The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

A leap of faith

If it seems any measure of the hunger in the land for talks – the Jonathan National Conference must have surprised itself at the roll call of delegates. For a conference without a guarantee of a definitive outcome, it has, surprisingly, thus far, managed to surpass expectations in terms of membership. As it appears, initial scepticisms about what the enfeebled body could achieve appear to have worn off; it seems that not even the contrarians in the South-west could resist the pressure to send their first eleven. At last, Nigerians have a platform to address some of the nagging questions about our statehood. Here, at last is our Eureka moment!

Issues about the conference of course remain, starting with the question of what the conference seeks to achieve. For not only is the so-called Nigerian malaise over-diagnosed, the issue really has never been one of shortage of prescriptions to get the Leviathan working. This is where the coming days should be exciting as the delegates meet to chart their idea of the way forward.

I do not think anyone disputes that a sizeable chunk of the problems facing the nation are of a constitutional nature. Indeed, majority of Nigerians would appear to have resolved that the present constitution, as amended, is federal only in name. This extends to the structure of relations between the constituent units in the Nigerian federation. At least, majority of citizens would seem agreed that the bizarre fiscal architecture that it has spawned –under which rent is rewarded while mutually assured poverty is guaranteed – is a prescription for disaster.

The same goes for the awesome power of the Nigerian presidency in the face of retreating state institutions – something that makes the Nigerian presidency near absolutist – possibly the most powerful in the whole wide world. Add all of these to the humongous cost of governance that leaves paltry little for development, the incipient micro nationalism tearing at the heart of the nation’s unity in the atmosphere of increasing diminution of effectiveness of state power and authority could only be the end game.

The point therefore cannot be over-made about the need to re-examine the structure of the union to guarantee its future survival. After 100 years of forced cohabitation, the signs of stress to the union are too palpable; they have grown to such extent that we can only ignore the symptoms only to our collective peril. Even without the now palpable weakened capacity of the Nigerian state to secure lives and property in the face of the renewed scourge of the Boko Haram and the unrelenting militancy in the Niger Delta that has seen oil production plummet by nearly one-filth in the last one year, the reality on the main street –by this I mean youth unemployment, rising poverty and the harsh reality of de-industrialisation – leaves little room for denials. These days, all we hear are claims of “progress” on all fronts; the truth however is that Nigeria is in far deeper trouble than anyone would care to admit. Nigeria sits precariously on the edge.

Where does the National Conference idea fit in the survival mix? That is the tough question. Not even the convener, the federal government, pretends to have the answers. Nigerians don’t either. It is simply taken that the journey would lead somewhere –a leap into the abyss of faith – minus work.

With due respect to the eminent body of 492 wise men and women many of them distinguished by any measure, I personally suffer no illusions about what their efforts would come to. My problem with the charade is the lie that the Jonathan National Conference, an extra-constitutional body, would dare to tread where the National Assembly– a body that enjoys constitutional legitimacy – dread. Whether the issue is the fundamental alterations of the structures of government described as devolution of powers, or routine matters of governance, I do not see the conference, short of staging a coup d’etat, imagining at any point that it could supplant the National Assembly. Which of course makes the suggestion that the conference could proffer binding resolutions wishful. Even at that, the requirement that resolutions could only be carried by consensus or majority 75 percent vote renders the prospects of any agreements not just potentially problematic but nigh impossibility. Not only are cleavages too deep, there are far too few areas that the contending groups in the polity have found agreement.

How about the more practical approach, the less fractious and potentially far more productive route of the on-going amendment with additional focus on revamping our institutions to curb the brazen outlawry dispensed by the PDP in the name of governance?

As attractive as it appears, that prospect offers possibilities that are unlikely to be far-reaching enough. Can you think of the national parliament that has had nearly the whole of 15 years to tinker with the awesome fiscal powers of the federal leviathan but did nothing suddenly finding the good sense in taming own unbridled appetite and that of the executive? Think it would ever happen? Not now – or in the foreseeable future. So how does the Jonathan conference propose to surmount the hurdle?

Is the National Conference therefore entirely useless? Not really. The conference would no doubt help to foster some degree of understanding among the disparate groups on a number of contending issues. Indeed, some of the resolutions may well come handy in the amendment process since, again, it is the National Assembly that has the final say on the outcome of the process. The important point is – this is hardly the time to dwell on the lie that the National Conference can offer Nigerians something that it is not in a position to do.

I don’t want to go into the question of whether the outlay of N7 billion voted for the conference is money well spent. To me, it is a matter of opinion. If you ask me, what is N7 billion in the self-help republic where officials routinely help themselves to billions of naira from the public till with no adverse consequences; a republic which lately reported a lone official allegedly chalking up N10 billion in air charters?

Where is the way forward? I wish I, or anyone for that matter, know. Not when the Nigerian thief has stolen more than the owner can pretend not to notice. As it appears, the myth about Nigerians’ infinite capacity to bear pain has some substance after all.

March 11, 2014
Problem Has Changed Name (PHCN)

Up till sometime last week, I guess it was so easy to put the hiccups being experienced in the power sector to the birth pangs of the historic transition. However, unlike many among the army of critics of the transition, yours sincerely did not suffer the illusion that the singular event of the handover of the distribution companies to private sector operators would come near the magic wand being bandied; the same goes with the undue expectations that the problems that have dogged the sector would vanish overnight because some new owners said to have plenty of cash have suddenly arrived town.

Beyond the question of whether the handover was historic or not, it takes a good understanding of the complex dynamics of the power sector to appreciate the fact that nothing was as yet (at least at this stage), given. Had the administration not been so eager to cart home the trophy before the final call of the game, it would have been more tempered in creating the climate of expectations and by so doing, spare itself, and the hapless electricity consumer, the orgy of celebrations of what is no more than a modest achievement of ceding the retail end of the electricity business to a disparate club of businessmen.

And to imagine that is supposed to be the dividend of the reform odyssey that has taken nearly 10 years to berth. Now, it seems everyone, not least the government, would have to re-learn the lesson on the danger of counting the chicks before they are hatched.

