Soludo blasts Okonjo-Iweala, claims N30tn was stolen under her watch

The ongoing war of words between the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo and the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has taken a new dimension as he has launched another attack on the minister, challenging her to give account of the N30tn reportedly stolen under her watch.

Soludo was reacting to Okonjo-Iweala’s earlier article where she described him as an ‘intellectual hara-kiri’ following his recent hard knock on the current government over the dwindling fortunes of the nation’s economy.

The former apex bank boss in a 10-page response to Okonjo-Iweala’s response said the nation was in for a very chaotic time this year because the economy had been grossly mismanaged by the minister.

Okonjo-Iweala had in a statement on Wednesday described Soludo as an “embittered loser in the Nigerian political space.”

But Soludo, in his new article, released on Sunday, said if the prices of crude oil in the international market failed to rebound, Nigeria would face an unprecedented level of economic crisis with horrible attendant hardships for the citizenry.

“Our public finance is haemorrhaging to the point that estimated over N30tn is missing, or stolen, or unaccounted for, or simply mismanaged,” the former CBN governor stressed.

In the piece entitled, ‘Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the missing trillions’, Soludo said the sharp decline in the naira-dollar exchange rate from 158 a few months ago to 215 currently showed that trouble was already at the doorstep.

He added that “unless oil price recovers, this is just the beginning,” adding, “For the sake of Nigeria, I won’t keep quiet anymore!”

“Part of my frustration is that five years after, everything I warned about has come to happen and we are conducting our campaigns as if we are not in a crisis. As a concerned Nigerian, I have a duty to speak out again,” he said.

The former Ananmbra State guber aspirant, who x-rayed, how N30tn allegedly stolen under Okonjo-Iweala’s watch, said, “Under you as the Minister of Finance and coordinator of the economy, the basket of our national treasury is leaking profusely from all sides. Just a few illustrations! First, you admit that ‘oil theft’ has reduced oil output from the average 2.3 – 2.4 million barrels per day to 1.95 mpd (meaning that at least 350,000 to 450,000 barrels per day are being ‘stolen’). On the average of 400,000 per day and the oil prices over the past four years, it comes to about $60bn ‘stolen’ in just four years.

“In today’s exchange rate, that is about N12.6tn. This is at a time of cessation of crisis in the Niger Delta and the amnesty programme. Can you tell Nigerians how much the amnesty programme costs, and also the annual cost for ‘protecting’ the pipelines and security of oil wells? And the ‘thieves’ are spirits?

“Secondly, my earlier article stated that the minimum forex reserves should have been at least $90bn by now and you did not challenge it. Rather, it is about $30bn, meaning that gross mismanagement has denied the country some $60bn or another N12.6tn. Now, add the ‘missing’ $20bn from the NNPC. You promised a forensic audit report ‘soon’, and more than a year later, the report itself is still ‘missing’. This is over N4tn, and we don’t know how much more has ‘missed’ since Sanusi cried out.