EFCC Wants to Convict Me Before Nigerians, I Can’t Defraud My Country, Diezani Laments

Former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, has claimed that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) wants to exploit her silence to numerous allegations of corruption to try her in the media and convict her in the public eye.

She regretted that her eight-year experience in government has been fraught with continuous malicious castigation and character assassination, all in the name of ‘personal vendettas’ or political horse trading, dismissing the “untruths” trailing her stay in public office as “well-crafted fables”.

A statement issued yesterday by her stated that the most dramatic and damning accusation was the purported $49.8 billion said to have been missing from the books of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, which she noted went from that figure to $12 billion and then up to $20 billion.

Pointing out her achievements in life including occupying the OPEC presidency, Diezani vowed that she would no longer allow fabricated accusations against her person “designed by unscrupulous persons with a vengeful agenda go unchallenged”.

She emphasised that regardless of whatever her flaws as human may be, she cannot be said to have stolen from,
or defrauded Nigeria, expressing optimism that she would still be alive when history judges exactly who lied and who told the Truth.

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 According to the statement, Deziani said: "I have up till now chosen to maintain my silence and not to respond to inaccurate press reporting. However, given the level of deliberate inaccuracies, I am now forced to respond because it is clear that the EFCC is taking advantage of my silence to try me by media and to."

On the issue of $153.3 million allegation! she said: "I am deeply disturbed and bewildered by recent media reports claiming that by virtue of an order of the federal high court, I have forfeited to the federal government the sum of $153.3m, which I purportedly stole from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

"First and foremost, whilst the reasons for my being out of the country are public knowledge, the principle of fair hearing demands that I should have been notified of formal charges if truly there was a prima facie evidence or indictment against my person linking me with the said issue, so as to ensure that I had adequate legal representation."