No doubt, the ugly experience of the past few months in the power sector must have been disappointing, to say the least for many Nigerians. And this is not just for the failure of the historic handover to fundamentally alter the electricity supply terrain but also for the fact that the harvest of new plants into the grid is yet to take the nation beyond the dark curtains. Presently, not only is the talk about the extant service thresholds taking a dip to unprecedented abysmal levels, the sad and uncomfortable reality is that the so-called jinx, which has held the sector down appears to have resurrected. While the current state of flux strikes at the heart of what the on-going reforms is meant to achieve, the latest fad of blaming the distribution companies (discos) for problems that are not their making is not only unfair but unhelpful.

Two issues seem to me to be at the heart of the current crisis in the power sector both of which hardly present the government as anything but one running on alibis.

The first is its continuing claim about the gas supply situation; linked to this is the recurrent claim of vandalisation of the gas pipelines by criminals.

The second is the slow pace of completion of the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs) expected to boost the capacity of the grid.

On the first, it seems taken that no substantial progress can be achieved without improvements in generation and the ability to evacuate the power so generated for sale to the end users. Unfortunately, it appears that our federal government has long resolved that the twin challenges of gas supply and the associated vandalism of pipelines and transmission lines are such that would require a millennium to tackle.

Nothing, perhaps, can be more unflattering than the fact that nearly a decade after the coming of the Power Sector Reform Act, and seven years after the government opened the first tranche of the Letters of Credit for the procurement of the equipment for the NIPPs, we are not just stuck with worn alibis, the serial shifting of the goal posts for the completion of the plants continues unabated.

By the way, who remembers these days the 700 KV Super grid projected to cost of $3.5 billion grid on which President Goodluck Jonathan once pronounced? What has happened nearly four years after?

No wonder the hype about the transfer of the distribution segment to private investors; the whole idea, it would seem, is to present it as the weakest link – the major undoing of the complex chain when in reality, the interest in that last mile is no more than the typical desire to share in the nation’s booty by the privileged elite.

It certainly may not have helped that the new investors and the regulators have not been forthcoming in terms of delivering a new framework for service delivery; it is however a different call to present the discos as the problem when they are actually no more than symptoms of the Nigerian Disease of mediocrity.

Should Nigerians expect improvement in electricity supply anytime soon? For an answer to the question, we turn to the chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, Sam Amadi as reported by The Punch. I may well add that I found his summary of the so-called transition milestone both interesting and instructive.

Here is what he said: “Yes we have oversold the handing over as a panacea; may be because we had expected people who had enough financial clouts to take over but they did not…what the regulator is doing is manage the scarcity to see if we can get entry points for more power through regeneration!

That was the regulator, barely stopping short of describing an exercise, touted as marking the turning point in the power sector reform as an elaborate farce!

I need to make an important point at this juncture. I don’t for believe that the argument for the liberalisation of the power sector is necessarily weakened by the dilatory approaches of successive PDP administrations. Indeed, it seems to me that the argument for opening up the sector for competition has become even more compelling now. To start with, I don’t think Nigerians would find much troubles in answering the question of whether a quarter of what the PDP administration has sunk into the power sector would deliver by far more value to the grid if given to the private sector. Rather the more pertinent question is whether the nation can afford to leave the power sector in the hands of the utterly inept, visionless administration that have done little else than mismanage our expectations from the sector.

February 18, 2014
Whose budget

Against the background of the directive by the leadership of the All Progressive Congress to its members to shun the consideration of the 2014 Budget, our Sunday columnist, Idowu Akinlotan, aka Palladium, had in his usual inimitable style, submitted that the directive by the party was not only wrong-headed, but would at best, supply a cheap alibi for a document that has hardly ever worked, and one which for all practical purposes, is designed to fail.

He simply couldn’t understand why the party would want to be blamed for the farce that was presented in the name of the national budget.

I beg to disagree. I do not accept that simply because money bill is involved, Nigerians cannot be persuaded of the need to appreciate the larger governance issues which underlie the directive. In any case, what the experience of the last 14 years has taught – at least as far as the budget and the budgeting process is concerned – is the need to shun all pretences about the exercise as anything but farcical.

What the APC has done may seem to many as no more than a mere fly in the ointment at this time – an unwelcome distraction to those whose egos are threatened; it seems to me as not just a symbolic but a necessary step to halt the steady descent to fascism. In due season, it might well be part of the effort to locate the budget conundrum within the larger conversation on the polity. It is therefore not a question of settling for a half loaf when there are no guarantees that the loaf on offer is not laden with toxins.

Now, to Budget 2014. I have tried to scan through the 1820-odd pages of the 2014 appropriation bill with planned expenditure of N4.642 trillion of which N3.53 trillion is for recurrent and the balance of N1.1 trillion is for capital spend. Perhaps, if we hadn’t been at this ritual in delusion to the point of making it our lifestyle, we’d probably just ask our lawmakers to do whatever they please while we move on with our lives. Unfortunately, it seems that not a few Nigerians still live in the delusion that the PDP budget would perform the magic that the previous years’ couldn’t hence the uproar.

No doubt, a lot has been written about the profile of the national budget as been out of sync with the demands of an economy that is said to be rapidly modernising. As it is, no longer is the need to pretend about the virtual regression of the exercise into a placebo. Even if we veer off the annual mismatch between recurrent and capital estimates, we are still left with the bizarre assumptions, the in-built entitlements and layers of earmarks that leaves little imagination as to whose interests the document is supposed to serve.

I look at the provisions for the Presidency for instance. At this time, we are supposed to have gone past the need for the 11th super jet for the Presidential fleet for the Big Man under whose watch the economy is said to be growing in leaps and bounds, and yet have left far more people at the margins. How about adding the purchase of canteen/kitchen equipment expected to gulp N131,750,000?

By the way, there is a minor provision for massaging bed – N2.1 million.

This year, the Vice President’s kitchen will also wear a new look with N8 million equipment earmarked in the budget. Also provided for is a state of the art laundry equipment expected to cost taxpayers N23 million. Never mind that the State House Clinic, designed to deliver first aid before sick officials get evacuated abroad also get N105,731,002.

You think the Presidency’s officials don’t read? There is provision for library books and equipment that comes to a princely N10,740,600. This year, computer software acquisition at the seat of government would take a chunk of N105,670,000; this is different from the a provision for the upgrading of accounting packages for the State House headquarters in Abuja, Dodan Barracks and Marina for another N50 million. And if I may add another, the Hyperion Enterprise Performance Licence (the public sector budget planning software) on which the nation would also spend N55.67 million.

