After about a week in detention, an aide to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Bodunde Adeyanju, who was arrested and interrogated by security forces in connection to the $180 million Halliburton bribe scandal has been released in Abuja, NEXT has gathered.
Sources close to the Presidential panel conducting the Halliburton investigation told us that Mr. Adeyanju was released late Wednesday after he "finally opened up and said all the money he collected from Gaius Obaseki, a former Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, was passed to Lawal Batagarwa, a former minister of state for education under the Obasanjo administration."
NEXT reported exclusively in March 29 this year that a number of high level Nigerian government and party officials, including three heads of states, have been indicted in the bribe scandal associated with the award of contract for the building of the $6billion Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas plant between 1994 and 2004
NEXT gathered that although the TSKJ consortium which won the NLNG contract released $5million slush fund to Mr. Obaseki with a view that he pass it on to the ruling People's Democratic Party [PDP] but Mr. Obaseki, for unexplained reasons, preferred to deliver the money to the presidency explaining that it was "contributions from contractors" according to inside sources knowledgeable about this matters. "Gaius [Obaseki] preferred to deliver the money to the presidency, which then issued cheques to the party from time to time" remarked our source who is usually reliable but sought anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.
The challenge of managing this slush fund, and liaison with the party, according to our source, ultimately fell on Mr. Adeyanju, the same Presidential aide who, during the high-profile disagreement between President Obasanjo and his then deputy, Atiku Abubakar, reportedly mismanaged the funds of the Petroleum Development Trust Fund [PTDF]. He was accused, then, of withdrawing N3billion from the PTDF deposit in the defunct Trans International Bank. Mr. Adeyanju has not denied this allegation till date.
As investigators freed Mr. Adeyanju to leave on Wednesday, they reached to Mr. Batagarawa who Mr. Adeyanju claimed took custody of the money from him in a chain of sleaze that presumably terminated at the PDP vaults. Mr. Batagarawa who is from Katsina State, and had served as both the Minister of State, Education, and of Defence at various times in the Obasanjo administration, was, according to sources close to the ongoing investigation, a Special Adviser on Non-Party Relations when this deals were been organised.
Investigators are now pondering what to make of the conflicting statements of Mr. Adeyanju and Mr. Batagarawa who said he only collected a quarter of a million dollars from Mr. Adeyanju. It is still unclear how much of the $5million slush fund Mr. Obaseki funneled to Mr. Adeyanju, and what cumulative value in cheques "he passed on to the party from time to time."
Audu Ogbeh, who was national chairman of the party at the time however confirmed that the party's national working committee under his leadership received funding from the presidency "from time to time", insisting nevertheless, that "nobody told us the source of the money. We were not told that it was proceeds of bribery."
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