The big question is:When will this suffering and smiling end in Nigeria? When will Nigerians stop the sidon dey look,e no concern me attitude? Ooooh God save nigeria! Read this: Nasir El-Rufai Ayisha Osori tells Nigerians some plain truths that Jonathanians will deny.....read Civilian Arrangement via Leadership - 26th November 2013 Excess Crude Account, Fuel Subsidy, Malabu, Police Pension, NNPC…the list is endless and we are barely even talking about it. bit.ly/17PkYqh In Army Arrangement, Fela tracks the disappearance of N7 Billion in a foreign currency scandal and N2.8 Billion ‘oil money’ and the fake storm it created under Obasanjo’s military administration. In the former, a few people were jailed but within a year they were released for being innocent while in the latter there was the usual inquiry that ended with an announcement that the money was not missing after all. That was then. Today, we can only wonder what Fela would make of the fantastic public sums which vanish into champagne bottles and private jets. In the song, he is outraged about the theft and mocks the insincere arrangement by which investigations are handled. Today, what is being siphoned is 100 times more than what was being stolen 30 years ago, but we are barely even talking about it. As for singing to raise awareness, nothing could be farther from the minds of our musical stars. Since President Jonathan was sworn in on May 6 2010 some of the major scandals involving the theft and disappearance of public funds or alleged embezzlement include the following: According to Governor Amaechi, there is $5 Billion missing from the Excess Crude Account. However, in a now familiar plot, the Coordinating Minister of the Economy denies this allegation. Two weeks ago, the Senate raised an alarm about the subsidy savings from January 2012 - September 2013 which should be N800Billion but only N300 Billion has been accounted for under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P). This would be amusing if there was no direct correlation to the rate of maternal and infant mortality which part of this money was supposed to address. And regardless of the tardiness of attack on Ambassador Kolade’s conscience, if only N300 billion has been paid out, then less than a third of that money has actually gone towards any activities to improve the lives of Nigerians. The N225 Million for two armoured BMWs scandal needs no introduction. It announces itself flamboyantly and scarily made up. However, considering the frightful numbers bandied around as the cost of the few airport facelifts under this administration, there are bound to be more skeletons or empty Ghana-must-go bags tumbling out of the aviation closet. N2.5 Trillion fuel subsidy bill…or something like that. When it comes to the fuel subsidy heist nothing is so maddening as the fact that we are not even sure how much has been lost. According to Punch, at the height of the discussions about how much the fuel subsidy was allegedly costing Nigeria, NNPC put the figure at N1.3 Trillion; the Finance Minister and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency said N1.4 Trillion; the Accountant-General of the Federation claimed N1.6 Trillion; and CBN tallied N1.7 Trillion. By the time the House of Representatives completed their investigations, the amount was closer to N2.5 Trillion. Nothing has happened apart from a few mock arraignments almost a year ago. The missing pension funds constitute a particularly interesting story because of multiple actors and organisations and the same inability to count. The main star is Abdulrasheed Maina, who chaired the Pension Reform Task Team and who along with a supporting cast of civil servants are responsible for up to N700 billion being allegedly stolen from pension funds. While Maina was meant to restore sanity to the pension units of the civil service and police, the Senate Pension Probe Committee clanged another alarm that Maina had started restoring money to himself – up to N195 Billion. Maina has since relocated and the matter is dead. According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s audit report, NNPC owes the Federal Government N1.3 Trillion ($8.3 Billion) in earnings from 2009-2011. It is not clear though whether this amount includes the N758 Billion that the NNPC owes the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas company but it is unlikely that it does. As far as the public is aware, no one has been held responsible for this debt. Crude oil theft in Nigeria has been elevated to a legal multi billion-dollar source of revenue. Almost N2 Trillion ($11 Billion) has been confirmed lost due to crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism between 2009 and 2011 alone. Today, the rate is allegedly higher causing Shell to shut down certain rigs as unviable in the face of the ‘raging theft’. Last month, production was deferred because of leaks observed on the Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) and officials report that a total of 189 crude theft points have been repaired on the TNP and NCTL between January and September this year. Yet, Tompolo’s Global West Vessel Specialist Limited was awarded a N15 Billion contract in 2012 to survey and protect the pipelines from crude oil theft. Although the transactions for OPL245 started in 1998 when Dan Etete was Minister of Petroleum, the Malabu $1.3 Billion deal only closed in 2011 with the active participation of this administration. In this deal, a few Nigerians and their agents earned at least $1.1Billion while Nigeria and its people lost one of the most productive off shore blocks with as much as 9 billion barrels of oil—enough to keep all of Africa supplied for seven years according to The Economist. The investigations of the EFCC have not been in the least impactful. And this is only the very tip of the iceberg. The same raging theft under civilian arrangements are going on in the states, local governments, ministries, agencies and departments – but who is counting? This is what we’ve inherited from our years under the military – a graduation to an avalanche of greed. Towards the end of Army Arrangement, Fela acknowledges that ‘paddies’ that have cornered Nigeria so that few people ‘dey fat with biggy moneyand the rest dey hungry’- that’s the most enduring legacy from the military years: that the civilians have learnt how to arrange themselves. If anyone was in doubt, we are not a democracy - we are just living under a civilian arrangement – infinitesimally better than the army one. bit.ly/17PkYqh leadership.ng
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:54:11 +0000
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