Former President Goodluck Jonathan has stated that he remains unconvinced that $49.8 billion went missing during his administration.
The claim was made by former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor and current Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, in his new book titled Public Policy and Agent Interests: Perspectives from The Emerging World.
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 be 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 an amount was missing.
“The report they came up with was that there are 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.
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