Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has said he is yet to be convinced that $49.8 billion went missing during his administration as alleged by the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Muhammadu Sanusi II.
Sanusi, now Emir of Kano, made the claim in a book, Public Policy and Agent Interests: Perspectives from The Emerging World, which he co-authored with a former minister of finance Shamsuddeen Usman.
Speaking on Thursday at the launch of the book in Abuja, Jonathan said the figure Sanusi claimed was unaccounted for could not be true as Nigeria would have been unable to pay salaries if such figure actually went missing.
“I need to say why I did not quite agree with him. All that he wrote was on some of the issues, especially the one that is related to me,” he said.
“He said he was sacked because he blew the whistle that the federal government lost $49.8 billion. It’s not quite correct. It was not that he was sacked. He was suspended.”
The former Nigerian leader said the financial reporting council of CBN could not investigate the allegations due to limited time.
“Before we could finish, his tenure was already over. Probably we would have called him back,” he said.
“Till today, I’m not convinced that the Federal Government lost $49.8 billion.
“After they came up with more figures; first $49.8 billion, later 20 billion, later 12 billion. So, I don’t even know the correct one.”
Jonathan, however, said that after forensic audits, there was no evidence to say such amount was missing.
“The report they came up with was that there is $1.48 billion dollars that they couldn’t really give a proper account and that NNPC should pay that money to the federation account,” he said.
