Dasuki in Trouble as the Arms scandal Came-up Again in US Court

The controversial arms procurement deals under the immediate-past administration of Goodluck Jonathan have came up again in US Court, where a national of Niger Republic, Hima Aboubakar, and a US arms dealer, Ara Dolarian, are locked in a legal battle involving a $246m contract.

The $246m was for the supply of weapons and equipment, including helicopters, bombs and ammunition, ordered at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency in 2014 .

According to AFP, the deal reportedly collapsed in 2015 and the arms never arrived, forcing Aboubakar to sue Dolarian for fraud in a Californian court.

Aboubakar claimed the US arms dealer failed to ship $8.6m worth of bombs and rockets to Nigeria as ordered, damaging his reputation as “a trusted arms supplier to the Nigerian military”.

Dolarian, however, alleged in court documents that he was unwittingly caught up in a “money laundering scheme” and that Aboubakar’s arms money was “stolen from the Nigerian government”.

Campaign group, Transparency International, described corruption in the defence procurement sector as “the new diesel for Nigeria’s kleptocrats”.

It estimated that more than $15bn had been stolen, “leaving the military without vital equipment, insufficiently trained, low in morale and under-resourced.”

“This has crippled the Nigerian military,” it added in a new report published on Thursday.

But the Director of Defence Information, Maj. Gen. John Enenche, rejected the TI’s report, describing it as “a sweeping allegation.”

Enenche said the defence ministry now did “government-to-government” deals and no longer used contractors.

Aboubakar, however, told AFP, “We continue to work with the Nigerian Army. Forget about what the people say; they lie.

Credit: Punchng