A CALL FOR ACTIONS TO MAKE 2024 A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR NIGERIANS BY S. KADIRI

[Salimonu Kadiri]

As usual, economically self-exiled Nigerians abroad and Nigerians at home have performed the annual ritual of wishing one another a happy new year, 2024, even though from our experience every out-going year is always less happy than the year before. Illustratively, Nigeria was economically worse in year 2023 than year 2022 and year 2022 was economically worse than year 2021 etc. Simply stated, Nigeria's economic recession and inflation are getting worse in ascending order of every new year, in spite of abundant natural resources, available manpower and good climate in the country.

The reason for forever negative economic progress in Nigeria is due to the mindless freewheeling theft of our commonwealth by officials in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the government despite the fact that the public officials are very highly renumerated in order to make them enjoy highly extreme standard of living in a country where the GDP is  $2,184 and to attract from them maximum efficiencies and productions. Thumbing noses of Nigerian masses with impunity, the first three stanzas in the Nigerian National Anthem - Arise, O compatriots, Nigeria's call obey; To serve our fatherland; With love and strength and faith - have been changed by Luciferous Public Servants in Nigeria to : Arise, O Greeds, Nigeria's call to gluttons; To serve Nigeria is to steal gluttonously; And to steal gluttonously is to be a politician, a public servant or a security officer. With overconsumption of ethnic and religious Viagra, the Luciferous Nigerian public officials, elected or selected, appointed or employed, steal with impunity funds allocated to the Federal, States and Local governments to build schools in compliance with Universal Basic Education Act 2004 and Child Rights Act, which in conjunction with the letters of Section 18 of the 1999 make education free for every Nigerian child up to junior Secondary School. They steal with impunity funds appropriated, for building hospitals, supporting science and engineering, maintaining old roads and building new ones, for generating and distributing electricity and they steal 445, 000 barrels of  crude oil allocated per day to the four national refineries which they claimed they have refurbished for billions of US dollars but still refining zero crude oil. 

The hen that lays the diamond eggs on which Nigeria's economy depends to survive is crude oil, yet, on Friday, 8 December 2023, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, told the Senate Committee on Appropriations the followings, "We have over 4,800 illegal connections on our pipelines. That means, in some lines within 100 kilometres of pipelines, you have as much as 300 insertions," by crude oil thieves. We have heavily armed Nigerian Soldiers in the oil producing states and safeguarding Nigeria's territorial waters is the exclusive preserve of the Nigerian Navy. Besides, Nigeria has Custom patrol boats to checkmate outflows and inflows of illegal products into and out of the country. Since crude oil cannot be stolen in bottles and cans of beers, crude oil thefts can only be perpetrated with boats or ocean vessels. How large scale crude oil thefts are committed in Nigeria without being detected by the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Custom Patrol Boats, should not be a mystery if one borders to compare the legitimate incomes of the security officers in charge of protecting crude oil pipelines and their known personal wealth.

Definition-wise Nigeria's $2,184 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) implies what every Nigerian would receive if the total annual income of the nation is fairly shared among over her 200 million citizens. Factually, the probability of any Nigerian becoming a naira or dollar millionaire  in view of the GDP, is zero unless millions of Nigerians are impoverished and deprived of their own shares of the Nation's GDP. Nigeria as country is not poor but Nigerians are impoverished by the gluttonous hyenas called politicians and public servants in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the government in Nigeria. Looting of national patrimony is euphemistically referred to in Nigeria as corruption and for decades every succeeding government has promised to tackle it without success because the nation's plunderers are, besides the Judiciary, partly the Lawmakers in the National Assembly and partly members of the Executive in the Presidency. Therefore, the National Assembly in collaboration with the Attorney General and Federal Minister of Justice have always worked together to render ineffective laws that would make it impossible to steal public funds or punish thieves of public funds. Let us look at some concrete examples.

