A Human Rights Lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has aired his opinion on the repatriated Sani Abacha loot.
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During an interview with Channels Television, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria said the recovered money does not belong to the Federal Government alone but belongs also to states and local governments. He said it must therefore be sent back to the Federation Account.
“First, the money was stolen from the Federation account and the Central Bank of Nigeria. So if the money is going to be returned, is going to be Repatriated, it has to go back to the Federation Account. The money does not belong to the Federal Government alone, it belongs to the three tiers of government. So if money was taken from the Federation Account and being brought back it must go back to the Federation Account for sharing by the three tiers of government. So the money cannot be used for the funding of the budget of federal government alone.” Falana said
The learned silk further said that the United States of America has no right to dictate to Nigeria how it will spend the recovered money. It was therefore insulting for them to have dictated to Nigeria. He added that It was embarrassing and insulting on the part of the Buhari administration to have accepted the insult.
“The Federal Government should have told the American Government: how dare you! This money was stolen from our country, taken away and kept for twenty years. Nobody is talking of interest, nobody is talking of penalizing the bank that kept the loot but as far as the law is concerned, this money does not belong to the Federal Government so it cannot be used by Federal Government alone.” Falana said
On the possibility of agreement by the tiers of government who are supposed to get this money for Federal Government to spend the money as it proposed, Falana says such agreement cannot have force of law. Relying on section 12 of the constitution, Falana said such agreement must first be
“You see, whatever agreement is made abroad, any tripartite or bilateral agreement or treaty will have to be registered in Nigeria and enacted to law under section 12 of the constitution and if you are not doing that, you must put the money back to where it was taken. If the Federal Government wants to use the money to fix some roads so be it, that is good enough. But the Federal Government must be prepared to refund that money belonging to the state governments and local governments in accordance with the revenue allocation sharing formula.”
When asked on the Legality of federal government going ahead to use the money, Falana said that would go against the constitution because federal government cannot spend money without Appropriation
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