The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • Yoked to the past

    Yoked to the past

    Two weeks after the announcement by Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke of the plan by government to sell the nation’s four refineries by the first quarter of 2014, there are enough signs already to suggest that the process is not guaranteed a smooth sail. As it appears, not even the horror of the reversal of an earlier sale of two refineries to Bluestar Consortium by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, or the self-evident folly that flowed from that botched exercise would suffice to persuade those whose understanding of the times seems at best antediluvian to have a change of heart.

    I refer of course to the latest round of opposition mounted to the planned privatisation of the refineries by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the newly created multi-purpose vehicle– NUPENGASSAN – an amalgam of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria PENGASSAN.

    The indications are that a titanic battle lies ahead.

    Not surprisingly, it would be another instance in which emotions rather than reasons would rule the roost; the same old stuff about a patrimony that needs to be preserved for some future generation. And so the argument goes that simply because those refineries were built with millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, everything must be done to preserve them as public entities even when it amounts to pouring scarce funds into bottomless hole.

    Here is how the TUC chieftain put it: “Other countries are building and maintaining refineries, what are you selling them to achieve? Is it to privatise them? What becomes of the workers and the assets? What becomes of the people whose land produces the oil? Are you going to sell to them as if Nigeria is not producing oil? Which of the OPEC countries will sell their refineries now? It is a development that workers will not accept just like that”.

    NUPENGASSAN on its part could not make its point without the usual threat to shut down the economy: “This planned outright sale is uncalled for; inimical to the economy and Nigeria as a nation…If government refuses to listen to the voice of reason, we will have no option than to do the needful – shut down the sector to protect these asets for generations unborn”.

    The problem with NUPENGASSAN and their likes is that they have simply refused to change. If their penchant to revert to their traditional default setting of antagonism is partly understandable given the history of their tortuous relationship with the government, their insistence on yoking the nation to the past, far from accceptable, is certainly not tenable in 2013. The point is, if only they would just take a step out of their comfort zones, they would find that the idea of elevating proprietorial issues over and above service delivery is long dated. Imagine defending such patently obsolete paradigm which puts everything other thing over above service?

    So, what’s their understanding of privatisation– stripping those aged complexes – bolts and nuts – and transferring them from their present locations to some fantasyland? Isn’t it about transferring them to better, more capable hands to enable their deliver on their rationale? What could be wrong with that? Isn’t somebody getting things muddled up here? Again, so much for the paranoia, what makes privatisation of the power sector desirable and the refinery not? And where is the evidence that some future administration would do better with the management of the refineries even when the facts of government’s legendary incompetence sticks out? And why should the interest of the unions override the collective interest of Nigerians?

    Imagine the costs being borne by the nation since TUC and their NUPENGASSAN fellow-travellers in the oppose-the-sale-train forced the hand of the federal government to abort what was possibly the best deal in the circumstance. It started with the $700 cheque returned to the Bluestar Consortium – a decision which although was quite popular then, was probably the dumbest, stupidest thing to do by a supposedly rational administration. Since then, the opportunity costs have grown to humonguos proportions. How many millions of dollars have been poured into the endless Turn Around Maintenance ever since? I wager that it would have exceeded that $700 million paid for the two refineries.

    Six years on, can anyone guarantee that the so-called prized assets would be worth anything near that $700 million?

    And now, courtesy of the presidential audit team on the refineries, we are even now learning that their performances are “sub optimal”, fit for the auction market! Yes, we have managed to poured billions of naira into the refineries for far less value all for the love of Grandpa’s piece of Oldsmobile! How about that as a fitting wage for prodigality?

    Now, if you ask me, it would hardly matter if the refineries are off-loaded into the market today. And I wouldn’t even bat an eyelid if the refineries are sold for a nominal price of one naira! Why should it matter that one money-bag with more cash than business buys up the carcass so long as he/she able to put it work? Who cares whether the fuel dispensed at the pump comes from Wazobia refinery so long as quality is guaranteed? Or would rather TUC and company prefer that the country continue to throw money into the hopeless entities? Is that what they want?

    Don’t ask me whether anything could be wrong with government establishing new refineries. First, it is late in the day. Secondly, its no use attempting to force an unwilling horse to drink. Moreover, the prospects of another refinery owned by the government must be seen as frightening indeed at this time. Apart from the fact that value for money at any point along the procurement chain would be a distant dream, it would most certainly end up as a museum piece – like the infamous four now locked in the battle to find willing suitors.

    We can only plead that TUC and NUPENGASAN take heart. One of the great lessons of the wave of globalisation is the futility of fighting it. As the far as the issue of the refineries’ privatisation goes, it’s as good as saying that the battle is lost; time to concentrate on the minor battle of process.

  • Reality or perception?

    That was our President Goodluck Jonathan speaking at the fifth edition of the Presidential media chat late September. As if you didn’t know already, the kernel of his submission was that corruption, among the many ills afflicting the Nigerian polity, is simply exaggerated. For proof, he referred Nigerians to the operative word “perception” in the annual rating exercise by Transparency International of which Nigeria ranks pretty among the top rung of the most corrupt nations on earth.

    Far from accepting that the unrestrained self-help that goes on in Abuja and the 36 state capitals in the name of governance is a major problem, the President chose to locate our problems in the hype that normally attends every reported incident of heist by highly placed officials!

