Former petroleum minister’s rabid lust for diamond and rubies cost Nigeria millions of pound sterling at UK’s exclusive jewelry shop
By Tope Benson
Vanity is the grand enemy of all peace; it robs the soul of inner harmony and unmasks the prettiest face to reveal every ill and quiet vice subsumed beneath its loveliness. Eventually, the vain heart withers under the weight of its acquisitiveness. Were Diezani Alison-Madueke aware of this truth, she wouldn’t have carried on like she did, back when she was Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum. After weeks of hiding out in the United Kingdom (UK) on the pretense that she was sick, Diezani was arrested yesterday, October 2, by the UK National Crime Agency. Diezani was arrested for bribery and corruption offences which are currently being investigated by the UK anti-crime organization. Although she was released later in the day on bail, her international passport was reportedly seized from her prevent her from jumping bail or absconding in desperate bid to escape prosecution.
But that is hardly the whole gist about the former petroleum minister; The Capital findings revealed that dossier prepared against her indicated that Diezani bought jewelry – expensive diamonds and rubies – amounting to £120 million (pound sterling) from UK’s exclusive luxury stores, Harrods, in the last threee years. The former minister’s outrageous spending in the UK and misappropriation of Nigeria’s public funds at her disposal is unbelievable to the UK crime authorities. The latter are particularly stupefied about the brazenness by which she allegedly laundered money abroad and squandered the country’s financial resources on her vanities. Since her arrest, Diezani has been singing like a canary in desperate bid to expose her fellow looters; she has been frantically coughing up names of her cohorts in order not to take the fall alone.
It would be recalled that Diezani fled the country after failing successively to earn the good graces of incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari, and influence him to give her a soft landing during his planned inquest into the massive looting and corruption that bedeviled the nation’s oil sector during Diezani’s tenure as the country’s petroleum minister.
Diezani lost her fearsomeness and intimidating stature immediately former President Goodluck Jonathan lost his re-election bid at the last general elections. Immediately President Muhammadu Buhari was declared winner of the election, every business and political associate loyal to Diezani withdrew their allegiance. Most of them stopped reporting to her home every work day and they also stopped picking her calls.
With the truth staring her in the face and several grievous allegations of fraud and embezzlement of public fund – including a controversial $20 billion fraud – leveled against her, Diezani started running helter-skelter in search of political refuge and soft-landing. When all her efforts to earn President Buhari’s pardon failed including her attempt to return $250 million of the loot in her kitty to the presidency, Diezani absconded from the country on the pretext of receiving cancer treatment abroad. This radical turn in her fortunes became the stuff of random gossip in the country’s political circles, as not a few people were eager to see how it will end for her. Going by the way her closest friends, associates and subordinates are deserting her and fleeing Abuja, the end looks nigh for Diezani Alison-Madueke.