Section 15 (1) of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) C15 LFN2004 requires Public Servants to declare and submit written declaration of their assets and liabilities within three months of resuming office. Failure to abide by the CCB and CCT is punishable under Section 23 (2) a, b, and c of the same Act. However, Paragraph 3(c) of the third schedule to the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) empowers the CCB to retain custody of asset declaration and make it available for inspection by any citizen ON SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS TO BE PRESCRIBED BY THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. The terms and conditions are as of date yet to be prescribed by the NATIONAL ASSEMBLY which considers Assets and Liabilities of public servants as private information to which Nigerian citizens should not be allowed access. The essence of declaration of assets and liabilities by public officials on resuming and exiting office is to prevent them from using their office to enrich themselves, their families and friends by stealing public funds. The APC presidential candidate in the 2015 election, Muhammadu Buhari, being a combatant against corruption, promised not only to make his assets and liabilities declarations public to Nigerians but to force all his appointees to do the same. After being elected his assets and liabilities declarations were partially made public, while those of his appointees remained secret. His Attorney General and Federal Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, was said to have counselled him that forcing public servants to make their assets and liabilities declaration public to Nigerians without the prescription of terms and conditions by the National Assembly would constitute a violation of the rule of law and would make Nigerians regard him as a dictator. Yet no Nigerian ever regarded President Umaru Musa Yar 'Adua as a dictator when he made his assets declaration open to all Nigerians and forced his deputy to do likewise in 2007.

When Muhammadu Buhari assumed presidency, many cases of corruption amounting to several billions of naira filed since 2007 by the then Chairman of EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, before he was haunted out of office under President Yar 'Adua, were still pending in the Courts. The treasury looters in those cases were granted bails and cases were adjourned sine die after Judges, Court Registrars and lawyers had received their own share of the loots. President Buhari who came to office with the promise of smoking life out of corruption in Nigeria set up a presidential advisory committee against corruption which was chaired by a Law Professor, Itse Sagay. The Committee drafted a Special Tribunal Bill which was meant to speed up the trial and convictions of looters of national patrimony. Buhari promptly sent the Bill to the National Assembly in February 2016. Speaking at a presidential dinner he held in honour of members of National Assembly at the Presidential Villa on Monday, 30 May 2016, Buhari appealed to them to speedily pass Special Tribunal Bills. What Buhari failed to realise was that many members of the National Assembly were either under EFCC investigation for embezzling public funds or had been charged in court for treasury looting. Because of the lukewarm attitude of Buhari in 2015, the Principal Officers of the National Assembly had been hijacked by the new-PDP and old-PDP, especially in the Senate where Dr Bukola Saraki (the n-PDP) and Ike Ekweremadu (o-PDP), had been elected as President and deputy President of the Senate respectively through a process similar to those described under article 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code - obtainment by false pretence. They actually forged Senate's Standing Orders of 2011. At the time the National Assembly members were gorging on the nicely sauteed Presidential dinner, it was revealed that members of the National Assembly had padded the budget submitted to them by the Presidency for approval with their selfish constituency projects. While the Senate President and his Deputy were to be prosecuted for forging the 2011 Standing Orders of the Senate, members of the National Assembly were to be prosecuted for the crime of padding the budget submitted to them for approval by the President. 

Luckily for Saraki and other crooks in the National Assembly, the Chief of Staff of  President Buhari, Abba Kyari, the Attorney General and Federal Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, were not interested in combating corruption. Malami was a charge and bail lawyer without any known contribution to the improvement and application of laws in Nigeria before Buhari federal-characterised him into his cabinet. Malami saw his appointment as a personal invitation to partake in the licking of national cake. Hence, he was never interested in Buhari's war on corruption. Similarly, Buhari's Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, had in July 2012 served in the Committee on Verification and Reconciliation of Fuel Subsidy Payments set up by President Jonathan under the chairmanship of the Group Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imokhuede. That gave him insight into how people in government and their cronies outside government collected billions of naira for imported ghost petrol. It was from that Committee that Abba Kyari got involved in Sahara Energy managed by Jide Omokore, a strong business partner to the then Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke. Sahara Energy Resource Limited as it was then known collected 27 billion, 950 million, 488 thousand, 118 naira and 13 kobo as fuel subsidy in 2011. Abba Kyari even included his name in the list of members of the board of NNPC, as it was then known, without the consent or knowledge of President Buhari, because he thought his time to unquestionably chop the national cake had come. He therefore collaborated with Abubakar Malami to give Saraki safe conduct from prosecution if the National Assembly ignored Buhari's request to pass into law Special Tribunal Bill as well as refusing to approve Ibrahim Magu as the substantive Chairman of the EFCC.

After the 2019 presidential election that returned Buhari to office for the next four years and the elected Principal Officers of the National Assembly were pure APC members, President Buhari on 19 November 2019 appealed to the National Assembly to hasten work on Special Crimes Court Bill but his appeal was not heeded as at the time he left office in May 2023.

