N150bn ‘Shared’ In 2015: You lied, Jonathan Replies Osinbajo
Former President Goodluck Jonathan, Tuesday, replied Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on claims that his government shared N150 billion two weeks before the 2015 elections, asking him to provide documentary evidence of the sharing.
The Vice President had at the 7th Presidential Quarterly Business Forum for private sector stakeholders at the Conference Centre, Old banquet Hall, Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Monday, said: “In one single transaction, a few weeks to the 2015 elections, sums of $100.289 million were just frittered away by a few.
‘When you consider that in 2014, as the Minister of Finance has said, that oil price was an average of $110 a barrel and only N99 billion was spent on power, works and housing and when we talk about the economy, we talk as if these are normal by every standard.
“Nobody should talk about the economy when you have this kind of huge leakages and huge corruption that completely makes nonsense of even what you are allocating to capital projects.
“We saw from the presentation of Minister of Finance that N14 billion was spent on agriculture in 2014, transportation N15 billion; so the total spent on infrastructure in those three years was N153 billion and in two weeks before the elections, N150 billion was essentially shared.
“So if your total infrastructure spending is N153 billion and you can share N150 billion, that is completely incredible. That sort of thing doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. And when we are talking about the economy, we must simply understand that it is the problem.
But responding to the allegation, Media aide to former President Jonathan, Reno Omokri, noted in a statement, Tuesday, that the Vice President, being a professor of Law must know that he who alleges must also prove, in order to be taken seriously.
He said: “My attention has been drawn to rehashed lies in the media by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, against the person of former President Jonathan.
“On this most recent allegation by Vice President Osinbajo, let me state categorically that former President Jonathan did not share N150 billion two weeks to the 2015 election.
‘If Professor Osinbajo has proof that former President Jonathan did so, then we challenge him to publish his proof. He is a professor of law and ought to know that he who alleges must prove.’’
According to him, the statements credited to Osinbajo not only represented deliberately twisted facts and figures but has also exposed the nation’s second citizen as a man incapable of telling the truth in matters relating to the former President.
He said further: “Only on October 20, 2017, Vice President Osinbajo was in Anambra State where he said that the present administration had paid $2 billion for the second Niger Bridge.
‘’I personally exposed that lie and forced the Presidency to issue a ‘clarification’. The money released was N2 billion and it came from the Sovereign Wealth Fund set up by the Jonathan administration which the APC resisted and challenged in court.
“Even after Jonathan left office, it is still monies that he left behind that the Buhari administration is using. It will also be recalled that in February 2016, the Vice President again lied when he claimed that both the Jonathan and Yar’ Adua governments did not build a single road.
‘’This fact was easily disproved when even members of this administration, including Osinbajo’s boss, President Buhari, began commissioning projects, including roads built by the Jonathan administration.
‘’Some of the roads either built or rebuilt by the Jonathan administration include the Benin-Ore portions of the Benin-Lagos Road, the Vom-Manchok Road, the Kano-Zaria Road Bridge (named after late Emir Ado Bayero) and many more.’’
