Lawmaker: Abacha’s $23m loot should be channeled to ASUU crisis, not 2023 elections

The member representing Jos North/Jos South Federal Constituency of Plateau State in the House of Representatives, Dachung Bagos, has said part of Abacha loot should be used to end the ongoing Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike.

He warned the government against using the money to prosecute the 2023 general elections.

Bagos made the remarks during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today.

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He said, “This is my third year in the National Assembly; we have never discussed any of the recovered loots. We just sit down and we hear the executive recovered loots and allocate the same expenses to to various projects that they so desire.

“Section 12 sub section 1 of the 1999 constitution as amended clearly says that any agreement or treaty that is being signed on behalf of Nigerians by the federation needs to be ratified by the National Assembly, but most of these agreements have not been brought to the National Assembly for us ratify to see if there are clauses in these agreements that will cause certain dangers or harm to the next generation of  Nigeria.

“The eighth Assembly really argued about some of the recovered loots, then it was about $600 million from 2015 to 2019 that was recovered, but the executive channeled it to social intervention programmes prior to election, sharing N5,000 and so on.

“These funds are critical and we want Nigerians to be aware of the situation because we don’t want the funds diverted to elections at the last minute of the administration.

“And to us if such amount of money will be recovered, we need to look into such amount of money. What is the pressing need of Nigerians that we can channel such funds? If such money is going into the federation account, it means that before it goes out of the federation account, it needs to be approved by the National Assembly, not the executive to just channel to what they want.

“We have pressing needs, like now ASUU has been on strike and government is trying to settle such issue.  As a representative of the people if I have to argue where such funds will be channeled to, why can’t we channel part of this funds to ASUU so that our youths that are home can go back to school?”