Omoyele Sowore has publicly questioned repeated claims by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organisation, that her mother was kidnapped because she uncovered an alleged 2.4 billion dollar oil subsidy fraud while serving as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance.
According to Sowore, serious questions remain unanswered. During her two terms at the centre of Nigeria’s economic management, a period he described as a spectacular failure, who exactly did she identify as responsible for this multibillion dollar subsidy fraud? Which companies and individuals were implicated? Where are the audit findings, investigation reports and records of prosecution?
Okonjo Iweala later published a book titled Fighting Corruption Is Dangerous, in which she portrayed the kidnapping as retaliation for her anti corruption efforts. She also used the publication to attack critics, including those who had publicly challenged her economic policies and questioned her record. Sowore noted that the book offered no evidence of who committed the alleged fraud or what happened to the money.
He pointed to documented Nigeria Police Force evidence of the involvement of palace guards at her father’s palace, along with relatives and domestic workers, in her mother’s abduction. These allegations, he stated, remain the subject of police investigations, prosecution records and judicial findings. To his knowledge, Okonjo Iweala has neither publicly challenged the police official account of the kidnapping nor demanded a fresh independent investigation to establish a different version of events.
Sowore argued that the allegations cannot simply be accepted or dismissed without evidence. He added that a Bloomberg Television journalist ought to have conducted due diligence before accepting the account. The central questions, he maintained, remain unanswered: who stole the alleged 2.4 billion dollars? Where are the audit findings? Who were the implicated companies and individuals? What became of the investigations? And what verifiable evidence establishes a direct connection between the alleged oil subsidy fraud and her mother’s kidnapping?
By John James
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