    Just when the deliberate misdiagnosis of the problem expectedly rankled to no end, the President would, days later, further expound his treatise by insisting that Nigerians – not his administration that has made an open show of harbouring tainted officials in its ranks – were the main culprits in fostering the environment of corruption.

    I don’t think anyone should lose sleep over the specious dissection of the national pathology by a leader under whose watch the industry of graft has grown to monstrous proportions. Situated in the context of its appalling helplessness in combating the monster, the statement provides a window into why the fight against graft under the Jonathan presidency not only went tepid but ineffectual.

    Of course, a lot has happened since those statements were uttered. We have had Stellagate – a scam which not only threatened to rip the innards of the Jonathan presidency open, but has since unleashed a burst of adrenalin across the land the result of which the administration is presently utterly breathless. And now, with a related event in Ghana in which a cabinet minister got the boot from her plum cabinet position merely for dreaming about cornering some future gravy, the welter of media commentaries and the not-so-subtle prodding that the President off-load his own “damaged good” has simply reached the heavens.

    As it is, the surest evidence of how far apart the President and Nigerians are on the subject would be the deliberate stone-walling over the Stellagate affair. This is even when the evidence in the public domain has exposed several layers of graft for serious administration to act upon. Is it a case of someone being convinced that the dust would blow away sooner than later? For this, we must grant that this President should know a thing or two things about perception as a subject and its links with the messy business of corruption that the whole world is yet to know.

    To be sure, we must be clear about the President’s diagnosis of the problem particularly his rather effusive distinction between the popular perception about the cancer and the reality he sought to paint, I guess, almost entirely in his own colours. Just as the president believes that the two are miles apart, the question must arise as to whether those accusing his administration of either fuelling the cancer or is at least indifferent to it are not entirely uncharitable. Conversely too, for a menace that has not only persisted, but has earned the nation notoriety as the global capital of graft, Nigerians would also be right to wonder about the President’s line of thought which appears to suggest that negative perceptions are at least tolerable in so far as the facts are beyond establishing! The truth of course is that perceptions, no matter how exaggerated or distorted they may seem, oftentimes have more than a whiff of reality. We must also acknowledge that the business of separating facts from fantasies in a clime riddled with corrupt practices is certainly not helped by the sheer scale of impunity that borders on schizophrenia. Whether it is the latest issue infamously described as Stellagate, in which a serving minister reportedly directed a parastatal head “to do the needful” as in the purchase of two fancy cars for a whopping N255 million; or the well-reported extravaganza of another cabinet member said to have ratcheted a bill of nearly N2billion to hire private jets, the point is that the scale of impunity in these parts simply beggars belief! And the President, as the leader of the team has done pretty little to dispel the image of his administration as one that condones impunity.

    Again, it goes to the fundamental point about what facts say. Beyond deniability, I think the issue is well established that corruption is not just real but has under this presidency become the driver of governance processes. Didn’t subsidy payments balloon from N300 billion under the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency to an unprecedented N2.5 trillion under this presidency? Yes, we are talking of one product line, petrol – jumping in multiples of eight under 18 months – the sheer stuff of fairy tales happening right under our very eyes!

    How about that for perception? Today, the subsidy figure is in the neighbourhood of N1.2 trillion. Has anyone been called to account for the deviation? Now, thanks to the Swiss non-governmental advocacy group, the Berne Declaration, the nation has just begun to find confirmation of how the triumvirate of NNPC, Vitol and Trafigura –two Switzerland-based oil traders, and their local minions numbering seven, used their offshore ‘letterbox companies’ to defraud the country of over $6.8bn in subsidy payments between 2009 and 2011.

    Are the documented findings of the Swiss body also in the realm of perception? What about the jumbo loans at a time of record oil earnings? At least, to its credit, the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, converted the benefits of the bumper oil earning to exit from the creditor-cartels of London and Paris Clubs. Today, not only is the nation back on the ruinous path of debt peonage even when the promise of infrastructural renewal remains undelivered.

    Former United States Ambassador Walter Carrington recently framed the issue rather succinctly when he quipped: “The question must now be asked, why is Africa’s most endowed country which earn $57billion a year in oil revenue not yet able to solve its persistent problems of electric power and infrastructure?”

    Well, the President has supplied the 10-letter answer: Perception.

    Surely, there must be something in the Villa that inures its occupants to the putrefaction.

     

  • Voodoo political economy

    Here we go again – with speculations rife that the nation’s finances may actually be in worse shape than citizens could have imagined. Although, it is not as if there was ever a time the economy as a whole could truly have claimed to have been out of the woods. This is despite the quantum earnings of the past decade. But then, the speculations have somewhat heightened in recent months. Before now, the closest indication about the economy being in any form of trouble was the acknowledgment by the federal government of the massive disruptions to oil production by activities of oil thieves said to have taken out a fifth of the nation’s daily output of 400,000 barrels.

    Today, with nearly the whole of the 36 state of the federation – minus the federal government of course – reeling in the after-effects of reducing revenues consequent upon the constricted oil output, with prospects of inability to pay wages of their workers looming and with many of them reportedly putting further implementation of capital projects on hold, things appears to have moved from the realm of speculation to grim reality.

