ARISE O NIGERIANS (VI)

[Salimonu Kadiri]

​In all Nigerian ethnic languages, none has equivalent word for million, or billion, or trillion because our numerical system of counting was still at thousand when Nigeria's development was interrupted, stagnated and retarded through classical and colonial enslavement. It is only in Nigeria's colonial and official language, English, spoken and understood by a minority of Nigerians that there are millionaires and billionaires in terms of money. Up to 1966, in the Yoruba part of Nigeria, a bag of money was equal to £100 which was a big money at that time. As it was said in a radio broadcast on 15 January 1966, one of the reasons given by Major Patrick Chukwuma Nzeogwu for executing the 15 January 1966 military coup was because public officials were receiving 10% bribes on government contracts and procurements. Ordinary Nigerians abhor thieves and stealing. That is why majority of Nigerians, especially the illiterates, express their revulsion against a thief who, for instance, steals a wallet containing money as small as N20, by roasting the thief to death in what is commonly called jungle justice or extra-judicial murder. Surprisingly, the same illiterate Nigerians look unconcerned when they hear of public officials stealing millions or billions of naira from our collective patrimony. This is partly because the numerical size and value of the stolen funds exceed their counting ability and partly because they do not know that the stolen funds really belong to them. Since January 1966, stealing of public funds in Nigeria, otherwise known as corruption, has progressed from 10% to 100%. Nigeria has become a country where people celebrate money and not moral and, worse still, it has become a society with people whose sense of right and wrong are determined by ethnicity and/or by adopted foreign religions e.g. Islam and Christianity. As I stated in part (V), President Jonathan realised that Nigerians were being defrauded of billions of naira on fuel subsidy by a few ethno-religious cartels but no one was being punished for the fraud. In Acts of Apostles Chapter 5, of the Bible, God was said to have struck Ananias and Sapphira to death with thunder and lightning for fraudulently concealing a basket of wheat from the church in order to avoid paying tax. In Yoruba mythology, Sango, the god of thunder is alleged to possess the power not only to strike a goat thief to death but also to bring the stollen life-goat onto the chest of the dead thief. In Nigeria, fuel subsidy funds worth billions of naira were stolen, but neither God nor Sango came to the aid of the Nigerian victims of state theft. As Nigerians look passively at their own exploitation, dehumanisation and impoverishment, President Jonathan eventually proposed what seemed to be a face-saving solution when fuel subsidy frauds became public.

President Jonathan reduced the proposed pump price hike of petrol from N141/litre to N97/litre. Interestingly, the new pump price of petrol according to the government was not to compensate for high cost of fuel subsidy but the difference between the old pump price of N65/litre and the new price, N97/litre would be used for what the government named, Subsidy Reinvestment Empowerment Program ( SURE-P). As usual, SURE-P turned out to be another conduit pipe, for well-paid public officials, to steal funds meant to elevate Nigerians, especially the youths, from poverty and joblessness. The theft of SURE-P funds by public officials was exemplified by the Lagos High Court decision of 17 August 2017 when it approved the request of EFCC for an interim forfeiture of N664, 475, 246. 60kobo and $137, 680.11c., found in accounts belonging to Clement Illoh Onubuogo, a Serving Permanent Secretary, in the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment. Mr. Onubuogo's duty was to supervise numerous programs under SURE-P, including Technical and Vocational Education, Training and Community Service, Women and Youth empowerment programs. Instead of executing those programs, Mr. Onubuogo diverted funds meant for various SURE-P programs under Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment and converted the funds to personal use. Mr. Onubuogo awarded his company, Clement and Bob Associates a fictitious and fraudulent contract of N94,829,845. 60kobo from SURE-P funds. A cash payment of N81,110,250 was paid into Clement and Bob Associates bank account number 1013449507 using fictitious names. Clement Illoh Onubuogo, the Permanent Secretary of Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment was also the Director of Ojeagu Farms and Ojeagu Global Service.  Yet, all Permanent Secretaries in Nigeria, like Mr. Onubuogo, are on superscale salaries. Besides that, if they are not housed in a free Government Reserved Area (GRA), they are paid house allowances; for their transportations, to and from work, they are paid car allowances; and they enjoy servant as well as children allowances. Despite that, all senior public officials, whether in the armed forces or in the civil service, including senior judicial officers in Nigeria, register briefcase private companies in their names or in the names of their close relatives, if not immediate family members. The economic and financial plunder of Nigeria was so deep-rooted in 2015 to the extent that it even permeated the Armed Forces and caused Boko Haram to occupy 50,000 square kilometres of Nigeria which it declared a Caliphate. Premised on that situation the APC, as a new party, sought the mandate of Nigerians to oust PDP's government of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.