So much for their love for e-governance.

To be honest, I couldn’t resist the thought that the service-wide votes earmarked for software acquisition and licences would actually suffice to start our local Silicon Valley. My little arithmetic actually put the annual spend on them to be in multiples of billions; amounts that could be retained not only to boost local software development efforts, but to kick-start the revolution in the sub-sector.

This is what officials who are more often than not, vendors for foreign software firms would rather ship abroad in dubious acquisition and licensing fees!

I guess it’s no longer fruitful to press the point that whereas a comparatively lean Presidency would get N33 billion in allocation, and the National Assembly N150 billion, the works ministry, whose business is to fix our pot-hole-infested roads is allocated a mere N128 billion (the capital estimate is actually N100 billion).

The same goes for the Police commands in the 36 states and the federal capital; they are supposed to make do with N292 billion of which a huge chunk of N285 billion goes for recurrent expenditures.

While the ‘paltry’ vote for the works ministry answers to the question of why the Lagos-Ibadan expressway may not be fixed despite the fanfare of its flag-off by President Goodluck Jonathan, the police capital vote, which comes to a mere N6.7 billion would seem at the heart of all that is wrong with the police institution.

The issue, in the circumstance, is hardly one of making sense of an exercise so revealing of the crass opportunism of our rulers. Rather, it is whether we should dignify a process that has become everything that a disciplined exercise should not be.

That, to me is the crux of the matter. Today, despite the denials, we know that the economy is in deep trouble. Unfortunately, that has very little to do with the global price of crude; neither is the nation currently experiencing insecurity on such a scale as to threaten oil production. We are simply told that the nation cannot pump enough crude to fund its budget – no thanks to oil thieves said to hold the nation by the jugular. End of the matter. As if that is not bad enough, the nation’s finance minister, has been issuing all manners of waivers and concessions to party hacks and all manners of men.

Never, it seems, has the nation’s economy known this scale of aided fall.

February 4, 2014
And now, waiver-gate!

Last week’s disclosure by the Nigerian Customs Service, (NCS) of the quantum of import duty waivers granted under the Jonathan presidency must have come as a ‘relief’ to the House Committee on Finance currently locked in a duel with Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Relief because, the service may have helped frame, in no small measure, the underlying issues so terribly muddled up in the 50-odd questions which the committee had sought answers in writing from the minister last December.

More certainly, the customs expose has for good measure laid bare the duplicity and lies that has been the hallmark of this presidency.

By way of preliminary comment, I don’t think that there can be any running away from the fact the House Comitteee on Finance did little credit to its image as a serious body with those awkward, unwieldy questions handed over to the minister. I honestly believe that a sizeable number of the 50 questions were at best sophomoric –clearly lacking in rigour of articulation as one would expect from a committee charged with oversight on public finance. The question of why the lawmakers would bundle the disparate questions which tended to betray astounding lack of knowledge in areas over which they had sought to take on the executive is best left to the members to answer. Suffice to state that the committee actually came off the entire episode as one on a mission to pick a fight with the irascible minister at all costs and for undisclosed reasons.

Having said that, it is a different matter to suggest that the generous excoriation by the minister could be justified in the circumstance. I refer here to the minister’s characterisation of the lawmakers as being uninformed; her query on whether the House committee had “a coherent policy agenda for our nation’s development”, and her subsequent wonder “whether these questions are simply meant to stir confusion and detract us from the Transformation Agenda of the current administration.”

Nigerians obviously know better than to dwell on the minister’s outsized ego. After all, what is a super-minister without the self-serving advisory to the lawmakers that “such protracted exchanges are a distraction to the executive and ultimately a disservice to Nigerians” and tutorial that “We would recommend more measured and civil exchanges in the future, which are informative for Nigerians and also enable the executive to focus on its goal of implementing programmes and projects across our nation?”

The point is, Nigerians have far more to worry about the activities of officials who say one thing and do exactly the opposite; grandmasters of the dubious agenda of promoting private as public interest; arch-stewards of laissez faire governance.

As I said in the opening statement, the issue today is last week’s confirmation by the NCS, of the existence of N1.4 trillion import duty waivers racket involving the finance ministry. Of course, when the news was first broken by an online medium few weeks ago, the ministry had dismissed the report as the handiwork of its detractors – the cult who do not see anything good in the activities of the Jonathan administration.

Now, we know better. The NCS whose responsibility it is to administer the waivers has finally spoken: as against the minister’s claim of N170.7 billion, there is actually a racket, all of them executed in the last three years under this presidency. The breakdown comes to a princely N480 billion apiece in 2011 and 2012 and N474 billion in 2013. And as the NCS has further clarified, more than 65 percent of the beneficiaries actually received waiver grants for goods not approved under the applicable guidelines. You ask how? All that the ‘political importers’ needed to do was wave the so-called Negotiable Duty Credit Certificate, NDCC to the men of the customs at the point of payment for import and excise duties to qualify for the bazaar!

And now this: a new memo signed by the Minister of State of Finance, Yerima Ngama dated December 11, 2013, has since expanded the scope of the NDCC to cover “other goods,”. “Other goods? You guesed right: Bullet-proof automobiles a la Oduahgate; rice, fish etc. Never mind that the customs think that the ‘other goods’ are those that can hardly contribute to the growth of the economy. It’s a lucractive the bazzar for all concerned – minus Nigerians, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries.

Seriously, I don’t think anyone should be surprised at the revelation which first came to light last year when the leadership of the customs appeared before the Senate. By the way, it should not surprise if a hurriedly assembled reconciliation team is put together to ‘retire’ the difference between the figures. After all, the administration already has set a precedent in creative accounting over the missing $10.8 billion, now retired and passed off by the NNPC and the federal government, as “expenses”.

Of greater interest to yours truly is that the minister and the customs cannot be right at the same time. It seems to me a case of Nigerians being misled by the minister rather than one of gross failure of arithmetic. Or, could the customs department – a parastatal of the finance ministry – have sexed up the figures to embarrass the minister? Could it be that majority of the waivers were recycled – again – a la Oduahgate when a waiver granted to the Lagos State government became an open-ended one?

