President Muhammadu Buhari has disclosed in an exclusive interview with Peter Okwoche of the BBC that his inability to prosecute Diezani Alison-Madueke, the immediate past Minister of Petroleum Resources, and other petroleum workers is due to lack of evidence against the named parties.
Peter Okwoche who quoted the President in his tweet which reads: “To prosecute corruption successfully we need evidence. That’s not easy especially in petroleum sector.”
The admission by the President to lack of evidence however vindicates the immediate past petroleum Minister from diverse allegations of corrupt malpractices leveled against her by Nigerians.
When accused of seeking asylum in some foreign countries to avoid being probed and prosecuted, the immediate past Petroleum minister said; “Let me state it clearly for the records that Nigeria is my country and am not going anywhere. I love my country and I do think that I have done the best for my country.
“For everything that has a beginning there is an end and that is not a surprise. What is the surprise is the sort of malevolence bordering on personal malicious libel to my person during this period of time.
“I do believe that I have done the best for Nigeria in this job and I have attained many firsts in the history of oil and gas, especially in the reforms that we have done. In this period of time, I have stepped on many big toes, particularly the feet of the cabal in the industry when we came in.
“I have said severally that we will open up the industry to all Nigerians and we have, but that is not to the pleasure of certain cabal. And I have been continuously maligned because of this and we have taken millions and in fact, billions of dollars out of the hands of multinationals and their sub-contractors and put them in the hands of Nigerians through Nigerian content.
She added that the reforms put in place during her tenure as the petroleum minister was responsible for the employment of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians into the oil and gas industry.