A former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, has exposed large-scale fraud spearheaded by individuals, public officials, ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), as well as private enterprises, during the federal government’s infamous subsidy regime.
According to him, for 25 years the perpetrators capitalized on the system’s loopholes to defraud the country of billions of naira by forging documents, breaching payment procedures and looting the national treasury.
By the time incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu removed the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, on May 29, 2023, Nigeria had spent N16.5 trillion on subsidy payments, the bulk of which had been stolen. Tinubu had in his inaugural speech declared that “Fuel subsidy is gone”. Bawa said the looting spree was carried out under four administrations between 1999 and 2023.
According to Bawa, the regimes under which the national treasury was plundered were those of former President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2006), the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (2007-2009), former President Goodluck Jonathan (2010-2014), and Muhammadu Buhari (2015-2023).
These revelations are contained in the book, The Shadow Of Loot and Losses – Uncovering Nigeria’s Petrol Subsidy Fraud, which the former anti-graft czar authored.
According to the figures disclosed by Bawa, of the four administrations, Buhari’s topped the controversial subsidy payment with N11 trillion, followed by Jonathan’s, which doled out N3.9 trillion. The Obasanjo government came third with N812 billion while Yar’Adua occupied the rear with N794 billion.
Obasanjo and Buhari spent eight years in office while Jonathan ruled for six years, having initially completed the two years left by the Yar’Adua administration, as the deceased’s deputy, winning the presidential election in 2011.
In the 317-page book, Bawa said the subsidy payments, which were usually fraudulent, were oiled by inadequate regulatory frameworks, weak law enforcement mechanisms, and a lack of transparency in the whole process.
Bawa said these lapses encouraged the spike in subsidy payments from N123 billion in 2006 to N886 billion in 2014 and the outrageous figure of N11 trillion in 2023.