In Section 7 (1) (b) of the 2004, EFCC Act, the EFCC is empowered to cause investigations to be conducted into the properties of any person if it appears to the Commission that the person's lifestyle and the extent of the person's properties are not justified by the person's legitimate income. It was that section of Nigeria's EFCC Act that the UK copied in 2018 and renamed it *Unknown Wealth Order, whereby the British prosecutor could apply for the forfeiture of money or property valued over £50,000 if the owner cannot justify the legitimate source of it's wealth. However, according to online Nigerian Premium Times of Sunday, December 17, 2023, the current Chairman of the EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, claimed that the EFCC would need National Assembly's legislation against unexplained wealth order so that the EFCC could be able to combat overnight millionaires in Nigeria effectively.

The maximization of Nigerian citizen's miseries has always been the sole objectives of the Nigerian public servants regardless of if they are politicians, civil servants or armed forces. That is why the Gross Domestic Poverty and Misery Index of Nigeria have been increasing exponentially and causing unhappiness at every ascending new year. In order to reverse and change this trend of progressive unhappiness at every new year, I call on all Nigerians at home and abroad to exert pressure on the Executive and the Legislature to see to it :

1.  That the declaration of assets and liabilities of public officials on assuming and exiting office are made available for inspection by any citizen. The National Assembly, should immediately comply with Paragraph 3 (c) of the third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution and prescribe terms and conditions of making the declaration of assets and liabilities of public officials on assuming and exiting office available to any Nigerian citizen for inspection.
2. Nigeria's system of Justice assists public servants to perpetuate and exacerbate theft of public funds with all of them being owners of briefcase companies through which bank accounts they launder stolen public funds. Since the trial of thieves of public funds are extremely very slow and in many cases never concluded, public servants are encouraged to steal for the rainy day, that is to say, for the day they would no longer be in office. In order to prevent and stop public officials from stealing public funds allocated for developmental projects, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should resubmit the Bill of the former President, Muhammadu Buhari, to the Senate seeking for the establishment of Special Corruption Court to speed up the trial and incarceration of looters of national patrimony. Corruption case should not take more than a month for a Special Corruption Court to conclude and the next appeal instance should be the Supreme Court where hearing and conclusion should be within 30 days after Special Corruption Court has delivered judgement.
3. There is no ethno-religious discrimination when it comes to treasury looting and stealing of funds appropriated for various developmental projects in Nigeria. Thieves of public funds in Nigeria always attribute their success in stealing to become overnight millionaires to the blessing of God or Allah, Jesus or Mohammed, depending on which of the two dominating religions in Nigeria the thieves belong. What sins have millions of Nigerians committed against God, Allah, Jesus, or Mohammed to exclude them from their blessings is what the Nigerian ethno-religious baiters and millionaires without ownership of factories and industries should be made to explain in the court in accordance with Section (1)(b) of the EFCC Act 2004. And if it is true that the power of EFCC under this Act is insufficient to take any Nigerian to Court to explain his/her sudden rise from rags to riches, the National Assembly should pass unexplained wealth order Act so as to enable the EFCC to perform its duty of getting illegitimate Nigerian Millionaires incarcerated as quickly as possible. 

In a country like Nigeria where brain-lazy and woe dispensing thieves of public funds hold sway and walk with the swagger of impunity, there must be Boko Haram, bandits, kidnappers, armed robbers and insecurity.    

 

[cornelius...@gmail.com]

Dear Baba Kadiri, 

Surely this perennial malady can’t go on forever in Independent Nigeria?

I just read Victor Okafor brimming with nostalgia, moaning that “ there used to be a time when South Africa's northern big brother, Nigeria, also used to stand tall in the international arena…”

Once again, your annual litany of woes is merely another matter of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted , and this time, just like the last time, it’s you and yours (the honest brokers) crying, with much gnashing of teeth, after the Nigerian rider on horseback has bolted off with what you refer to as the nations ”commonwealth”, in so many words,” the mindless freewheeling theft of our commonwealth by officials in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the government”

Since, according to you the Nigerian Justice System, including law enforcement and the judiciary are all so hopelessly compromised and corrupt that in the whole of Nigeria, there’s no court of justice competent enough to put the miscreants on trial, get them to vomit the loot and then dispatch them to long terms of imprisonment with hard labour, or even less expensive and perhaps much more of a deterrent, the threat, not only of life imprisonment with hard labour but facing the firing squad for an immediate dispatch to the Hereafter. 

 

Since this is not feasible in today’s Nigeria, shouldn’t Nigeria subcontract Justice to some external agency or competent international body such as INTERPOL / the ICC/ the ICJ to issue an international warrant for the speedy arrest and extradition of the indicted criminals ( as per honest citizens complaints) to await judgement at the Hague, where Justice will be done and be seen to be done?

N.B. The death penalty has been abolished in Sierra Leone