At the APC Presidential primary election in Lagos on Wednesday, 10 December 2014, Muhammadu Buhari addressed a letter to party delegates that contained, among other things, the following excerpts : I have placed myself before you seeking your help to nominate me as your standard bearer for our progressive party, APC. Personal ambition does not drive me in this regard. I seek to be the next President of our beloved nation because I believe I have something to offer Nigeria at this time of multiple crises. Insecurity, corruption, and economic collapse have brought the Nation low. Time is past due that we work together to lift Nigeria up. I am ready to lead Nigeria to its rightful future. ...//... I do not intend to rule Nigeria. I want to democratically govern it with your help.  With the exception of Boko Haram, all the evils troubling Nigeria which Buhari and his APC wanted to liberate Nigeria from were, in fact, listed for measures by the military coup that propelled Buhari to power in December 1983. Here follow excerpts from the national radio broadcast of the 31 December 1983 military coup : Fellow countrymen and women, I Brigadier Sani Abacha of the Nigerian Army address you this morning on behalf of the Nigerian Armed Forces. You are all living witnesses to the great economic predicament and uncertainty, which an inept and corrupt leadership has imposed on our beloved nation for the past four years. I am referring to the hash, intolerable conditions under which we are now living. Our economy has been hopelessly mismanaged; we have become a debtor and a beggar nation. There is inadequacy of food at reasonable prices for our people ... ; health services are in shambles as our hospitals are reduced to mere consulting clinics without drugs, water and equipment. Our educational system is deteriorating at alarming rate. Unemployment figures including the undergraduates have reached embarrassing and unacceptable proportions. In some states, workers are being owed salary arears of eight to twelve months and in others there are threats of salary cuts. Yet our leaders revel in squander-mania, corruption, and indiscipline, and continue to proliferate public appointments in complete disregard of our stark economic realities. In the evening of 31 December 1983, General Muhammadu Buhari emerged as the new military head of state in a broadcast to the nation. Corroborating what Brigadier Abacha said earlier in the morning, Buhari told Nigerians : While corruption and indiscipline have been associated with our state of underdevelopment, these two evils in our body politic have attained unprecedented height in the past few years. The corrupt, inept and insensitive leadership in the last four years has been the source of immorality and impropriety in our society. Buhari and his Chief of Staff, General Tunde Idiagbon, began with War on economic indiscipline culminating in their botched attempt to airfreight Umaru Diko in a crate from London with the assistance of Israeli secret service, MOSAD. A little after a year in power, Buhari and Idiagbon were overthrown. Thenceforth, economic indiscipline and corruption escalated in Nigeria and reached maximum in 2015, when Buhari returned as an elected civilian President. 