    Of course, the lady in charge of the exchequer, Madam Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has insisted that the nation is nowhere near insolvency, contrary to the averments by the governors. Her view would be re-echoed by the duo of the Accountant General of the Federation, AGF, Joseph Otunla and Director General of the Budget Office, Bright Okogwu in their joint appearance at the National assembly last week. Both had insisted that whereas cash flow issues are to be expected in normal cycles of business, what the nation is currently experiencing comes nowhere close to being broke.

    To be sure, not even the tell-tale signs of potential crisis would render speculations of an imminent financial Armageddon anything less than an exaggerated at this time. And like this newspaper observed in its editorial of yesterday, the nation does not as yet face the prospect of slipping into the balance of payment crisis as we had in the 80s through the 90s. No doubt, the point could be made that this is hardly on account of what the managers of the economy have done but more out the benevolences of nature and the market – the factors of increased crude output and sustained high prices in a little over a decade. Even at that, the truth is that no one has sufficiently explained the current paradox in which the federal government continues to ratchet new debts at a time of sustained crude oil earnings. That is however a different matter.

    Flowing from that background, the latest squabbling between the federal government and the states over the renditions into the federation account, and which eventuated in two botched meetings of the Federation Accounts Allocations Committee (FAAC) in July and August, and which is held as partly responsible for the cash crunch across the board, would seem at best a storm in a teapot. The issue at stake really is the augmentation being demanded by the states in the face of cutback in oil exports in the situation that the price has held steady over the budget benchmark price. Left to the federal government, the net difference should be warehoused in the excess crude account to save for the rainy day – and this, naturally against the objections by the states. It is therefore clear that the squabble is one over entitlement, a reflection of the ingrained sharing mentality and the fixation at all levels with rent collection. So, the squabbling could as well go on forever.

    What cannot go on is the delusion being championed by the federal government that it pays to do either little or nothing. Clearly, the econometrics of stashing public funds in foreign bank vaults at nominal interest rates of barely two percent is yet to be sufficiently explained let alone appreciated by Nigerians. This is even more so, in the event that the federal government’s promises about giving the private sector the required muscle to thrive have remained undelivered. Today, it is no longer in dispute that after more than 10 years of financial services sector restructuring, businesses still cannot get cheap funds to run their operations, thanks to Sanusi’s central bank for making fetish of inflation-targeting with industry’s reference interest rate pegged at 12 percent. Trust the banks, they have since mastered the art of making money without lifting a finger just as small businesses have long adjusted to coughing out anything between 22 to 27 percent rate on borrowed funds or risk closure.

    Of course, like every other thing, critical financial infrastructures either for direct financing of businesses or those designed to take the pressure of capital acquisition off them, (a good example is infrastructure for leasing) remain underdeveloped. Ditto, for the plan for mortgage development; it remains on the drawing board more than two years after Okonjo-Iweala first served notice of government’s intention to overhaul the sector.

    The story of the operators on the Main Street is one of double whammy. Because the states cannot get enough from the federation account, they swing into overdrive with their tax hounds demanding all manners of taxes from hapless entrepreneurs across the states. Meanwhile, at a time small and medium scale businesses are hardly able to keep their heads above water, the political establishment, together with their bureaucratic allies, continues to gobble more than disproportionate share from the national till.

    I don’t think the question of the country being broke has arisen, yet. The proof is not just in the bazaar going on in Abuja and the 36 state capitals, but in the voodoo economy that thrives in rent as against a day’s honest and productive work. How can the nation be broke when all it takes to join the big league is a one-way ticket to Abuja or wherever for a share of the gravy? Isn’t that why politics has become the most lucrative, the biggest business in town?

    Broke? We aren’t; at least, not yet. Why should we worry when we have enough to finance imports for the next nine months even for doing nothing? Isn’t our membership of the Sovereign Wealth Fund club meant to announce our arrival in the global league? Didn’t the Americans say that if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix? And who says Nigeria needs fixing?

  • Beyond Stellagate

    Beyond Stellagate

    This week, I return to Stellagate – the latest brand of impunity featuring Aviation Minister Stella Oduah and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). Just as the histrionics that have attended the on-going investigations by the House of Representatives are not entirely unexpected, there is something in the attempt by the chamber to play the thief-catcher that smacks of hypocrisy – or worse, abdication. More than a week after, I mean the motions have become all too familiar; outrage couched in righteous indignation has not abated; so also is the fanfare of staged investigations that deliver no more than we already know. . Soon enough, the chapter will be closed in time for the nation to return to business as usual.

    Not even those who relish the placebo of elevating the ritual of fact-finding to an end itself can fail to be amused by the charade primed to generate more heat than light. It’s hardly a case of returning a verdict of failure of oversight more so since the House has denied approving the vote for Oduah’s armoured cars. However, there can be no running away from the preliminary point – which is that the body in which the constitution vests the authority to determine how public funds are applied, and which gobbles N150 billion of taxpayers funds annually, could do far more than the ritual of fixation with post mortems.

    Now, if you ask me – what is excitable in yet another putrid flesh being served hot and steaming to luckless citizens on prime-time TV? And since when has graft in high places ceased to be citizens’ daily staple in these parts? And what is new that we do not already know about the self-help culture which goes on in the name of public service? Isn’t it now obvious to everyone – save our self-appointed gate-keepers – that due process, like its law kin, is either a donkey or an ass depending on who is involved?

