Veteran journalist, Kunle Ajibade has berated President Muhammadu Buhari for downplaying the massive looting of the national treasury that occurred between 1993 and 1998 under the military junta of Gen. Sani Abacha.
Buhari was the chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) set up by Abacha to manage excess revenue from petrol sales.
Buhari rose to power in 2015 majorly for his hard stance against corruption which many Nigerians hold to be responsible for the nation’s backwardness.
The president had told members of the Buhari Support Organisation on May 22, “No matter what opinion you have about Abacha, I agreed to work with him and the roads we did from PTF exist from here to Port Harcourt, to Onitsha, to Benin and so on.”
But Ajibade, who was jailed for life by Abacha before his life sentence was commuted to 15 years, queried how Buhari could be laying claims to being an anti-corruption crusader on one hand and glorifying Abacha, who records have showed robbed Nigeria blind, on the other.
The journalist, who turned 60 years recently, accused the president of attempting to falsify the nation’s recent history.
In an interview with The Punch published on Saturday, he said, “When you defend a rogue the way President Buhari has defended Abacha, you cannot in all honesty describe yourself as an anti-corruption crusader.
“However, we should not allow President Buhari to get away with falsifying our recent history. Abacha was not only a murderer; he was a proven looter of our national treasury. Even if Buhari benefitted from Abacha, he shouldn’t have said those things.”