Anyaoku’s desperate mission to Buhari revealed that Anyaoku urged Buhari to remember that Jonathan voluntarily decided not to contest the results of the March 28, 2015 presidential election, won by Buhari, on the understanding that he and his administration would not be subjected to a probe.
Sources disclosed that Anyaoku spent a little more than two hours in a close-door meeting on Thursday where he sought to persuade Buhari to halt the ongoing probe of what happened to billions of public funds during the last few months of the Jonathan government.
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 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 (CBN), 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 Jonathan and his closest aides and political appointees made illegal withdrawals of funds to finance his failed bid for re-election.
After emerging from his marathon meeting with Buhari, Anyaoku claimed that he had visited to offer “advice” to the president regarding his forthcoming official trip to the US. Buhari is scheduled to start his US trip on Sunday.
A source at the Presidency said that Anyaoku had misrepresented the purpose of his visit. “The elder statesman [Anyaoku] did not come to advise 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 Buhari was not receptive to Anyaoku’s pleas. According to the source, Buhari told Anyaoku 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.
YOU PRACTICE JUNK JOURNALISM
If this is true, its very unfortunate because as an international figure, we least expect Mr Anyaoku to plead for a corrupt person to be spared. Moreover he shouldnt forget that the general consensus is for Buhari to recover stolen funds. So therefore, Buhari is under great obligations to do just that! The best Buhari could do for Jonathan is to allow him secretly return stolen funds!