Don’t forget, we are talking here of a variance in excess of N1.2 trillion over a three year period –allegedly lost to the whims of some fat cats in the finance ministry. Did I hear someone scream waiver-gate!!

Still wondering about what to make of the ill-tempered 100-page epistle put out by the minister who obviously couldn’t imagine the indignity of being questioned by a group of ‘unlearned’ lawmakers? The nation’s treasurer who only a short while ago played the gloater-in-chief over Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s so-called spurious claims of vanishing $49 billion, now on the verge of being docked for terrible crimes ranging from ignorance, bad faith, to figure fiddling? Truly, Nigeria’s wheel of malfeasance spins at the speed of light!

If you ask me, I think the Lower House may be on to something big here. Big of course is an understatement. Scandal would be a better word. For now, the House should just forget the issue of revisiting the 50 questions. The job at hand seems as easy as plodding from the known to get at the unknown. With or without the theatricals, the exercise promises to be an exciting one. The customs have done a good job to tell us how much has been lost. The puzzle is – to who? The beneficiaries should not be hard to trace; just as their contribution to the economy should not be difficult to evaluate against what they claimed as rationale for obtaining the waivers. Over to you, Messrs Abdulmumin Jibrin and co, of the House Committee on Finance.

January 28, 2014
GEJ vs. SLS!

By now, Nigerians must be sufficiently alarmed at latest turn in events over the ‘missing’ $49 billion. By this, I do not mean the frenetic pace of book reconciliation said to have brought the figure to $10.8 billion, or even the more shocking attempt by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to pass off the $10.8 billion as routine “expenses”. Rather, I am talking of the reported altercation between President Goodluck Jonathan and the rambunctious Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

The story is that the President ordered – on phone – the CBN governor to hand in his letter of resignation. The latter, who had all along indicated his intention to proceed on his terminal leave effective March, had, according to the reports yet to be denied by the authorities, pointedly told the President that he would not be stampeded out of office. As if to give flesh to the story, the CBN governor would later be reported as convoking a ‘family meeting’ where he told his staff that he would now be staying put until the very last day of his term – in June!

Understandably, opinions would remain divided over the question of whether Sanusi’s continuing stay in the office was still tenable in the aftermath of the finding by the reconciliation team that the ‘missing’ money was nowhere the $49 billion claimed in Sanusi’s September letter. Now, I have also heard that the letter was actually leaked to embarrass the President. The argument of course continues to go forth and backwards on the propriety of the government banker ‘squealing’ on the same government.

Let me state that these are unusual times. It requires extraordinary times for the government’s top banker to write to the President alleging a whopping discrepancy of nearly $50 billion in the nation’s finances without the benefit of a formal acknowledgement of the latter for nearly the whole of three months. And more extraordinarily – we have since found out that the top banker didn’t even get his sums right before putting pen to paper on a subject that should ordinarily be within his remit!

More intriguingly, now that the letter marked – KIV by the President– has now become the hot potato in street corners, the President appears to have resolved to kick the butt of the inveterate squealer – as against those of the outrageously inept, figure-juggling gate-keepers in the NNPC!

No doubt, there is a tribe out there who would swear that Sanusi was disrespectful to the person and the office of the President. To this tribe, I guess it’s no use seeking to persuade them – or anyone for that matter – to be sober in their appraisal of the situation; not now after what is perceived to be Sanusi’s latest insolence against the person of the President. I guess its part of the notion of the Nigerian Presidency as the most powerful one on the face of the earth – something I describe as the Kabiyesi syndrome. It sums up to the notion of an all-knowing, unchallengeable institution, an illusion that continues to be sold and bought by many Nigerians.

In this, I was drawn to re-read the typically illuminating piece by my brother and colleague, Segun Ayobolu with the title Transformational Power of the Nigerian presidency published December 28 last year. Although the subject was on the potentially transformative power of the office when properly deployed; he drew clear examples from the nation’s recent experience to illustrate how it has often been deployed more like a force for evil – rather than good. Today, when Nigerians talk about the power of the number one office, they hardly ever do so in the sense of the intendments of the constitution but in the context of wilting institutions or what is now the penchant by the incumbent to press state institutions in the service of ignoble causes. Yet, it is to the credit of the framers of the nation’s constitution that they actually inserted enough safeguards to guard against arbitrary use of power and to ensure that actors play by the rules.

Much as the President’s ego may have been ruffled by the Sanusi indiscretion, he and his advisers ought to know that he cannot remove the CBN governor by executive fiat. I don’t think there is any dispute as to where the ultimate power resides. The CBN Act is explicit enough. Section 11(2)9F): “A person shall not remain a Governor, Deputy Governor or Director of the Bank if he is removed by the President – provided that the removal of the Governor shall be supported by two-thirds majority of the Senate praying that he be so removed”.

Now, the danger of the misadventure of the past week is that the aura and authority of the office may have been damaged irreparably. More worrisome is that the two outsized egos would not give up until one side is thoroughly vanquished. And just when you begin to wonder what the whole fuss is about, you are reminded that it is not about getting people to account for the $10.8 billion which the creative fellows in the NNPC insist we pass to their imprest account, or the needed overhaul of the shambolic public finance system under which a corporation does as it pleases with the commonwealth.

No; it’s as simple as GEJ vs. SLS!

Where do we go from here? If you ask me, I’ll just say that the President blew the chance big time. Sanusi’s suspension – an extra-constitutional step by the way – may please the presidency’s hounds so ready to draw blood. May we also remind them there is something described as the rule of unanticipated behaviour in power relations? How about stoking a fire you can never accurately predict the extent of its conflagration?

Have I canonised Saint Sanusi? Far from it. If you ask me, I think the whole thing smacks of disorderly conduct on his part. Why would the man not disappear after the extravagant goof if not for the mortal sin of impudence? So, he does not want to be disgraced from office? Since when did hubris become a badge of honour? And where is honour here: staying put when you are clearly unwanted? Since when did Sanusi begin to worry about his legacy of double standards? Is it now that his hypocritical posturing is being laid bare as his exit nears?

January 14, 2014
Lost and found!