    Again, if you ask me, I would tell you that the bicameral chamber should focus on better things rather than reduce the hallowed halls to parliaments of trivia. This is what the so-called high profile inquiry would achieve. I mean beyond their sheer entertainment value, what purpose or purposes did previous investigations serve if not to further muddle the waters as we saw of the pension probe in which they played the spoilers instead of allowing the public service and the anti-graft agencies to do their job? And, by the way, what is the job of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission ICPC other than to establish whether or not the law was broken? And do we need a distracting and utterly superfluous activism of a presidential panel to establish that?

    Talk about the august body preferring to treat ringworm when a life-threatening affliction is indicated. So much for their activism; do our overpaid lawmakers have the foggiest idea about the crisis ravaging the public finance system beyond the episodic theatricals each time another high-profile thief shows up? How about treating the citizenry to the same dreary motions with predictable outcomes merely for the fun of being seen to be doing something?

    You call that leadership or governance? Well, I call that abdication!

    Focusing on the elephantine N4.6 trillion annual federal appropriations and their share of the pork described as constituency projects is not nearly quarter of the job for which our lawmakers draws a whole of three percent of the entire federal budget. I am talking of a National Assembly of 90 Senators, 450 Representatives, together with their hordes of assistants and allied bureaucracy gobbling up N150 billion of our four-point something trillion annual federal budget. That’s hardly money well spent!

    For once, I think our lawmakers should get their hands dirty by putting them to work. That means getting the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly to undertake a comprehensive look into the bastion of pork – described as agencies and parastatals. How many are they? How much of their fiscal activities are known? It would be interesting to know.

    How much of their revenue and expenditure profiles are captured in the appropriation process? How much of their fiscal operations are knowable or even known? How are their operating surpluses utilised and how effective are the institutional controls? To what extent do they comply with the mandatory requirement of periodic rendition of their audited accounts to the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly? Now, we are talking of agencies whose revenues in some cases exceed those of some of the less prosperous states in the federation!

    For starters; what would it take for PAC to get the outlaw national oil corporation – the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC ) to comply with the law by throwing its books open? For how long will the nation continue to suffer the monthly eruptions at the Federal Accounts Allocations Committee only because the rent-collecting corporation insists on acting above the law of the republic? Now, I have not even mentioned the relatively less known cash cow of the ruling party, the Nigeria Ports Authority – a parastatal under the Ministry of Transport which came to national attention only because one Bode Gorge took his turn to eat!

    How much of the fiscal activities or operations of this important parastatal are known?

    That, to me, is the way for the National Assembly to go; evolving an adequate template of fiscal controls would seem by far more productive venture than the fruitless mission to catch the legion of execu-thieves.

    Interestingly, no one it seems bothers anymore about the root of the gravy: the Abuja behemoth which swallows 54 percent of proceeds of the federation account leaving the 36 states to share a paltry 24 percent; this they do in addition to countless other below-the-line revenues that are either unaccountable or unaccounted for. Ever wondered why there is too much money with pretty little thinking going on?

    By the way, isn’t it a shame that the Revenue Allocation Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission has had a whole of 14 years to strip the federal behemoth of the excess baggage but instead feigns helplessness? Isn’t it about time the members headed back home?

    If our lawmakers want to be taken seriously, let them take practical steps to tame the Abuja gravy and its expansive infrastructure. We do not need those spectacular shows to catch a few thieves.

  • Wages of hubris

    It is not unlikely that some Nigerians would pass off the controversies surrounding the purchase of two choice BMW cars by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) as needless storm over nothing. I must confess that few of those I shared my thoughts with on the matter in the course of the weekend couldn’t understand what the matter was let alone be bothered.

    For some, the problem was the newshounds. Supposing the purchase was captured in the NCAA budget? How are we to know that the $1.6 million (N225 million) cost was outrageous? Do we have evidence that procurement rules were not followed? And should these suffice to stoke the furore that we have seen since the news broke?

    In any case, isn’t that the way the business of governance is conducted in these parts?

    I understand why many Nigerians, long inured to malfeasances by public officials would see nothing wrong with a minister directing a parastatal under her watch to purchase her fancy auto for her exclusive use. The development, in my view, not only underlies the grave crisis of values governing public service, but is at the heart of the crisis of governance.

    I have taken good look at the rationalisation offered by Joe Obi, Stella Oduah’s Special Assistant on Media few days after the scandal broke. It provided a good window into the hubris that has become the driver of governance, a measure of the extent to which the cancer gnawing slowly at the heart of the nation’s soul has come to metastasise.

    “Yes” offered Obi, “some security vehicles were procured for the use of the office of the honourable minister in response to the clear and imminent threat to her personal security and life following the bold steps she took to reposition the sector”.

    And he would further supply the context: “When she came on board as the minister, she inherited a lot of baggage in terms of the concession and lease agreements in the sector, which were clearly not in the interest of the government and people of Nigeria. And so, she took bold steps and some of these agreements were reviewed and some were terminated, and these moves disturbed some entrenched interests in the sector, and within this period, she began to receive some imminent threats to her life; therefore, the need for the vehicles”.

    And as if to reassure Nigerians of his boss’ good faith, he asserts: “It should be noted that these vehicles are not personal vehicles and were not procured in the name of the honourable minister; they are utility vehicles and are for the office of the minister, and if she leaves the office, she will not be taking the vehicles along with her.”

