A human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana
(SAN), has advocated that persons accused of diverting funds meant for
procurement of arms to fight Boko Haram should be tried by the
International Criminal Court.
Falana made the call in a paper he presented during the opening of the Amnesty International’s office in Abuja on Tuesday.
The senior lawyer, who urged the AI to
promote economic and social rights, argued that corruption “frustrates
socio-economic rights.”
According to him, promotion of
socio-economic rights will enhance the principles of universality,
indivisibility and interdependence of all human beings.
He noted that scores of people had been
killed by Boko Haram due to lack of equipment, adding that people
involved in diverting the money meant for arms procurement must be
prosecuted for the avoidable deaths.
He said, “By diverting the huge funds
for arms procurement, the suspects deliberately caused the death of not
less than 25,000 ill-equipped soldiers and unarmed civilians, including
children. For committing such grave crimes against humanity, the
suspects should be referred to the prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court in The Hague for prosecution.”
He recalled that the National Assembly approved $1bn loan for former President Goodluck Jonathan for procurement of arms.
The lawyer said that based on his
involvement in the defence of soldiers in military courts, he had
confirmed that the loan was obtained, but diverted.
“I wrote to the then Finance Minister
and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to
demand an inventory of the arms bought with the $1bn loan. In her
embarrassing reaction to my request, the minister stated that she was
not in a position to account for the loan!
“When I persisted in demanding
transparency and accountability, the immediate past Chief of Defence
Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, claimed that the armed forces led by him
lacked the equipment to fight the insurgents,” he said.
Falana also dismissed the World Bank’s
report on the disbursement of the recovered money from the late former
Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha.
Faulting Okonjo-Iweala’s claim that only
$500m of the Abacha loot was recovered, he said it was misleading for
the World Bank to say that the money had been judiciously spent.
He stated, “Apart from the package of
lies which lacerated the report on the projects purportedly funded with
the loot, the World Bank deliberately set out to cover up the fact that
the bulk of the Abacha loot had been re-looted. Contrary to the figure
of $500m admitted by the World Bank, I wish to state, without any fear
of contradiction, that over $4 billion was recovered by the Federal
Government from 1998 to 2014.”
The human rights lawyer said President
Muhammadu Buhari’s administration should ask the office of the
Accountant-General of the Federation to account for the $4bn recovered
from the Abacha loot.
Falana did not dispute the Transparency
International’s ranking of South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as the
leading corrupt countries in Africa. He, however, said the ranking had
exposed the hypocrisy of the organisation, which failed to identify
western countries which kept stolen funds.
Earlier in his welcome address, the
Director of the AI, Nigeria, Mohammed Ibrahim, said the group in the
last five years had released reports on human rights violations in
Nigeria, including extrajudicial killings, forced evictions as well as
Boko Haram’s atrocities and the military violations.
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