Abubakar Malami, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation Some of the officials working under former President Muhammadu Buhari were the target of harsh criticism from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, particularly his Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN).CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
“The most atrocious waste, enthronement of corruption, and discouragement of officials fighting corruption took place under the watch of President Buhari and the devil’s workshop, his Attorney General, Abubakar Malami,” Obasanjo wrote in his book “Nigeria: Past and Future,” referring to Malami as “the devil’s workshop.”
Obasanjo said that although convicting VIPs involved in grand corruption was a challenging task for the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), it was accomplished with the 10-year prison sentence of former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye and the 12-year sentence of Jolly Nyame, who embezzled N1.126 billion and N1.64 billion of state funds, respectively.
Four months after receiving a state pardon, Dariye and Nyame were freed on August 8, 2022, from the penitentiary facility located in the Kuje council region of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Dariye and Nyame were among 159 prisoners who received presidential pardons at a Council of State meeting in April 2022 that was chaired by former President Buhari. Due to their advanced age and poor health, the two former governors who had been imprisoned for embezzlement and fraud of public funds were pardoned.
Nyame was found guilty in 2018 of embezzling public funds and sentenced to 14 years in jail; however, in 2020, the Supreme Court overturned the court of appeals’ decision and lowered Nyame’s sentence to 12 years. After a Supreme Court ruling upheld an earlier decision by the appeal court, Dariye’s 14-year prison sentence for N1.126 billion fraud was lowered by four years. Speaking about their pardon, Obasanjo said that Malami, the AGF, had strongly advised it.
According to the elder statesman, Buhari asked the Council of State for advise before granting the two former governors a presidential pardon on the basis of their health. “I would have like to have stated that the governors should be released from prison on health grounds rather than receiving a presidential pardon, but I was unable to attend the Council of State meeting when the governors received it. Later, rumors spread that it was all a lie and that neither of them had a serious illness.
All of this was a result of Malami’s financial antics, many of which he exploited. In a variety of ways, his principle coexisted peacefully with corruption while agreeing, condoning, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, and making token gestures toward combating corruption. As a result of this government action, Obasanjo stated, “I was made to understand that some officials of the EFCC were terribly disappointed, discouraged, downcast, and lost the pep in doing their work of fighting corruption.”CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
