THE House of Representatives’ Ad Hoc Committee on Assessment and Status of All Recovered Loots Movable and Immovable Assets from 2002 to 2020 by Agencies of the Federal Government of Nigeria for Effective Efficient Management and Utilisation has asked the National Security Adviser, Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd.), to explain the circumstances surrounding the slush fund recovered from a former Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayodele Oke, and his wife, Folasade.
In some documents sighted by our correspondent on Wednesday, the committee accused Monguno of concealing information on the current state of the fund recovered from the ex-NIA boss.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had declared that the couple wanted in connection with the $43m, ÂŁ27,800 and N23.8m cash recovered by the commission from an apartment at Osborne Road, Ikoyi, Lagos in April 2017. At the then exchange rates, the monies amounted to laundering N13bn.
Under the former DG, the NIA was said to have collected $289,202,382 in cash for special operations from the account of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services at the Central Bank of Nigeria in February 2015.
The House committee, at the investigative hearing held on May 28, 2021, had asked the Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, about the whereabouts of the recovered loot.
Bawa had said, “As it is today, it is with the Federal Government of Nigeria in the Final Forfeiture Account. I don’t know precisely where the funds are, whether we have moved them to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. But what I do know is that the monies are in an account with the Central Bank of Nigeria.”
The committee has now written to the NSA to say that submissions made by other respondents had contradicted his earlier claims to the panel.