    In this, Obi is at least more truthful than Yakubu Datti, the so-called coordinating spokesperson for aviation parastatals who, without thinking, simply dismissed the report as lacking in substance – something beneath his principal, who owned barges and depots before accepting the lowly job of minister of the republic!

    Do you, dear reader, detect the hubris a la Obi? Note the phrase “imminent threat to her personal security and life following the bold steps she took to reposition the sector”; add to it the claim of inherited “baggage in terms of the concession and lease agreements in the sector, which were clearly not in the interest of the government and people of Nigeria” and the picture of what is the minister’s oftentimes misguided if not entirely misdirected activism comes revealed.

    So, for personal security, a lone, reform-minded minister would be rewarded with prized toys of two bullet-proof BMW 760 Li cars worth $1.6 million drawn from the coffers of cash-starved NCAA, cars that some say should have cost no more than $40,000 apiece! That is how to run a self-help republic!

    How about the minister’s two-pronged self-help of shunting aside the justice ministry and the police in her self-consuming messianic mission to change the face of aviation for good? How about casting herself as lone star in the cabinet of dunderheads? What does it say about self-help being acceptable when public funds are involved?

    The problem here is that the minister merely acted in ways typical of public officers who have come to see parastatals as their pot of fortune. Don’t forget, this particular minister has never been known to be a fan of due process. If you recall, she it was who jettisoned all known niceties of due process and financial regulations in pursuit of her dream of airport modernisation? Does anyone now remember her tango with aviation stakeholders over unilateral expenditure of BASA funds outside the strictures of parliamentary appropriation? Is the minister not simply treading a familiar path here?

    Now the onus is on her to explain the utmost secrecy surrounding the transaction and whether or not it was it breach of the procurement law. Clearly, Nigerians are interested in knowing the approving authority considering that the amount involved ordinarily exceed ministerial approval limits. It would be interesting to know if the purchases were done with the approval of the President or the Federal Executive Council.

    None of these of course compare with the most bizarre rationalisation by Fola Akinkuotu, the Director General of NCAA at the so-called press conference in Abuja last week. Now, the NCAA-DG does not know the cost of the armoured vehicle; yet he affirms that “the cars are operational vehicles used in the various operations of the NCAA in transporting the minister and aviation related foreign dignitaries as part of its operations”.

    Armoured vehicles to transport the minister and visiting foreign dignitaries? What rules under the IATA protocol mandates NCAA to provide bullet-proof vehicles to visiting dignitaries? What else does the NCAA chief know? Has he ever heard about ministerial approval limits? By the way, how did the NCAA pull off the transaction in the absence of a functional board? Were the processes done under the sole authority of the minister?

    I think the aviation industry is in more trouble than we can even begin to imagine.

    So where do we go from here? Those expecting a tremor will be disappointed as nothing will happen; not to a member of the Amazon-triumvirate at the drivers’ seat of the Jonathan administration. As sure as daylight, the hysteria will peter out until another expensive distraction surfaces to engage us. That’s how it’s always been. That is how it would remain.

  • So much to talk about!

    I got a very interesting response to my Independence anniversary piece titled The giant totters at 53 from Uncle Layi Ashadele in what appears to be his discomfiture with my diagnosis of Nigeria’s crisis of governance and by extension, development.

    Here is what the distinguished thespian wrote: “your piece makes a lot of sense under normalcy and proactive leadership. Under an inept entrepreneur, nothing is achieved in production; no matter the effectiveness of other factors of production. Even in the days of our fathers, only a few of them were in real terms literate but there was a common desire by even the least educated to led his flock well enough to better their lot. As Olatunji Dare pointed out in “Still planning and polling without facts”, the true population of Nigeria was premised on fraud by Britain at 1914 amalgamation; to lure the North into Nigeria’s nationhood and the trend has been consistently maintained to date. The military came to truncate the economy with ruthless stealing…remember IBB’s Gulf War windfall saga? What we need to survive is true federalism we had before independence… growth within capacity per block Shikena!

    Now, the piece to which Mr Ashadele referred did not anticipate President Goodluck Jonathan’s October 1 Greek Gift of a National Conference. It didn’t even pretend to any grand theorem on the Nigerian situation in any structured sense although I hinted in passing on the need to tinker with Nigeria’s dysfunctional architecture if only to ensure that the locked-in energies from Nigeria’s federating entities are released for development. Needless to state that I considered it an inescapable step towards national integration. I did of course raise serious worries about the absence of abiding values across the board not just as an inhibiting factor in the current tepid efforts to crank the knocked-down Nigerian machine to life, but as the bedrock without which any notion of future orderly society stands only a dime of a chance! How could I have imagined that our outsourced presidency was actually preparing a full course menu to re-engineer itself into relevance in the midst of what is probably the most comprehensive meltdown in governance ever witnessed in the annals of the republic!

    Have I taken a position on the National Conference yet? Not at this time; we are not even there yet! I believe that Nigerians will inevitably get to talk. And to be sure, it is now past debate that this iniquitous arrangement as unsustainable as it has become, can only engender needless attrition among component units of the Nigerian federation. And then to imagine that the present course is the ultimate path to mutually assured atrophy (MAD).

    But then, should anyone be carried away by the antics, or the latter-day manoeuvres of those who have suddenly found the need to “review the foundational principles that drive our action” only because the challenges of governance have overwhelmed them?

