The House of Representatives has mandated its committees on Finance as well as Appropriation to commence investigation into the allegation by former Minister of Solid Minerals and Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, that $45billion in the Foreign Reserve Account and $22billion of the Excess Crude Oil Account have been mismanaged since 2007.
The committees are to conduct an investigative hearing and report back to the House, the truth or otherwise, of how the Foreign Reserve and Excess Crude Oil Accounts were managed or mismanaged as the case may be.
This was sequel to a motion moved by Hon. Umar Bature, (PDP) Sokoto State, in which he noted that the federal government had already responded to the allegation by accusing the former minister of misappropriating N458billion between 2006 and 2007.
The motion was adopted unanimously by the members and referred to the committee by the speaker, Hon Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, who presided over the day's sitting.
The Federal Government, on Sunday, reacted angrily to comments by the former Minister of Education, alleging that the governments of Presidents Umar Musa Yar'Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, squandered $67 billion(about N10.6trn) in foreign reserves, describing the allegation as "outlandish and clearly fictitious."
Throwing its hat into the ring, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) issued a seven- day ultimatum to President Goodluck Jonathan to organise a public debate between the former Vice President of the World Bank, Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili and the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku or any other official of the government to thrash out the issues.
In statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary Osita Okechukwu, yesterday, CNPP said that the ultimatum followed the challenge to public debate thrown by Ezekwesili.
"We challenge President Jonathan to convoke this debate within seven days or we stand on Mrs Ezekwesili's allegation to prosecute the government for unbridled and wanton looting of the national treasury. We are alarmed that instead of responding to the grave allegation made by Mrs Ezekwesili the presidency tepidly said, 'it is obviously preposterous for Mrs Oby Ezekwesili to be asking for a national debate on the outlandish and reckless disinformation she made to incite the Nigerian people against the government.
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I'm for democracy, but when a country is premature for it, then the so called "democratic system" must be well managed internally, without all corrupt backed policies from most of the western countries. I knew right from the start that, removing President Obasanjo from the government was a grievous mistake from the Nigerian people. After all, that we suffered from the military and previous political leaders of the country we remain so naive to criminal political intrigues. In 8 years President Obasanjo did what the Nigerian state could not do in more than 20 years. If he were to be in power, by now, we could have been talking about 150 billion of foreign reserve, instead of new debt that we incur now, while treasure looting continues. Even the Nigerian Parliament of today is also very selfish and dishonest, because the salaries and allowances they pay themselves, are at the expense of our development and the deepening poverty among our fast growing population. In the first place, a close study shows that many parts of our present constitution were design for looters and embezzlers to keep their fists tight on our treasure. Most of these people should be in jail long ago, but we are still worshiping them as gods everywhere. And even the international community is not helping us either to checkmate their criminal activities. It's a pity that our we are so absentminded, short sighted and inactive civil society while poverty rock, we are easily blind-fooled by cronies.