Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta said that he has written President Muhammadu Buhari, objecting to the Federal appropriation of the £4.2million Ibori loot.
Okowa disclosed this when he appeared on Channels TV Programme, Politics Today on Wednesday night.
“We have written a formal letter of protest to Mr President,” the Governor said.
He also said the Attorney General of the State has engaged with the Federal Attorney-General, Abubakar Malami, to return the recovered money to Delta.
“I have spoken with the Attorney-General of the federation. My Attorney-General went to have a meeting with him. I think that we are working and we are likely to come on the same page”, he said.
Delta State is opposed to the decision of the Federal Government, as announced by Malami, to spend the money on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge and Abuja-Kano expressway.
Malami made the announcement at the signing of an MOU with the British Government on 9 March.
Governor Okowa said that he expected the Federal Government to take a similar route as the UK Government by returning the money to the source it was pilfered from.
“In the same manner of the relationship created between the UK and Nigeria, we also expect that the Nigerian Government will do the same thing by being magnanimous to return the money back to the source, which is Delta State,” he said.
To guarantee that Deltans benefit from the repatriated loot, the governor said it had provided options to the Federal Government and made a compelling case for the State.
“We have made two suggestions; return the money directly to us or apply it directly to projects that we feel are of importance and are in Delta State so that Deltans can directly benefit from the repatriated funds and I don’t think anybody can fault that line of thinking”, he said.
