The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, has claimed that about $1bn (N197bn) went missing every month under former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The former apex bank governor, said this during a programme entitled ‘How a cancer of corruption steals Nigerian oil, weapons and lives’, which aired on The PBS NewsHour, an American daily evening television show.
The monarch said many dirty and shocking deals took place under the immediate past Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who is currently being investigated in the United Kingdom.
His words, “In Nigeria, there is no accountability at all and that is why I think Nigeria’s corruption is worse than corruption in most parts of the world. It is the worst type of corruption. It’s stealing.
“Frankly, I think a billion dollars under Jonathan a month was about what we were losing.”
Speaking further, the emir claimed that during Alison-Madueke’s tenure as petroleum minister, people paid as low as $50m for access to crude oil blocs valued at over $2bn.
Sanusi said, “Basically, all it does is allow a group of people, who themselves don’t have any kind of operating background, to pay $50m for access to the crude oil in blocs, valued at over $2bn and they just take the crude oil, ship it out and don’t return the money and there is no trace of where the money has gone.
“Someone gets a contract to lift crude from the terminals to the refineries and in between, that crude is stolen; it is stolen on the high sea.”
“If she goes to court and is jailed for example, it sends a signal; I think that there is a day of reckoning,” he said.
The US television show quoted United States and UK authorities as saying that Alison-Madueke might have “personally overseen the stealing of $6bn”.
“The most common method is awarding oil contracts to companies owned by friends,” it added.