If Nigerians ever needed iron-clad evidence of outlawry of their national oil corporation, weekend’s response by the General Manager, Media Relations, Group Public Affairs Department, NNPC, Omar Farouk to the firestorm over the alleged missing $10.8billion may have finally supplied one.

Not that anyone ever doubted the farce that rules the nation’s finance system as a whole; or the plague of officials helping themselves to the national till that has long become norm. However, the latest revelation of the laissez faire conduct, the outrageously out-of-control practices by a corporation that is supposed to be a creation of statute –with active connivance of top officials of the finance ministry – may have set new limits in outlawry.

Let’s start from the very beginning.

Late last year, Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, had alleged that the corporation failed to remit $49.8bn to the Federation Account for the period spanning 18 months – that is, between January 2012 and July 2013. The problem, as it later turned out was that the figures declared missing had failed to take into account the $39 billion paid by the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, and the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, into the federation account.

I had said on this page that, coming from the nation’s top banker, the ‘omission’ was inexcusable, if not entirely irresponsible. Since then, the officials of the finance and petroleum ministries – including the NNPC, have made valiant attempts to pass off the charge as fiction even when there was still $10.8 billion unaccounted for.

Apparently, the corporation’s weekend tale of the missing money was meant to be the final demolition job on the charge by the CBN governor. While I do understand that some so-called defence do not so qualify; the suggestion that the missing money has been spent on behalf of the federal government, is not only worse than no defence at all, it borders on the treasonable!

Let’s look at the three-part component of how the money went as told by the NNPC’s spokesman.

The first part, he claims represents “the expenses on some of the responsibilities, which the corporation carries out on behalf of the Federal Government with respect to domestic crude oil utilisation. One of such issues is the unpaid subsidies on kerosene and Premium Motor Spirit”.

Here, if Nigerians are any familiar with the billions allegedly paid to the scores of ghost importers of petrol and kerosene, the tale about the value being deducted at the source from NNPC’s piggy bank on behalf of the federal government has been told so severally to the point of being wearisome. Considering that the same subsidy is also said to be charged on the excess crude account, Nigerians must wonder at what is going on.

The same applies to the 32 days’ stock of premium motor spirit at 40 million litres of national consumption per day. Isn’t that supposed to be one-off budget? Of course, while the reserve accounting looks easy and simple and straightforward to determine upfront, NNPC and its allies in government obviously think that they require something outside the cycle of the budget to defray.

And the third – you guessed right: the cost “of pipeline vandalism, oil theft and other security issues”.

Again, that is supposed to be indeterminate – the kind that requires the rule of thumb to determine.

And the three, we are told is what makes up the yet-to-be-reconciled balance of $10.8bn”!

Should anyone be surprised at the creative account that seeks to work backwards to the answer? To be candid, the shock would have been if the reconciliation team came up with anything new?

To begin with, for a corporation that has long acquired the image of a lawless entity, the self-indicting revelation that the quantum of national obligations – reckoned in billions of dollars – could be financed outside of the framework of appropriations can only pass on the altar of the ingrained culture of criminal impunity. Before now, the arguments about the deductibles from the federation account had always centred on the shady operational costs borne by the NNPC in the course of its activities. Quite familiar also is the creative accounting in which all manners of expenses gets passed off to the federation account.

Now, the revelation that the corporation has a licence to do as it pleased with the federation account has finally been declared as legit!

So, no money is missing? Only when one accepts that the beneficiaries of the accruals into the federation account actually get the amount due to them can one suggest otherwise.

Now to the specifics: Did Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala actually claim last year that she had not paid any subsidy on kerosene since she assumed office? At what point was it therefore charged to the NNPC account? Is a case of looking for expenses to charge to the missing money?

The latter obviously raises the question of who authorised the payment from the NNPC accounts. Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke? Or the NNPC board which she chairs? Does the board – if it exists – have such powers? Is it the Federal Executive Council? Could they have done so without the authority of the National Assembly?

While Nigerians may not have bothered about the laws of the republic being broken by officials sworn to uphold the law, I guess it’s time to worry about the parallel government described as the NNPC; a quasi-government without the strictures of parliament; an entity only answerable to a conclave.

Still want to know where the money went? Certainly, it’s not in the books. Try as the reconciliation team might, the job goes beyond reconciliation. That itself assumes that the reconcilers have the nerves to do the job. Soon enough, Nigerians would see evidence in the cities and the country-sides when our Abuja overlords unleash their war-chest for 2015. That time, it would be headache for Sanusi as it would be for everyone of us all.

Again, it is happy New Year!

January 7, 2014
From my crystal ball

It’s been boom time for the practitioners of the futurological art of crystal gazing. Not that there could have been a better season for our hordes of diviners to spew forth all manners of strange brews described as “prophecy” than the countdown to a new year. The cult of Nostradamus has not disappointed with their pronouncement on virtually everything under the sun: from politics to finance, commerce, energy, and security – just name it. It is a measure of the attraction to the undying art that the practice has flourished over the years, more so in our clime.

And what have they said?

Common to all is the prognosis of a difficult year ahead, a defining one at that.

Let me say also that I have done some crystal gazing and therefore share in the general premise that the incoming year has all the elements to make it a defining year. I start with the tectonic shifts in alliances that birthed All Progressives Congress, (APC). If that marked the emergence of an opposition finally poised to wrest power from the arrogant PDP, it is in another respect, a clarion call to battle on several fronts.

Does anyone see mere coincidence in the so-called industrial scale theft in the oil sector and the financial scorched-earth policy visited on the states for the most part of 2013? I mean the dubious alibi of oil theft, in which the federal government and its fellow-traveller in perfidy, the NNPC, would seek to leave the states enfeebled? Does anyone rule that out as the beginning of the process of weaponisation of the instrument of federal allocation?

So what to expect in the incoming year?

Richter-scale level of theft in the oil sector? Full-scale weaponisation of the fiscal instrument in the hands of our rampaging bull in the China shop? More brazen absurdities in the computation of the distributable pool by the NNPC?

Obdurate states had better beware.

Here is what the crystal ball shows for the coming months: the states can make all the noise in the world about the cheating game at the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meetings, nothing would change. The behemoth is not about to budge. Rather, expect the behemoth with a hefty 54 percent to continue to play the thief-catcher with states whose allocations average less than one per cent. That is how it’s always been; and so would be in 2014 and beyond.