    Here, one must give it to the hordes of the President’s speech writers. It seems finally that their lines, not the delivery of their principal, are getting better particularly the song about the Pauline conversion to the national conference idea and then, the subsequent treatise on leadership accountability to the electors under representative democracy: “we are in a democracy and in a democracy, elected leaders govern at the behest of the citizenry. As challenges emerge, season after season, leaders must respond with best available strategies to ensure that the ship of state remains undeterred in its voyage.”

    Really? Since when? The trouble is that the President is coming to this awareness several years late. Where in the PDP manifesto is the idea of a national conference? How many of the current parties are sold on the conference idea? Are there consultations going on that Nigerians are not aware? Now, I cannot even recall the President mention the word “conference” while campaigning for our votes. Worse is that the President has not – at least up till this time – bothered to give Nigerians the benefit of the outline of his thoughts on how his administration intends to marry the conference outcome with the existing constitutional order.

    Will the outcome be in the form of recommendations, hence a bill for consideration by the National Assembly? If so, why not simply continue with the current process of reworking the constitution and save everyone the trouble of a rancorous talk that would not achieve anything in the end? And why should anyone trust this administration to treat the outcome of the conference as sacrosanct? And why shouldn’t Nigerians be suspicious particularly coming in the second half of the President’s current term?

    Perhaps, only the fat cats in the Presidency live in the illusion that the President has earned our trust, or that Nigerians believe that the charade is anything but the race towards 2015. As it is, it is not yet a question of half loaf being better than nothing; after all, a poisoned loaf is worth less than nothing.

    Here are few tips that the President may wish to consider if he truly desires to address some of the more manifest distortions in the fiscal arrangement and to galvanise development across the board.

    Let’s start with the sharing of the national revenue. Today, for every N100 that flows into the federation account, his federal behemoth takes a whopping N54 under the iniquitous distributive arrangement. That way, the 36 states and the federal capital territory get to share a meagre N24 – which comes to less than one naira per state for every N100 earned. Let him initiate a bill to the National Assembly aimed at reducing the awesome fiscal powers of the federal behemoth. How about allowing the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission to do its work for once? A good beginning is to move to slice the federal pie to 20 percent; apart from stripping the patronage-spinning Abuja machine of its awesome war-chest, it would surely be one step to reduce corruption and the fiscal brigandage at that level.

    I have not yet dealt with the mater of the incredibly opaque Nigerian National Oil Corporation which not only treats the nation’s daily oil receipts as unknown, but unknowable and the pervasive culture of corruption and indolence that the corporation has spawned in the nation’s life. How about dismantling the corporation block by block to stave the nation of its putrefaction?

    Such practical steps by the President would seem by far more immediate than the journey to the unknown that he seems set to lead us. That journey, if I may say, would still have to come later!

     

  • The giant totters on at 53

    We’ll probably hear the same old cliché repeated at several venues in the 36 state capitals plus Abuja today: our behemoth with the feet of clay has several reasons to celebrate at 53. As it was in the years past, so it will be this year, next year and perhaps forevermore. It is a ritual that Nigerians, long used to living on that intangible staple called hope and its derivatives are well familiar. It comes in the simple and perhaps familiar prose: the over-sold Nigerian dream and its infinite possibilities may have turned dross and forlorn, hope, abided still.

    And what do they say is proof? That the geographical entity called Nigeria still exists?

    Guess it’s time to paraphrase the lines of the scripture: in hope we live and have our being.

    At 53, no one denies that Nigeria is anything but a huge disappointment. Everything from the economy, to the infrastructure, politics, education, right down to the value system has suffered denudation to various degrees. Our fathers truly, may have munched the sour grapes; it is our generation’s teeth that are set on the edge. The sins of our fathers have returned to haunt us; so we hang on the straw of hope.

    Where is the hope in an environment where things continue to get progressively worse, not better? Where millions of children still die of malaria and other preventable diseases? Where is hope when in spite of the boom in numbers of educational institutions, the real indicators are of decline in access?

    Want proof? How about the record 10 million out-of-school kids? Or the 1.2 million candidates who, for reasons of limited spaces in our tertiary institutions, have no hope of securing a space. Where is the hope in an environment where it is possible to shut down the university system for three months running without those in charge wincing?

    The situation of the economy is all-too-familiar. We grew up in the 60s to behold the wonders of the groundnut pyramids, the stacks of the cocoa beans, the rubber, and the timber – all made for export. All that now belongs in the history books. Despite our record earnings from oil, we are comparatively a poor nation. Check this out: In 2012, that is, 52 after independence, our per capita income was US$ 1052.34. South Africa by comparison in 2012 had a per capita income of $6003 and Singapore $33,988. With monthly import bill of close to $7 billion, our manufacturing comes to zilch in real terms.

    So where is the hope when nearly every manufactured item is imported; where the few indigenous manufacturers are rendered uncompetitive by inclement policies of government?

    Today, one out of every four eligible Nigerians is believed to be out of work. Among the youths, one out of two has no gainful employment. At a time many more factories are either closing shop or about to, the government continues to make a song of foreign direct investment as well as outlandish claims of economic growth. As for inequality, this has since grown in leaps and bounds with few Nigerians displaying stupendous wealth in the midst of pervasive squalor. Once a thriving class, the middle class has virtually disappeared.

