Former Petroleum Minister Diezani Playing The Sick Card

As information continues to emerge of the
billions of dollars of public funds that
Nigeria’s former Petroleum Minister, Diezani
Alison-Madueke, stole with the help of
cohorts she handpicked, the embattled
former minister is apparently playing the sick
card in the United Kingdom where she has
spent most of her time since ex-President
Goodluck Jonathan lost his reelection bid.

In recent days, several online media have reported that Ms.
Alison-Madueke was critically sick in a London hospital.
However, two sources in the UK who are quite conversant
with the former minister’s physical condition told
SaharaReporters today that her condition had not
deteriorated, contrary to media reports.
One of the sources went as far as suggesting that the ex-
Petroleum Minister might be orchestrating the reports about
her grave ill health as a strategy to attract public sympathy
as well as official leniency from President Muhammadu
Buhari who has received extensive intelligence from US
authorities detailing the extent of Ms. Alison-Madueke’s
looting of petro-dollars under the watch of Mr. Jonathan.
One of our UK sources disclosed that the beleaguered
former minister recently concluded a course of treatment
for cancer, adding that she is not hospitalized in London as
being touted by some members of her family.
Another source revealed that he and others were in touch
with the former minister as recently as yesterday. “She is
definitely not in an ICU [intensive care unit] as I understand
that some press people have been reporting,” the source
said. According to him, “All I know is that there is a fair
amount of anxiety on her part about all the reports coming
out about her management of the affairs of the oil sector.
Perhaps this anxiety is translating into efforts to portray her
as sicker than she is, in reality. That strategy is
understandable, as a way of lessening public reaction to
reports that are out there. And there’s considerable
uncertainty about what [President] Buhari is going to do.
So, yes, there’s an advantage to the reports [of her critical
ill health], but I can tell you she’s not in any devastated
shape. Far from it.”
A series of coordinated reports about Ms. Alison-
Madueke’s ill health began to surface after
SaharaReporters revealed that US officials handed a
dossier of the former minister’s billion dollar fraudulent
deals to President Muhammad Buhari during his visit last
week to America.
Yesterday, in a move that corroborated our report, Governor
Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State told reporters at the State
House in Abuja that US officials informed Mr. Buhari that a
Nigerian minister under President Jonathan stole as much
as $6 billion from the Nigerian treasury. Even though Mr.
Oshiomhole did not disclose the name of the minister
involved, a source at the Presidency confirmed to
SaharaReporters that Ms. Alison-Madueke was the minister
in question. Governor Oshiomhole was the only governor in
President Buhari’s delegation when he held a critical
meeting with US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, at Blair
House in Washington, DC. Ms. Lynch, who is known to be
tough on crime, especially international fraud, reportedly
pledged US assistance to arrest and prosecute the former
Petroleum Minister and others who have defrauded the
Nigerian people provided that Mr. Buhari would take steps
to identify and flush out corrupt judges from the Nigerian
judiciary.
Mr. Oshiomhole said that US officials, who were astonished
by the size of looting that took place under Mr. Jonathan’s
administration, declared that the funds stolen by one
minister were staggering even for an economy as big as
that of the United States. The former Petroleum Minister
was known to be extraordinarily close to Mr. Jonathan, who
refused to remove her from his cabinet despite numerous
credible reports of her illicit and corrupt deals.
SaharaReporters earlier reported that Ms. Alison-Madueke
had attempted to send emissaries to President Buhari
offering to return $250 million from her loot in return for
being shielded from prosecution. One of the associates she
contacted is a northern governor known to be close to Mr.
Buhari. A highly reliable source told SaharaReporters that
Mr. Buhari rejected the offer, contending that he would
uncover how much Ms. Alison-Madueke and her fronts
looted from the Nigerian treasury. “Mr. President is not
interested in settling for small change. He has sworn to the
Nigerian people that he will recover the vast sums stolen by
officials of past government, especially those of President
Jonathan. He is determined to keep his pledge to the
Nigerian people.”
Former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, had
accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC), an agency under Ms. Alison-Madueke, of failing to
deposit more than $20 billion of oil earnings at the CBN.
Rather than launch a serious investigation, then President
Jonathan ran to the former Petroleum Minister’s defense,
and eased Mr. Sanusi out of his job at the CBN.
Fresh reports are surfacing of how Ms. Alison-Madueke
used cohorts she handpicked to systematically deprive
Nigerians of billions of dollars of oil revenues. Among the
big players in her web of oil scams are Kogi-born
businessman, Jide Omokore, Ben Peters, Igho Salome, and
Kola Aluko. The mega scams the former minister pulled off
with her trusted hands involved opulent acquisition of at
least four private jets, a yacht, real estate in various world
locations, including New York, Dubai, and London, and the
transfer of huge sums to bank accounts operated by
shadowy companies in Switzerland and several tax
havens.
Ms. Alison-Madueke famously fell out with Mr. Aluko over
the latter’s reported romantic involvement with ex-super
model Naomi Campbell. It is believed that Mr. Aluko
absconded with more than $1 billion that was in his custody
as a result of shady transactions engineered and approved
by the former Petroleum Minister.

Source: Sahara Reporters, New York.