Before the 2015 presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari had contested similar elections on the platform of ANPP, in 2003, jointly with the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo as well as in 2007 on a joint ticket with Edwin Ume-Ezeoke but he was declared defeated on both occasions. When members of the ANPP, including Ume-Ezeoke, accepted to serve under Yar'Adua broad-based government while Buhari was still at the election tribunal challenging the validity of Yar'Adua's election, Buhari resigned from the ANPP after the election petition was resolved against him. He therefore formed the CPC to contest the Presidential election in 2011 on a joint ticket with Tunde Bakare in which he was declared defeated by Goodluck Jonathan. When the 2015 presidential election was fast approaching, the CPC, ACN, a tiny fraction of APGA and the so-called new-PDP, submerged to form the APC that later elected Buhari as its presidential flag bearer in the 2015 election. As a person making a fourth election attempt to become President of Nigeria, it was assumed by many Nigerians that Muhammadu Buhari, in 2015, had prepared for how he was going to govern should he win the election. Yet, after Buhari was declared the winner of the 2015 presidential election and was inaugurated on 29 May 2015, he kept the nation in suspense for six months without naming his ministers and appointing key officials into the government and parastatals. When a house is on fire, as Nigeria was in 2015, it cannot be sensible to think that slow and steady action will quench the fire. After sixteen years rule of the PDP, the country required declaration of emergency in all sectors of governance in the country. Instead the APC that won the National Assemble and Presidential elections ceased, almost immediately after the election, being a national political party.

Organisation of political parties is not culturally entrenched in Nigeria after many decades of military rule and most Nigerian politicians join politics out of self-interest and not for national interest. For the Nigerian politician, politics is about dispensing patronage and pillaging the commonwealth than of service to the fatherland for the common good. The pursuit of self-interest in politics by individual politician should have been rid of if the guide line for membership in a political party as stated in the constitution of Nigeria is strictly adhered to. For instance, Section 65 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution as amended requires anyone wishing to contest for an elected office in Nigeria to compulsorily belong to a political party which must sponsor one's contest. Further in Section 68 (1g), it is stated that any legislator who leaves the political party on which platform he/she was elected before the expiration of the term for which the House/Senate is inaugurated will automatically lose his/her seat in the National Assembly. Similar condition is stipulated for Legislators in the State's House of Assemblies in Section 109 (1g). With these provisions in the Constitution, a political party is superior to individual member because if a legislator is expelled from his/her party he/she cannot remain in the legislature. In 2015, the National Chairman of the APC was John Odigie-Oyegun and under his watch, the APC National Assembly majority members constituted themselves into opposition to the APC presidency (Legislature against Executive). John Odigie-Oyegun remained aloof instead of reigning dissenting members into party line with the threat of either suspension or expulsion if their intransigency against the party line continued. His aloofness emboldened the new and the old PDP to seize control of the National Assembly (the legislature) and it became clear that the presidency (the Executive) was going to have problems in getting laws, to deal drastically with corruptions, enacted by the legislature composed of scores of treasury looters. Had the President acted politically matured, he would have summoned the national caucus of the APC together to deliberate on the composition of his cabinet and his advisors. Instead, Buhari went solo as if the APC was just a means to win election and to be discarded afterwards. As long as Ministries, Departments and Agencies are designed to produce goods and services to the entire nation the ethno-religious inclination of an appointee to any MDA is of no significance if the concerned MDA official is qualified, competent and efficient in delivering products and services to all Nigerians. Strange enough, Nigerians who criticise Buhari for lopsided ethno-religious appointments are never concerned about competence and efficient delivery of goods and services required of appointed officials. What has ethno-religious identity got to do with constant electricity, potable water, decent housing, functional crude oil refineries, functional iron and steel industry, good schools for children, well-equipped hospitals etc.? The same Nigerians, most especially the intellectuals, who demand ethno-religious balancing in official appointments, for instance, ride Mercedes Benz cars even when they do not share the same race with, or speak the same language as, and perhaps do not believe in the same religion as the producers (makers) of Mercedes Benz cars. That is just by the wayside. Contrary to the promise made in his letter to the APC delegates at the presidential primary election on December 10, 2014, that "I do not intend to rule Nigeria. I want to democratically govern it with your help," Buhari singlehandedly appointed key officers of his administration to tackle insecurity, corruption and economic collapse without any influence from the APC, his political party base. (To be continued)

S. Kadiri