By Abiola Olawale
Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd), the National Security Adviser has debunked the reports of missing arms procurement funds making the rounds, saying he was misquoted.
The National Security Adviser was quoted to have said that the $1 billion withdrawn from Excess Crude Account, in 2018, to procure arms was missing and the weapons are nowhere to be found.
Many news reports had quoted Monguno to have said this during an interview session with BBC Hausa on Friday.
Monguno in the interview said: “It is not that we are not working to end the security challenge in the country. The President has done his own part and allocated huge amount of money to purchase weapons but they are yet to be here. We don’t know where they are. I am not saying that the past Service Chiefs have diverted the money, but presently we don’t know where the money is. I am sure the President will investigate this. As I am talking to you now, even the Nigerian Governors’ Forum has started questioning where the money is. So I assure you that the President is not playing with anything that has to do with the people. I can’t say the money was stolen but we didn’t see anything and even the new Service Chiefs said they didn’t see the weapons. It is possible the weapons are on their way coming. Maybe from America, England and other places but as at now, I didn’t see anything and the Service Chiefs too didn’t see any weapons too.”
The NSA while reacting to viral reports of the purported missing arms funds said he did not categorically said the funds were missing.
He, however, reiterated that President Buhari has provided enormous resources for the procurement of arms, but, the arms haven’t been delivered due to the tedious negotiations involved.
This was contained in a statement released by the office of the NSA, Abuja, on Friday.
The statement reads, “The attention of the Office of the National Security Adviser has been drawn to some media reports regarding Armed Forces equipment during an interview with the BBC Hausa service. We would like to State that the NSA was quoted out of context as he did not categorically say that funds meant for arms procurement were missing under the Former Service Chiefs as reported or transcribed by some media outlets from the BBC interview. During the interview, the National Security Adviser only reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to deal decisively with insecurity and stated President Muhammadu Buhari’s continued commitment to provide all necessary support to the Armed Forces, including the provision of arms and equipment. In the interview the National Security Adviser clearly informed the BBC reporter that Mr President has provided enormous resources for arms procurement, but the orders were either inadequate or yet to be delivered and that did not imply that the funds were misappropriated under the former Service Chiefs.
“The NSA also informed the reporter that, Mr President is following up on the procurement process as is usual with contracts relating to military equipments, in most cases the process involves manufacturing, due diligence and tedious negotiations that may change delivery dates. As the National Security Adviser conveyed during the Aso Villa Media Briefing, questions relating to Defence procurement should be channelled to the Ministry of Defence. All Security and Intelligence agencies are working together to bring an end to insecurity with the full support of Mr. President and Stakeholders including the media and civil society as part of a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach to address our security challenges.”