By the way, you don’t expect the federal government with its awesome power of patronage to engage with objectors in its rank and file; it’s a sign of weakness. So, in 2014, it’s fight to finish.

As an aside, more of state government officials should expect to be unwilling guests of the EFCC. Jigawa and Kano are already in; Rivers, Sokoto, Kwara and possibly Niger should beware. This, the oracle says, is only a dress rehearsal for their war on corruption. As for the stench oozing from their backyards the latest of which came from Stella Oduah’s Aviation House of sleaze, it is supposed to be proof of the administration’s affirmative action that big time impunity pays!

So what is for the ordinary man on the street in terms of governance in 2014?

Time again to consult the crystal ball.

I start with the power sector – a sector that many have come to accept as offering the brightest prospects of a turn-around. Nigerians by now must be wondering what the hoopla was after the successful take-over of the PHCN entities by the private sector. Here again, the problem appears to me as the tendency to confuse the means for the end. No one argues about the fact that the retention of the PHCN in the hand of government is akin to a sentence of death on an already comatose sector. But then, it is also not the same as suggesting that a mere change of ownership is all there is to it to make things happen?

Now, I must say that the problem is not unknown. Neither is the solution rocket science. The problem is that of under-investment of the past years. The solution is to bridge the service gaps in the shortest possible time. And the way to do that is to invest massively in new technologies and business models to improve on service delivery.

This is where my crystal ball tells a different story. As far as the prospects of improvement go, 2014 may end up as a disappointment. To start with, the new wonder owners of the power entities haven’t even begun to convince us that they know what the business entails let alone what they need to put in place to turn the sector around. Now, Nigerians are fast finding out the world of difference between abdication and liberalisation – the result of the astounding bad faith and ignorance across the board.

My crystal ball tells me that 2014 is the year of awakening for all.

Now to Olusegun Aganga’s so-called auto-policy. If ever a policy was conceived in conceit and ignorance, that policy must be it. What’s the idea if one may dare to ask? To join the league of auto manufacturers? Now, that is supposed to be grand except that in this instance, the minister would rather we start building our houses from the roof.

You ask: how does a 100 percent hike of auto duty assist Aganga’s phantom auto assemblers in an economy where the existing capacity is next to zero? Where is the infrastructure? Or is it simply about producing some fanciful contraptions that no one would be able to buy? If I may be more specific, where is the infrastructure of credit to make his grand dream sustainable in the long run? Or is Aganga thinking of made-for-government only vehicles? Why the hurry to inflict punitive tariff on car importers in 2014?

If anyone ever needed evidence of how detached some of our policy makers are from reality, that so-called auto policy is one. Thanks to Olusegun Aganga, our long-suffering middle class will suffer the affliction of paying more for their favourite tokunbo just to satisfy the whims of some high-minded officials. The same is no less true of Aganga’s kinsman in the Agriculture Ministry who has already moved to ban rice import when he cannot even guarantee local sufficiency.

As for the unprecedented youth unemployment, the ostentation in the midst of ravaging poverty, the corruption in high places, the day of reckoning is certainly near! At least that is what my crystal ball says.

Happy New Year to all!

December 31, 2013
Sanusi’s ‘valedictory’ letter

It seems unlikely that majority of number-numbed Nigerians cared a hoot about the weighty allegations contained in the September 25 letter to President Goodluck Jonathan by the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, let alone his embarrassing recant at the House of Representatives last week. If the letter was a bomb, the subsequent recant had all the elements of a shove-it-in-your-face Sanusi anti-climax!

The sum total of the letter is an alleged under-remittance by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC of a whopping $49.804 billion into the federation account. The allegation, has naturally, spawned strident denial by the corporation.

If you live in a clime where multiples of billions of public funds routinely take a walk from the public vaults, ordinary citizen ought to be forgiven for seemingly passing off yet another invitation to the join in the elaborate farce of a mock trial and – as it always ends – the spectacle of the post mortem that yields nothing.

Now, in just under two weeks, the wheel has turned full circle for the CBN governor. If the initial intention was to put NNPC in the dock, it is in fact Sanusi that is in the dock! From his self-assigned role of prosecutor-in-chief, Sanusi now has the burden that he actually knows his onions to discharge – aside the scare-mongering for which he is now infamous. Nigeria may have been described as a country of anything goes, even at that, the astounding revelation of the nation’s chief of treasury, banker to the federal government, member of the economic management team, and statutory adviser to the President being caught flat-footed on a matter as straight-forward as the accounting of the accruals into the federation account obviously takes our officials’ fangled dalliance with mediocrity to record low levels.

You guessed right: the duel between the NNPC and the CBN is only another window into the chaos that our public finance has become. But then, it also reveals a disturbing character trait in our public officers: their inability to admit when they go wrong – not to talk of offering apologies to fellow citizens they misled! Sanusi of course would wear a placid face – like a piece of stone statue while the charade lasted; his nemeses in the finance, petroleum ministries and the NNPC would in equal measure be content to gloat after the technical knock-out – leaving the rest of us to wonder whether the entire proceeding wasn’t indeed a circus!

Now, what do we know? Only a little more than we knew before. The riddle of course continues; the riddle of how the nation continues to pump more and more crude and sell at record high prices, and yet has far little to share in the piggy bank. By the way, there is a new phrase in the industry’s lexicon – ‘industrial scale’ used to describe the menace of oil theft. Meanwhile, the books of the NNPC remain inaccessible; just as the state governments as joint beneficiaries from the distributable pool continue to shout themselves hoarse over charges that the corporation remits only what it deems fit into the federation account. The NNPC meanwhile carries on, completely impervious to entreaties from any quarters save the presidency.

That is where informed interjections by individuals like Sanusi ought to have made the difference. The kind of difference expected obviously goes beyond the wild and generalised claims about the shady activities going on. Which explains the pain when he blew the chance!

Shouldn’t Sanusi, for instance, have known that only 24 percent of the revenue in question goes through the NNPC to the federation account?

Was it deliberate – or is it simply a case of ignorance – that Sanusi did not bother to fit the payment by the NNPC into the remittance by other agencies in the oil sector to see how they fit into the matrix of the oil industry accounting before forming his conclusion about the scale of theft?

