World Bank to give details of Abacha loot spending
August 9, 2016
Ramon Oladimeji
The World Bank has asked to be given more time to produce the details of how the loot recovered from Nigerian late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, was spent.
A rights advocacy group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, had last year written to the World Bank, seeking to know how much of the Abacha loot was recovered and to what use it was put.
In response to the request, the World Bank had supplied SERAP with a 700-page document stating the projects executed in the country with the loot recovered from Abacha.
But not satisfied, SERAP had appealed for more information, contending that “important portions of the information requested on how Abacha loot was spent” were missing from the document supplied to it by the World Bank.
The Executive Director of SERAP, Adetokunbo Mumuni, said in a statement on Tuesday that the organisation had received a letter dated August 8, 2016 from the World Bank, requesting to be given more time to supply the additional information.
Mumuni said it was the second time the World Bank would be asking for additional time to supply the details of the Abacha loot spending.
According to him, parts of the additional information being sought by SERAP was the evidence of the 23 projects, which the World Bank said were executed with Abacha loot.
The organisation also sought to know “what became of two abandoned projects; evidence and location of the eight health centres built with the recovered Abacha loot reviewed by the World Bank; and evidence and location of the 18 power projects confirmed by the World Bank.”
The statement added, “Other aspects of the spending of Abacha loot the bank referred to its Archives Unit for processing for public access are information on how the $50m Abacha loot received before 2005 kept in the special account was spent; evidence and location of schools which benefited from the Universal Basic Education programme in the amount of N24.25bn; and evidence and location of the 13 road projects completed with the recovered Abacha loot, including the names of the three of the largest road and bridge projects in each geo-political zone.”
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