“Sanusi removed instead of investigating missing $20 Billion won't condone stealing” - Buhari

President-elect, Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd), on Sunday said his administration would take a second look at the claim by a former Governor of the Central Bank (now Emir of Kano), Muhammad Sanusi II, that $20bn, that was supposed to be remitted by the NNPC to the federation account, could not be unaccounted.

While addressing a delegation of Adamawa State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who paid him a congratulatory visit at his campaign headquarters in Abuja on his victory at the polls, Buhari showed open bitterness that the present government turned deaf ears over the missing money when it was raised by the former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanisu Lamido Sanusi, Vanguard reports. 

The President-Elect, who spoke in the local Hausa language, expressed surprise that instead of probing the allegations by the former CBN governor, the authorities chose to fire him.

He also noted that his administration would not condone stealing of public funds meant to provide jobs for the teeming jobless Nigerian youth. 

“I heard that some people have started returning money; I will not believe it until I go and see for myself.

“Imagine a situation where the former CBN governor who by God ‘s grace would later become the Emir of Kano raised an issue of missing billions of money, not in Naira but in Dollars, $20 billion. 

“What happened, instead of investigating to know whether it was true that the money was missing or not, they simply found a reason to remove him So these are the issues we are talking about”, Buhari said.  

Buhari listed his government top priority areas to include security of lives and property, the economy, job creation and the war against corruption. 

This fresh declaration by the president-elect comes hours after a pronouncement by the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has started refunding the unremitted $1.48bn into the federation account.