And then to imagine in another breadth that the same Sanusi would actually seek – through the letter – to prod the President to act on recommendations whose premises are patently flawed?

Clearly, the mere suggestion that the nation’s number one banker is ignorant of this elementary dictate of the oil sector accounting – something that goes to the heart of how the accruals are determined – must be considered as deeply troubling. Or is there something in the structure of the industry that prevents the government banker from knowing what is going on?

Considering that he has barely six months left of his tenure, it may well be Sanusi’s valedictory letter. No doubt, the letter has done some good. For one, it should rest the controversies surrounding the $49 billion un-remitted funds. Moreover, if it is any consolation, the nation is at least spared the wild goose chase that leads to nowhere. At least, we now know that the custodial agencies responsible for remitting the balance into the federation account are the DPR and the FIRS. There should be ample time to chase the $10 or is it the $12 billion yet to be reconciled. One other good is that is to make the demand for a thorough overhaul of the corporation, urgent.

On a final note, the twist in the NNPC under-remittance tale should cause a reflection on the Sanusi odyssey at the apex bank even as the debate on the character of his successor ramps up. While I do not belong to the lynch mob that would describe Sanusi’s tenure as a disaster, a lot can be said about his temperament, his judgment calls, not least his frequent outspokenness on just about anything that calls into question the wisdom of those who drafted him into the top job five years ago. While I may agree that a case can be made for activists like Sanusi in public service, it is hardly in the conservative chamber of the apex bank where a minor slip can sent the financial markets reeling. It shouldn’t be too early to wish Dan-Majen Kano luck in his next assignment. Considering his relatively young age, he would need it in the years ahead.

Merry Christmas to my readers

To those of you my readers who have kept faith with this page without fail in the past years, here is my simple prayer for you at Christmas: You will witness many more Christmas in good health and prosperity. The year 2014 and beyond will be better for you and all that is yours. Once again, Merry Christmas!

December 24, 2013
Before it is too late?

Hate him or love him, there is something about the Olusegun Obasanjo persona that manages to evoke mixed passions both in the polity and in every one of us. A classic study in ethical and moral abdication, his story, emblematises the ugly face of the nation’s leadership regression. For a man whose entire public life had the ever tending hands of benevolent gods doing the cracking of his proverbial palm kernels for him, those who endlessly accuse him of opportunism merely acknowledge the gracelessness that has dogged his entire life.

So much for the naked dance of the self-appointed diviner of fate!

The issue of course is the ex-President’s inelegantly worded 18-page ‘advisory’ to the estranged godson dated December 2 – that is few days before the December 5 passing of the great Nelson Mandela. Although it seems highly improbable that the timing of its ‘leakage’ had anything to do with an attempt to burnish the shrunken stature of a man who once rubbed shoulders with global statesmen as a member of Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, even at that, there are those who would swear that Obasanjo actually chose the timing of the release of the ‘satanic verses’ as his own revenge on a world that has long expunged his name from its roll of statesmen!

I must say that one of the difficult, unenviable choices of being a Nigerian is being called upon to pick between the graceless, unforgiving, hypocritical and the outright lawless godfather and his utterly incompetent, vacillating and corrupt clone!

I have been asked the question nearly a dozen times – what do I make of Obasanjo’s letter to President Goodluck Jonathan?

My ready answer is –it is vintage Obasanjo with its signature self-serving patriotic pretensions and alarming prognostications. Simply because he created Jonathan in his image and after his likeness, he seeks to remain the jealous god to whom the man must defer whether in the running of the party or the conduct of his government! It’s part of living in the illusion of being the ultimate shuttle diplomat – consulted by Presidents and kings – to do what he does best – dousing the fires created by the many marionettes on the continent!

Such make-believe larger than life image of Obasanjo obviously plays to type. It is part of the myth woven round the man now pejoratively call Baba. Recently, I watched Baba spar with ex-CNN man, the Kenyan-born Jeff Koinage on You-Tube. I struggled to reconcile the image of a once celebrated professional with the practiced actor fawning before our own OBJ at some downtown conference in East Africa! And how the man loved the comical spectacle!

Why is OBJ angry with GEJ? Is it for surpassing his administration’s records in serial abuses of our laws and institutions? And talk of fidelity to party; didn’t Obasanjo blaze the trail in party infidelity when he supported Ikedi Ohakim, the PPA candidate against Ararume, the candidate of his party? What about the serial impunities in Ekiti, Plateau and Bayelsa? And the corruption? The third term subversion, etc.

Nigerians, it must be said truly know who their troubler-in-chief is.

Now, let’s turn to the sanctimonious Jonathan presidency. I wish there was something left of that intangible called ‘sympathy’ for an administration that has done all in its power to mismanage virtually all aspects of our lives in a little over three years since it took charge. From a broad pan-Nigerian mandate of 2011, what we have now is a presidency diminished both in moral authority and in grandeur. In this, Obasanjo was neither original nor expressed anything outside what other Nigerians have come to perceive as the gracelessness of our Ijaw brothers in appropriating this Presidency as theirs. And how they rub it in!

Under Obasanjo, at least you knew who was in charge; today what we have is a laissez faire presidency – a party of all comers. Imagine an administration presiding over the daily theft of 20 percent of its main revenue source – crude oil? It would hardly be uncharitable to qualify it as an administration only in name.

In saner climes, that is a cause for war! What do we have instead? Brigands calling the shots leaving state actors to squabble over the dregs in the pot. And this is supposed to be a country with a standing army, navy and air force. Welcome to GEJ’s gangland republic.

That was what Obasanjo inferred with his allegory of the thief being invited to guard the house. Only the presidency can afford to pretend not to know who the thieves are; or the house being ravaged. We know. We know what the supposed minders have done with our lives. It’s etched on the faces of the ordinary man on the Main Street.

It is of course that graft in high places of course stinks to high heavens. The scale of impunity beggars believe. Ever heard of corruption-complaint administration? There is putrefaction everywhere; the NNPC is an island unto itself; or so it has always been. The accounts, we are told by those who should know, are for their eyes only. Only in Nigeria would the variation on existing contract quadruple the initial contract sum. If in doubt, ask Works Ministry; the smart operators in the powerful ministry have just enough tools to convince, confuse and confound anyone!

