Governor Adam Oshiomole of Edo State on Monday alleged that a minister in the Goodluck Jonathan administration stole as much as $6 nillion, according to a United States official.

The governor, who was part of President Muhammadu Buhari’s delegation on his recent US state visit, said the information came from a senior American State Department official, although he did not name the corrupt minister.

Oshiomole made the startling disclosure while speaking to State House correspondents shortly after he met with President Buhari at the Aso Rock Villa in Abuja.

“…from the lips of American officials, senior officials of the State Department said one minister, under PDP, cornered as much as $6 billion. The man said even by Washington standards, that is earth-shattering,” the Edo governor stated.

He took a swipe at the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan under the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, saying that the country has moved “from a president that does not seem to know his powers to one that understands that he is a president of the country”.

Oshiomole observed that the PDP “presided over the liquidation of our nation” adding that it also “destroyed all our institutions, converted the Armed Forces commanders to use them as if they were political thugs, converted NTA to a party megaphone, destroyed the SSS, went after opposition as if we were rabbits to be pursued in to our holes, compromised even student unions and destroyed everything that you can think of and elevated religion to a state affair.”
The governor said that the PDP ran such a bad government that if not that Nigerians were patient, anyone carrying a PDP card would now feel unsafe in the country.

Drawing a comparison between the Jonathan and Buhari administrations, particularly their perception in the international community, governor Oshiomole recalled comments made by a US Assistant Secretary of State, Jonnie Carson.

According to him, Carson had lamented to a group of Nigerian governors during the last administration that with the coming of Jonathan the world thought that there was light at the tunnel but that “you would wake up the following day under President Jonathan to find out that even the tunnel had been removed.”

Oshiomole continued: “Now, last week, this same Carson chaired the president’s address at the Institute of Peace and he said ‘we now have a man of enormous integrity; one that has shown so much faith in the democratic process; one that refused to be frustrated even in the face of massively rigged elections. He submitted to the judicial process and even when that was compromised he never gave up”

He said that the American government has confidence in the new administration in Nigeria and that that would be of tremendous benefit to Nigeria and its economy

.”America has done its check and we are convinced that this president is the one that Nigeria needs at this time to regain its leadership of the African continent. America now has a partner worthy of relations because they believe that every dollar that America provides to support Nigeria whether in the area of security, in the area of education, or encouraging American investors to invest in Nigeria, there is an enabling environment because what had been destroying the country is corruption,” he stated.