South Africa is considering
returning more than $15m, it
seized from Nigeria in
September, last year.
The money, which was meant for
the purchase of arms to fight the
Boko Haram insurgents, was
seized in two batches of $5.7m
and $9.3m.
A South African newspaper, The
Mail & Guardian, reported on
Friday that South Africa had
begun to work out the process of
returning the money.
According to the newspaper, the
effort of South Africa is aimed at
starting on a clean slate with
Nigerian President-elect,
Muhammadu Buhari.
The money was taken to South
Africa through Lanseria Airport in
Johannesburg in three suitcases
by a delegation said to represent
the Nigerian government.
The Mail & Guardian stated that
South Africa wanted to use the
money to extend an olive branch
to Buhari’s government and
mend relations between the two
countries, which became
strained during the tenure of
outgoing President Goodluck
Jonathan. It quoted a South
African government source as
saying, “The positive thing about
[Buhari] is that one of the people
who supported him is Atiku
Abubakar. That makes him our
man and he will automatically
work well with [President Jacob]
Zuma.”
According to the newspaper,
Atiku is a close associate of Zuma.
He was Nigeria’s deputy
president during the presidency
of Olusegun Obasanjo, at the
time when Zuma was Thabo
Mbeki’s deputy.
“Also, this man [Buhari] is a
[retired] military general. It is
true that the military needs
some beefing up to fight Boko
Haram and we should help,” the
source added.
On the process of returning the
money, the South African
government source added,
“Diplomatically you send a
signal. Obviously they will have
to make a request once they
receive a positive signal, but the
request will just be an official
step to finalising the
transaction.”
The newspaper stated that
although formal talks had not yet
begun, South Africa had
apparently started sending
“positive signals” through its
diplomats in Nigeria and to the
Nigerian embassy in Pretoria.
“To ensure that the process of
returning the money or
regularising the sale of arms
looks as clean as possible, the
Hawks investigation will
continue, the source said, but
will be managed politically to
reach a conclusion that is
diplomatically favourable.
“One way is to make the
investigators say: ‘Yes, a law has
been broken, but it’s true that
the government [of Nigeria] is
the owner of that money and
genuinely wanted to buy arms
legally. They might have flouted
the rules, but it’s a genuine
transaction.’ [We will say] this
money does not come from dirty
hands or rebels or arms dealers,”
the source said.
“We will find a way to regularise
the transaction and either return
the money or give them arms.”
Nigeria wanted to use the
money to buy arms such as
helicopters and ammunition to
strengthen its fight against
Islamic extremist group Boko
Haram.
In 2014, the South African
newspaper had reported that
the head of the national
conventional arms control
committee, Jeff Radebe, who is
also the minister in the
presidency, was blamed by the
government for taking a
unilateral decision to try to
regularise the sale of arms to
Nigeria to facilitate the release
of bodies of South Africans who
were killed when Pastor
Temitope Joshua’s church the
Synagogue Church of All Nations
building collapsed.
At the time, Radebe denied it
and said the committee had met
in October and decided to
propose unlocking the Nigerian
arms trade.
The M&G quoted from two letters
that Radebe had written to JP
“Torie” Pretorius of the Hawks
and Dumisani Dladla, the head of
the arms control committee’s
secretariat, in which he said the
failed attempt on September 5
to pay an arms dealer in South
Africa “was, in fact, a legitimate
requirement from the
government of Nigeria”.
“Although the required
administrative processes were
not adhered to at the time, the
government of South Africa
deems it a bona fide error,” he
wrote.
The newspaper also reported
that a government source in
South Africa said, “What Jeff did
may have been unilateral, but it
is now an avenue that South
Africa is willing to explore. Even
when we were doing damage
control after your story, the
discussion centred around how
we can get a positive outcome
out of this.”
The spokesperson for the South
Africa’s Department of
International Relations and Co-
operation, Nelson Kgwete, was
reported by the newspapers as
saying that the department had
not been in talks with Nigerian
government over the
confiscated money and knew
nothing about a proposal to
either return the money or sell
arms to Nigeria
When contacted, the South
African ambassador to Nigeria,
Lulu Mnguni, said there had been
discussions between his country
and Nigeria to return the money
before the expiration of the
tenure of the Jonathan
administration on May 29,2014.
Mnguni however said he could
not comment on the report that
the South African government
planned to give the money to
the incoming government,
noting that he has no such
information.
“We have been holding
discussions about returning the
money to the current
government in Nigeria before
the expiration of its tenure on
May 29, but I can’t react to the
report in a newspaper on the
issue, but I will get across to my
principal and let you know the
position of things,” he said on
the phone.
by ROTMANLUV 2023-07-08, 17:34