I need to talk about the little matter of the aviation ministry. Yes, Stella Oduah of the Stellagate fame is still in charge. You ask; how come? Our President of course thinks corruption is overblown; that it is more of a perception thing.

Now, we have since learnt how easy it is to purchase two bullet-proof vehicles outside the strictures of appropriation process in clear violation of the procurement laws; that is of course permissible so long as you have the ears of the President. Never mind that those who should approve the expenditure have long denied that they gave no approval for anything of the sort. With the chief of state settling for an administrative panel rather than haul the alleged felons before the courts, the case appears closed.

I don’t think Nigerians can suffer the indulgence of ignoring Saint Obasanjo. That would be fatal. An erstwhile commander-in-chief obviously knows the implication of raising hell over the 1000 names said to be on political watch list and an alleged recruitment of hit squads for whatever agenda. It goes beyond wishing that the worst would not happen. It calls for action on the part of the National Assembly as the elected representatives of the people. As the Yorubas would say – the log that poses a threat to the eye is better taken off from a safe distance. Hardly a time to cast lots between godfather and godson.

December 17, 2013
Averting the fire next time

Had last week’s go-back-to-work-or-face-a-sack order handed to the striking university teachers by the federal government not grated sufficient nerves to the point of rage, we should ordinarily be savouring the prospects of an engaging conversation on the future of our ivory towers in the global academe, and the crisis of our education in general. For not only has the latest but most unfortunate tango that has left public universities in utter paralysis for five months running rendered the conversation urgent, it is now such that the nation can only postpone the exercise at its peril.

Now, there are those who believe that our nightmare is about ending – barring of course the threat by the unimaginative federal government to dislodge ‘recalcitrant’ teachers should they fail to report at their duty posts at the expiration of yesterday’s ultimatum. They have a good reason to be: with N200 billion in the kitty and the promise of naira rain totalling N1.2 trillion in the coming years; soon it would be time to savour the peace purchased with tears and a precious blood – that is, assuming that the remaining elements in the 2009 sticky agreement, especially the clause mandating another round of negotiation few months from now in 2014, sails without rancour.

No doubt, the N200 billion intervention fund – slated to be shared among the three score plus four universities – federal and states – may seem a lot of money at this time. More like throwing water to a parched soul, it is a lifeline, sort of. However, the fund, when spread among the 701 projects dotting our universities’ landscapes as identified by the Committee on NEEDS Assessment of Nigerian Public Universities, which found 163 of them abandoned and another 538 on-going, it comes to pretty little – a drop in the ocean of the universities’ needs.

By the way, the universities running costs are an entirely different matter; they are just as inadequate to cope with the demands of modern centres of higher education. It takes only a visit to our supposed citadels of higher education to appreciate the depth of the decay ranging from inadequate classrooms, ill-equipped libraries and laboratories to basic conveniences like lavatories and rest-rooms. The situation, to put it mildly, is unimaginable.

The fundamental question remains – what happens after the N1.2 trillion is fully disbursed? Would that also call for another round of strike to press the same point about revitalising the institutions? And by the way, where is the guarantee that the current truce would last particularly as a lot depends on what happens in the coming months? Moreover, to the extent that the same elements of bad faith – which was not in short supply these past years – would remain a constant factor in the 2014 negotiations and beyond, the road ahead promises to be just as bumpy.

The ultimate challenge, in the situation, is to find a lasting solution to the crisis to avert the fire next time.

To be sure, the crisis of funding in our universities mirrors the larger crisis of our public finance system, the corruption and the rot, not excluding the warped definition of what constitutes national priorities for a nation that aspires to join the league of the top 20 economies in less than seven years from now.

That is why the big question really is what to do – in the environment of competing demands on public funds not just in the context of the abysmal state of infrastructure, but also in the context of the grim reality of declining per capita spend on recipients of tertiary education in the last few years. Put simply: it is how to bridge the observed financing gaps in tertiary education.

Now, if you are, like me, persuaded that the nation does not have an inexhaustible vault from where it could always draw upon, you may also agree that it’s time the beneficiaries are called upon to do their bit for the overall good of the system. Coincidentally, as Professor Niyi Akinnaso would have us know in his column in The Punch last year, Nigeria is not alone in this. Drawing his example from his base in the United States where he teaches, he noted that government appropriations, having dropped from over 50 per cent of university budgets in the 1980s to between 12 and 20 per cent in the 2000s has led to the hiking of tuition fees from some five per cent or less to between 25 and 35 per cent of university operational budgets.

In our environment, such a proposition is certainly not popular to push. The truth however is that the illusion that tertiary education could be had for free can no longer be sustained any more now than the loathing of the idea of pricing that level of education like any other economic good. The challenge, to start with, is how to overcome the confounding reluctance by the universities themselves to determine the per capita cost of academic programmes as a necessary step to addressing the problem of funding in a realistic way.

I had cause to address the issue on this page when the staff and students of Lagos State University took to the barricades shortly after the institution hiked tuition in that institution. Imagine a situation in which it costs N600,000 to produce a well-rounded doctor and the government is only able to put, say N300,000 on the table. Let’s also say, for the purpose of argument, that the student is made to pay additional N100,000 in tuition and associated fees. Of course, even if we take out the factors of corruption and leakages in the system, only in our typically creative imagination can we conceive of a situation in which N400,000 input would deliver the result of N600,000 input! Has anyone considered the output in terms of the cadaver that our medical trainee would never get to ‘see’ outside of the theoretical anatomy class throughout the entire five-year duration of the course?

Here is my simple proposition: let begin with determining the cost of each academic programme. In addition to capital grants, let the government state how much, per capita, it is willing to put in. It is the educated thing to do. That way, everyone knows the gap to be filled. In the long run, the challenge is how to ensure that bright, indigent students are not denied university education.

By the way, I have heard the suggestion about transforming the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETF) into an education bank to avail everyone that desires higher education loans. If you ask me, I would not consider it a bad idea. Why should we baulk at the idea only because the Students Loans Board of old failed? And what is so sacrosanct about the TETF bureaucracy?

December 10, 2013