By Uzoma Akobundu
Nigeria’s former governor of the Central Bank (CBN), Paul Ogwuma, and his wife have have been reported to have bought property worth £33 million (N15.6 billion) in the United Kingdom, according to a UK investigative journalism magazine.
Ogwuma served as CBN governor between 1993 and 1999 during the military junta era of General Sani Abacha and his successor General Abdulsalami Abubakar.
He was working as the managing director/CEO of Union Bank of Nigeria before his appointed to head the CBN in September 1993.
The UK magazine, the Private Eye, in its report “Abuja on Thames” said it “has identified a network of 15 British companies owned or controlled by Anna Ogwuma.”
The report further read: “Paul Ogwuma, 86, was governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria during the brutal and kleptocratic rule of General Sani Abacha, when the bank was the latter’s personal piggy-bank. Some estimates suggest looting under Abacha ran to billions of dollars.
“Under his successor for one year, retired general Abdulsalami Abubakar, Ogwuma oversaw a depletion in Nigeria’s foreign currency reserves of around $3bn, or 40%.
“Between 2002 and 2017, her companies were used for 20 separate property purchases. They ranged from commercial sites in the north of England to luxury apartments in west London.
“Among them are townhouses in Kensington and Paddington, a couple of apartments in Mayfair, and premises in Bishop’s Stortford town centre that currently house a branch of Greggs,” the Private Eye reported.
The report also said “although the Abacha era and its excesses are receding into history, banks that were often complicit at the time might be expected to know some of this history.”
“Yet Mrs Ogwuma’s most valuable properties were either bought or remortgaged with loans from Barclays Bank (which handled $170m of Abacha’s ill-gotten wealth) and Lloyds Bank in the years after 2015.
“While times have moved on, so has the law on money laundering, and Mrs Ogwuma’s lavish property buying should have prompted questions about the origin of her money. The looting of Africa has a long legacy on the streets of Britain.”