My Mother Was K!dnapped After I Uncovered $2.4bn Fuel Subsidy Fraud – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Former Nigerian Minister of Finance and Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has revealed how her investigation into an alleged $2.4 billion fuel subsidy fraud led to threats against her and the kidnapping of her mother.

Naija News reports that Okonjo-Iweala disclosed this during an interview with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua.

The WTO chief explained that the discovery of irregularities in the country’s fuel subsidy programme prompted her to seek an audit of the payments being made to fuel importers.

According to her, Nigeria, despite being an oil-producing country, relied on imported refined petroleum products because it could not refine all the fuel it consumed at the time.

Under the subsidy arrangement, importers brought refined petroleum products into the country and received government payments that allowed them to sell the products at lower prices at the pump.

However, she said the amount being claimed by importers increased rapidly, raising concerns about possible fraud in the programme.

Okonjo-Iweala said she brought the matter to the attention of the president, who approved her request to audit the accounts.

The investigation subsequently uncovered what she described as about $2.4 billion in fraud, prompting the government to refuse to pay the disputed claims.

She explained that the decision triggered threats against her, with the situation escalating when her mother was kidnapped.

The former finance minister disclosed that her mother’s abductors demanded that she resign from her position and leave Nigeria in exchange for her mother’s release.

She said: “When I was finance minister of my country, we noticed that large sums of money seemed to be being spent on a programme that we had subsidizing gas at the pump.

“Nigeria is an oil producing country, but we cannot refine everything that we consume. So we do bring in refined oil from outside.

“So importers would bring in and they would be paid the subsidies and they would sell cheaper at the pump. And they put in claims for these subsidies. And we suddenly found that the amounts were just skyrocketing. It just didn’t seem normal.

“So I went to the president and said, look, something is going on here. Could we audit the accounts? And he said, yes, go ahead. And we found about $2.4 billion worth of fraud. So we refused to pay.

“That then led to threats to me, and then my mother got kidnapped. I was told that for her to be released, I should resign and leave the country. Of course, it was a terrible, terrible five-day ordeal. I think the worst in my life.

“You know, when you feel that what you’re doing might lead to the death of your own parent, that is not a situation that anyone ever wants to be in. But, yeah, so it’s even painful every time I think about it and what happened. I feel very emotional. She was held in the middle of a forest and one night she escaped. She’s still alive. She’s 96 now. You can’t talk about, if you mention it, she just starts shaking immediately. Having my mother alive and staying in a job, I will pick my mother any day.”