A former senior member of the President Muhammad Buhari administration, Amina Mohammed, the erstwhile Minister of Environment until she joined the United Nations as Deputy Chief is now embroiled in a $300 million scandal.
$300 million represents the value of the 1.4 million logs of Nigerian endangered Rosewood timber that was stolen and shipped to China under the United Nations number two watch during her immediate former job as a Nigerian minister.
Nigerian president Muhammad Buhari during the onset of his administration had concurred with then British Prime Minister David Cameron stating that indeed Nigerians are fantastically corrupt. Amina Muhammad is a close ally of the Nigerian leader.
The Environmental Investigation Agency said that 1.4 million logs of Nigerian rosewood worth $300 million were confiscated for months by Chinese authorities upon arrival at ports, pending paperwork. They were released after Mohammed provided in January 2017 permits retroactively issued to clear their export from Nigeria. This was just weeks before she left her ministerial post to join the UN, the EIA said in a report released Thursday after a two-year investigation.
Bloomberg reports, Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General since February 2017, “appears to have signed thousands of retroactive CITES documents that legalized the timber,” Washington, DC-based EIA said, referring to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, to which Nigeria is a signatory.
Mohammed “categorically rejects any allegations of fraud” and has Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ full support, a UN spokesman said Friday in an emailed response to questions.