'Okonjo-Iweala is afraid of Buhari' - Governor says

Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole has has faulted the operations and activities of the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the last four years, stating that she fed Nigerians with half-truths.

He said the Minister’s recent outcry about oil marketers falsifying subsidy claims may be for the fear of the incoming President General Muhammadu Buhari.

Oshiomhole who reviewed Nigeria’s economy in the last four years said Okonjo-Iweala ran the Excess Crude Account as a one-man show.

He said: “As the country transits from one democratic dispensation to another, there is no gainsaying the fact that the state of the nation’s economy is the focal point, especially with the unending fuel scarcity which is gradually grinding the nation to a halt. No doubt, the best person to explain the state of the economy today is Dr Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, whose management of the nation’s resources these past four years has elicited different reactions from Nigerians.

“As a member of the National Economic Council, I had spoken out at different times at NEC meetings and even in public on the way the economy was managed under Dr Okonjo-Iweala. Again, I want to share my views with the public on some of the issues affecting the Nigerian nation.

“Recently, Okonjo-Iweala has been all over the place, pointing in the wrong directions and blaming everybody but herself for the parlous state of the Nigerian economy. Coming after her deafening silence on the Pricewaterhouse Coopers, PwC, audit of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, crude oil sales and receipts, which revealed massive abuse of public trust and stealing of our common patrimony in high places under her watch and the government she serves, it is quite intriguing that with barely few days left in office, she has suddenly woken up from her slumber to realise that oil marketers have been all along falsifying subsidy claims and defrauding the nation of billions of naira and dollars.

“This latter day policy activism on her part deserves closer scrutiny and interrogation. Perhaps for fear of the incoming President, Gen. Buhari, come May 29, 2015, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is now compelled to disclose to Nigerians that a cabal is holding the country and the government to ransom. Beside the abuse of the subsidy regime, we will insist that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala also comes clean on some other critical issues that demand accountability from her and her office.”