    So, where is the hope of security where such large numbers of youths are kept idle even as the few rich have no qualms about living ostentatiously?

    Today, the security situation is not only parlous, life, as in the famed Hobbesian jungle has turned brutish and short. In the East, citizens have the scourge of kidnappers to contend with; in the North-west, it is the Boko Haram; elsewhere it is everyone to himself and God for us all. How do we turn the tide without confronting the problem of under-performing economy which has since awakened the old daemons of religion and ethnicity?

    Now, I do not seek here to understate the structural problems of the Nigerian state. Only the most incurable believer in the unity would fail to be wearied by the tell-tale signs of Nigeria’s degenerative disease. Of course, I agree that our federal structure as currently practiced is not only problematic but clearly dysfunctional. My task is to point at the possibilities even within the current warped framework.

    The first challenge is to make the economy work. Part of the problem in my view is our increasingly bizarre definition of productive labour. To the extent that rent has remained a pervasive feature of the economy, there is at the moment very little incentive for work. That has to change if Nigeria will ever survive her current travails.

    One other thing that must happen is to ensure that the economy is made truly competitive. Now, the place of modern infrastructure in the making of modern competitive economy cannot be overstated; too bad that the attention has been either too slow or too late in this regard. The road infrastructure needs to be improved upon; ditto the railways. Electricity is of course given; just as the banks needs fixing to catalyse the economy.

    It seems to me however that one of the greatest challenges facing the Nigerian economy is how to develop and grow the critical skills pool for industry and the real sector. Once upon a time, the nation had a pool of artisans, masons and other crafts to draw upon; these were graded and remunerated accordingly. Today’s artisan class is a laissez faire class with poor work ethic – a class that seeks rewards over and above the value delivered. Improving their capacity seems to me the surest strategy to address the unemployment problem in the long run.

    Would these moderate the resurgence of incipient ethnic nationalism? It may or may not; I am convinced however that the chance of Nigeria’s survival depends on growing the economic base. A prosperous Nigeria would seem better positioned to deal with the centrifugal forces currently assailing her. The matter, as it is, goes beyond hope.

     

     

     

     

     

  • The drought here? Not, yet!

    It seems highly unlikely that many Nigerians paid much attention to the issues raised by the Rotimi Amaechi-led Nigeria Governors Forum outside of the body’s call for the resignation of the Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala last week. That would be understandable given that very little gets discussed these days outside of the prism of “Jonathan versus the G-7”, “PDP versus nPDP”, “GEJ and 2015: to run or not to run” etc.

    The call – coming from the governors whose opposition to the Jonathan-led federal government is well known comes with the temptation to dismiss the messengers with their message. Unfortunately, it seems that those who would rather dismiss the governors even without the benefit of looking at the merit of their position would appear just as culpable in foisting the reign of fiscal impunity on the polity.

    So, what is the problem this time?

    The text of the governors’ well-presented communiqué is rather explicit: The federal government stands accused of that fiscal iniquity called cheating. The governors not only believe that the federal government has something to hide; they insist that its accounting of the accruals into the federation account is fraudulent.

    As unsettling as that view may sound at this time; I don’t even think the view is anything new.

    Here is how the governors put it: “The non compliance with the revenue projections of the Federal Government of Nigeria 2013 Budget is a direct breach of the provisions of the Appropriation Act 2013. Members expressed concern in the management of the economy by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy and called for a strict adherence to the Appropriation Act 2013, failing which she should resign”.

    Flowing from that, the governors would restate their demand for “the separation of the office of the Accountant General of the Federation from that of the Accountant General of the Federal Government for accountability and better management of the economy”.

    I don’t think anyone should miss the point at stake. The issue primarily is one of the shrunk exchequer; the other demands like the separation of the office of the Accountant General of the Federal Government from that of the federation, and the resignation of the minister are at best ancillary and tangential.

    Let’s examine the issues a bit more closely. Before now, the idea that the exchequer is actually shrinking was not only scoffed at; indeed that the economy was in any form of trouble was, at least to the best of my knowledge, considered preposterous. Today, in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the massive revenue leakages from oil theft and associated production shut-ins, only the federal government can afford to live in the illusion that the economy – or the budget which relies on oil revenue for between 75-85 percent – is anything but in deep trouble.

    Here are few proofs. First is the claim by the 36 states of the federation that they are yet to receive arrears of N466billion from the federation account in the last three months. Indeed, few days after Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State was reported as bemoaning the imminent precarious situation, Niger State commissioner for finance, Alhaji Mahmoud Kpako Bello, would in Leadership newspaper on Sunday give the breakdown of the amounts due to the 36 states from the federation account. According to the Niger State representative on the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC), the states are owed arrears of three months totalling N121 billion. Another N140 billion that ought to have been paid in August is said to be still outstanding. And this month, another shortfall of over N90 billion is already reported.

    The second proof is the decree recently rolled out by the federal government that revenue would henceforth be based on actual collections instead of the budgeted value. This is perhaps because the country only realised N4.39 trillion as the gross federally collected revenue in the first seven months – a shortfall of N443.76 billion from actual projections for the period.

    The issue here is not that the price of our sweet crude is in decline; on the contrary, the ruling price continues to exceed the price posted as benchmark in the budget. The problem really is the thriving industry of stolen crude.

