Former military head of state General Abdulsalami Abubakar has recently made controversial statements regarding the late General Sani Abacha. In a June 2026 interview with the Sun, Abubakar suggested that the widely documented looting during the Abacha era is fabricated. He argued that these funds were actually savings intended to protect the nation from international financial sanctions, allegedly suggested by leaders like Muammar Gaddafi. However, historical evidence contradicts this narrative.
Following his transition to power, General Abubakar established a Special Investigation Panel in July 1998 to look into corruption under his predecessor. Led by Peter Gana, the panel uncovered massive financial irregularities involving the Central Bank of Nigeria, revealing that the National Security Adviser facilitated the transfer of public funds to Abacha’s associates. Based on these findings, Abubakar signed the Forfeiture of Assets, Etc. (Certain Persons) Decree No. 53 of 1999, which officially seized hundreds of millions of dollars and various properties from the Abacha estate for being acquired illegally.
Despite this legal history, Abubakar now attempts to reframe these events. This contradicts decades of international efforts to recover stolen assets. Successive administrations, including those of Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, and Muhammadu Buhari, successfully utilized evidence from the 1998 investigation to recover over $1 billion from foreign banks. Global legal proceedings in jurisdictions like Switzerland, Jersey, and France have consistently treated these funds as stolen rather than state savings. Most recently, in 2023, France pledged to return an additional $150 million in stolen assets linked to the late dictator.
Given that Abubakar himself enacted the legislation that formally identified these assets as proceeds of corruption, his current stance is viewed by many as an attempt to sanitize history. There are calls for him to retract these claims and step down from his role as Chairman of the National Peace Committee, as his comments appear to ignore the factual record established by his own administration.
