I didn't see anything incriminating concerning Buhari-Says Obasanjo

 

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo made a new revelation on Tuesday said his administration probed the accounts of the Petroleum Trust Fund headed by the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and found nothing unpleasant.

Buhari headed the PTF, inaugurated in March 1995, under the regime of the late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha. The PTF was established to manage the fund accruable from the increase in the pump price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise know as petrol, from N3.25 to N11.

The PTF was scrapped by Obasanjo on assumption of the Presidency in 1999. The ex-President also set up a committee to investigate the accounts of the PTF following allegations of N25bn fraud in the agency.

Obasanjo’s fresh revelation was made in Ogun State when Buhari and other national leaders of the APC visited the ex-President at his Hilltop residence in Abeokuta.

On the Buhari’s entourage were the APC national chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun; the party’s former interim national chairman, Chief Bisi Akande; a former governor of Lagos State and a national leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, and the governor of Ogun State, Ibikunle Amosun, among others.

Obasanjo said when he looked into the report submitted to him on the alleged fraud in the PTF he did not see anything incriminating concerning Buhari.

He said, “When you were going to become the manager of PTF. We talked about it and when you finished and I took over, we looked into it.

“I haven’t said this publicly, I would say it publicly now. When we looked into it, there was really nothing amiss except that that organisation went from road building to mosquito net-buying and all sorts of things.

“And what the investigation discovered is a bit of inconsistency in prices and all that. In one area, mosquito net might have been given for N50; in another, N45. And I then remarked that this is fishy. We should look into it.

“And I called my brother and colleague (Buhari), I said see this and he said ‘look we are managing billions of Naira and I tried to make sure I see everything.But I will not say that what they have said about this is correct or not correct. But I can assure you, I tried to see everything.’

“I said okay Muhammadu, between me, you and God, was there any personal benefit for you? And you said ‘no.’ I said that is the end of the matter.