On his trip to the U.S., President Buhari is quoted as making some remarks that suggest that former ministers believed to have acted improperly during their tenures will be prosecuted. He is quoted as saying at the Nigerian Embassy;
“We are now looking for evidences of shipping some of our crude, their destinations and where and which accounts they were paid and in which country
When we get as much as we can get as soon as possible, we will approach those countries to freeze those accounts and go to court, prosecute those people and let the accounts be taken to Nigeria.
The amount of money is mind-boggling but we have started getting documents of some senior people in government, former ministers, some of them had as much as five accounts and were moving about one million barrel per day on their own. We have started getting those documents. Whichever documents we are able to get and subsequently trace the sale of the crude or transfer of money from ministries, departments, Central Bank.
We will ask for the cooperation of those countries to return those monies to federation accounts and we will use those documents to arrest those people and prosecute them. This, I promise Nigerians.”