President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed reservations over the delay in bringing to Nigeria officials of former President Goodluck Jonathan and its collaborators indicted in corrupt deals taking refuge in Britain.
Buhari, in an interview with Britain’s The Telegraph also expressed regrets that the Jonathan administration had to mobilise South African mercenaries to fight the Boko Haram insurgents instead of properly equipping the armed forces.
Full details of the interview first revealed last week also saw Buhari confirm that Nigerians Islamic radicals were increasingly taking sides in the conflicts in Libya and Syria. Buhari in the interview nevertheless welcomed the assistance of Britain and some other western countries in restoring normalcy to the country’s troubled Northeast which he said had been almost eradicated of insurgency.
Noting his frustration in bringing those indicted of corruption to justice, he said: “One of the biggest suspects is in Britain now, although I am not going to name that person. But Britain has earned our respect in the way it deals with these matters.
“Our only problem is that it seems to be too thorough and it takes too much time. If there are obvious cases, like bank accounts, infrastructure houses and hotels, I would hope they could do it quicker, so that we can claim these things back promptly.” As military head of state 31 years ago, Buhari brought himself to international reckoning when his government allegedly employed Israeli agents to help smuggle the wanted official of the preceding regime, Umaru Dikko out of Britain.
Also expressing his disapproval of the use of mercenaries against Boko Haram by the Jonathan administration, Buhari said: “I personally was very disappointed that the previous government resorted to mercenaries. I was also disappointed by the recent revelations of how military allocations were also misappropriated.
How is it that Nigeria’s military, which has a good record across West Africa, cannot claim back to 14 out of 774 local governorates from Boko Haram? They have to ask for mercenaries from South Africa? How the mighty has fallen!”
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