Nigeria say it is ready
to make another attempt to get back billions of dollars stashed in
Swiss banks by the late military dictator General Sani
Abacha. President Umaru Yar'Adua says the country has received
over $290 million out of an estimated $ two billion stolen by General Abacha. The
Swiss ambassador to Nigeria, Andreas Baum, says his government is
ready to cooperate with Nigeria. Switzerland had disagreed with Nigeria
over how it spent the first batch of recovered funds.
Sina
Loremika is the southwest coordinator of the group Zero Corruption Coalition.
He says Nigerians are worried any fresh recovered funds will not be put to good
use by Nigerian authorities.
"We've
been asking our friends and associates in government to tell us what they have
done with the Abacha loot. Interestingly, no one has pin-pointed anything. The
closest we got was that it was used for the energy project, but unfortunately
all our homes and offices are always in darkness 24 hours a day." He says it
remains a mystery why President Yar'Adua is making another plea to the Swiss
authorities.
"Actually,
we are shocked and surprised and it appears as if we have been shortchanged and
some of us thought that if the worse comes to the worst, development will be at
the pace that President Obasanjo left the nation, but unfortunately, it appears
that we are moving steps behind where Gen. Obasanjo left us."
Loremikan
says the insistence by Swiss authorities that Nigeria account for how the first
batch of the recovered funds was spent should be commended. "The issue is
beyond that, globally the government and the people have committed themselves to
transparency and accountability. An average Nigerian has a right to ask the
British Prime Minister what he is doing with tax payers money; an average
Japanese has a right to ask what the government is doing with the tax payers
money."
