Okoi Obono-Obla, a former Chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), has claimed that loot recovered under ex-President Muhammadu Buhari were returned to the owners.
Obono-Obla, who was a presidential aide under Buhari, made the allegation while speaking on the Mic On Podcast.
He added that the Buhari administration failed to fight corruption, supposedly the bedrock of people’s trust in him.
SPIP was an independent investigative panel set up by Buhari to recover stolen property and assets belonging to the country.
According to Obono-Obla, his efforts to bring many looters to justice in the country were frustrated by officials in the same administration, including former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, whom he (Obono-Obla) described as an ‘authoritarian’.
“Some of the things I recovered were returned to the looters. For instance, there was this case of someone from whom I recovered over 80 brand new X-class Mercedes Benz cars (armoured plated) from in Jabi, Abuja.
“I wrote to the DG, Customs to ask if the person paid customs duties of the vehicles, he said ‘No’, they didn’t pay. I wrote to the Federal Inland Revenue Services to know if the person paid tax on the vehicles; he also said ‘No’ and that they don’t have the records. We went to court to get an order of interim forfeiture, and it was granted pending the hearing of the case. So, I sent a memo to Malami to brief him on what we were doing, only for him to tell me that he never mandated me to do things I investigated,” he said.
