How Obasanjo covered up Magashi’s $550,000 loot

**Got crude oil allocation as PRC member

***Returned $400,000 through plea bargain .Loot kept at BNP Paribus, London

TRACKING >>Indications have emerged on how former President Olusegun Obasanjo covered up the illegal crude oil deals enjoyed by the Minister of Defence, Bashir Magashi, as a member of the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC) of the military administration of late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, according to a report by online medium.

Between 1990 -1998, Magashi was a former military Governor of Sokoto State, became the commander of the Brigade of Guards and was appointed commandant of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) after the death of Gen. Abacha by the administration of Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar.

As a trusted member of Abacha’s inner caucus, the minister and other members of the late dictator’s kitchen cabinet were from time to time arbitrarily allowed access to the nation’s coffers and in some instances, awarded illegal crude oil allocations which they sold for huge sums of money.

Evidence now point to the fact that Magashi realised $550, 000 from one of such crude oil deals and deposited the proceeds in a secret Jessey, UK branch of Bank PNP Paribus.

According to Premium Times, when Obasanjo was elected as President in 1999, following the country’s return to democratic rule, he directed that military officers who had held political positions for six or more months preceding his election be compulsorily retired from service. The present defence minister was one of those affected by that policy.

Obasanjo’s administration in its bold attempt to recover and repatriate all looted funds during the Abacha regime, hired a Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, and he traced Magashi’s foreign account with $550,000 (about N200 million) in the United Kingdom based bank.

Sources told online medium that Obasanjo upon being briefed by the Swiss lawyer about his find directed former National Security Adviser, Air Vice Marshal Abdullahi Mukhtar to contact Magashi and other former serving officials who abused their offices by stashing public funds in foreign banks to surrender their loot.

The NSA via a memo NSA/A/225/I/C dated October 26, 2006, briefed President Obasanjo on the cases of Magashi and four others, notifying the President that Magashi’s London “account has a total deposit of $550,000,” adding further that the amount in the account remained intact before it was frozen in 2001.

Confronted with this incriminating evidence by the government, Magashi was said to have admitted wrongdoing, revealing that the funds in the London account was proceeds of illegal crude oil allocation by the late Abacha to members of the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC).

Thereafter, President Obasanjo further directed that the entire amount in the account linked to Magashi be recovered and forfeited to the Federal Government.

However, in an apparent plea bargain with the government, Magashi pleaded for a concession and Obasanjo agreed that $150,000 from the initial amount be left for the retired military officer while $400,000 is remitted to the Federal Government.

Premium Times gathered that the plea bargain was entered into by Magashi with the Obasanjo administration in order not to face humiliation and possible prosecution.

Questions are now being asked why President Muhammadu Buhari, whose anti-corruption stance is widely acclaimed, would acquiesce to naming a man indicted for abuse of office and corruption to the esteemed and strategic position of minister of defence in his cabinet.

It remains however, unclear whether President Buhari is aware of the indictment of the defence minister by the Obasabjo administration.

A Presidency source, on condition of anonymity because he has no official permission to answer questions from journalists, according to Premium Times, affirmed that it was impossible for the President to have appointed Magashi as minister if he had been aware of the corruption case hanging on his neck.

This will mean that the much touted security screening of nominees for high public office allegedly carried out by the Department for State Services (DSS) is not as thorough as the agency makes Nigerians to believe.

It would be recalled that the service had similarly, in 2015, failed to detect that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate bandied by former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, was fake