Probe Malabu oil scandal, APC tells Jonathan

The All Progressives Congress has challenged President Goodluck Jonathan to urgently speak out and take action on the Malabu oil scandal, which has been rocking his administration and portraying Nigeria as a corrupt nation.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the APC said Jonathan must end his silence on the matter since half of the $1.1bn paid to Malabu Oil and Gas for oil field OPL 245 by two oil majors was allegedly used to bribe Nigerian officials, who bought private jets and armoured limousines with the proceeds.

It said since the deal to pay Malabu the huge funds was brokered and defended by the Jonathan administration, officials of the same administration will know one or two things about the scandal.

APC said, ‘’The only way to know for sure is if there is an independent investigation of the allegation, which has been published by the international media after Italian prosecutors intensified their probe into the deal. This is where President Jonathan comes in. He must allow an unfettered probe of this scandal that has again put Nigeria in bad light. Whatever happens, however, the names of those who received the bribes will soon be known, thanks to the determination of the UK and Italy to show that no one who violates their laws will go scot-free.

‘’Just like the Halliburton and Siemens bribery scandals that were also exposed from abroad, this Malabu scandal has again damaged Nigeria’s standing in the comity of nations. While US, France, Italy and Germany have jailed officials and imposed fines on the foreign firms that gave bribes to Nigerian officials in the Halliburton and Siemens scandals, none of those who received the bribes here in Nigeria has been touched. The Malabu scandal must not go the same way.’’

It said the Jonathan administration “is swimming in corruption and the President has contumaciously allowed it to fester because his government is feeding fat on the proceeds of graft.”

APC said apart from the Malabu, Halliburton and Siemens scandals, the Jonathan administration has done nothing to tell Nigerians what happened to the $20bn in diverted oil money; the multi-billion naira fuel subsidy fraud for which no single persons has been brought to justice; opaque crude oil swaps at the expense of encouraging domestic refinery; payment of billions of naira in kerosene subsidy without appropriation and the police pension fraud.

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