    Only last week, a United Kingdom-based think-tank, Chatham House released a rather conservative – but nonetheless scathing – report on the theft now said to have reached an industrial scale.

    The report paints a daily average loss of 100,000 barrels – that is, some five percent of its daily crude output –in the first quarter of the year. As if to confirm the uniquely opaque character of the Nigerian oil industry in which integrity of industry numbers are assumed without verification, the report would also note that the amount does not even include the goings-on in the export terminals.

    Howbeit, the overall picture painted in the report is one of an industry riddled with poor governance, violent opportunism, and one in which organised crime has festered.

    Are the governors crying wolf where there was none? It must be admitted that the governors opted to play politics when they put the finance minister on the spot as against President Goodluck Jonathan on whose desk the buck stops. Not that the book-keeper is less of the sinning party; but then, why leave out the principal under whose direction the book-cooking took place?

    As it is, there are clearly two aspects to the governors’ grouse, both of which in saner climes would warrant drastic measures.

    The first is the absurd accounting practices under which the federal government hides to illegally short-change the other beneficiaries from the federally distributable pool.

    How much of the crude is stolen? Does our famed chancellor of the exchequer actually know? Is it 100,000 bpd as claimed by the think-tank – or the 400,000 being bandied by the administration? How much of this figure is stolen? What fraction is shut-in? Does our overrated technocrat know? Does anyone in the administration know? And shouldn’t those who do not know yield the space for those who know? How about getting everybody to a joint sitting to examine the books if one party has nothing to hide? Isn’t that what transparency is all about?

    The second is the shame of losing 400,000 barrels per day in output. At a conservative price of $100, that comes to $40 million dollars lost daily through the activities of oil thieves. Is anyone still in charge? Don’t ask me what the combined forces of the Army, Navy and the Air Force are doing to combat the scourge. The last time I checked, I was told that the business has been outsourced to our erstwhile creek lords.

    And yet someone has dared to complain about the drizzle; well, it hasn’t started raining yet!

  • Back as One big, happy family!

    I know that there are many Nigerians who will swear that the implosion currently rocking the Peoples Democratic Party of President Goodluck Jonathan is the long-awaited divine response to the anguished prayers of Nigerians for freedom. After 14-years bondage in the hand of a party sworn to serve citizens the cup of affliction till kingdom come, it seems that not even our prayer-addicted but by now traumatised fellow citizens would have anything left in their arsenal of good wishes for the party.

    Going merely by indications at the weekend, it seems that those in the business of prayers still have a long way to go as far as the quest to rid the nation of the PDP yoke is concerned. I start with the so-called resignation of the treasurer of the Baraje-led faction of the PDP said to have been procured at the villa over the weekend. While the matter of how the nPDP treasurer, Malam Tanko Isiaku Gomna, found himself in the lion’s den would remain a matter of conjecture, it is good grief that the lone unwilling (?) guest at the villa didn’t have to suffer the pains of losing life or limbs. At least he was given the option to either resign from his beloved nPDP or forfeit his company’s contracts with the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency and the Federal Ministry of Works. Oh yes, he resigned with gusto –followed by a treatise rationalising his Pauline somersault with a pledge of allegiance to the Bamanga Tukur leadership and a clarion call on all party faithful to do the same! That was one down. I hear from the grapevine that many more surprise resignations are on the way.

    That was however, merely one part in the two-part play staged at the weekend. Elsewhere within the same precincts of the Villa, a “ceasefire” was in earnest between the group of seven “rebel” governors, President Jonathan and the leadership of his faction of the PDP. By late Sunday night, a communiqué which suggested that the feuding parties may to have resolved to let Nigeria be, emerged. By the terms of the temporary truce, the parties are expected to sheathe their swords in the understanding that the issues in dispute are not necessarily irreconcilable. And just like that?

    The army of volunteers and the not-so-well-wishers drafted into the party’s turf wars would by now be licking their wounds for their exaggerated expectation that their predicted implosion would create a reformed PDP. And this applies to those who have long sworn that things will never be the same again for the party; it is apparent that not only did they rejoice too soon, they suffered terrible underestimation of the power of the patronage machine in Abuja to force behavioural change. Nigerians have between now and October 7 to see how many would be left of the nPDP members when the machine is fully deployed as it would surely be.

    Of course, the war was never about us in the first place. This was the point so beautifully made by my colleague, Segun Ayobolu in his illuminating back page column of last Saturday. It’s not about fixing our unworkable federal contraption much less about addressing those age-long economic strictures that continue to hobble the nation’s capacity to renew itself. It is not about the rot in our educational system that has left 10 million kids out of school; an educational system that continues to churn out barely literate graduates. It is not about defining Nigeria’s place in the sun among the mass in the 21st Century and beyond. It is not about advancing the cause of our collective security or such nobler goals.

    It is none of those.

    It is about the office of President and who occupies the office in 2015. That is what is tearing the PDP apart – for which Nigerians – treated as unknown equation by the PDP, have now been drafted to the role of cheerleaders.

    The G-7 wants Goodluck Jonathan out. That seems fine, and it is entirely their business – not ours – at least not at this time. I believe they have done well in seducing Nigerians into taking sides in their bitter family squabble. In this, one must give it to the leading lights of the “rebellion” for their profound mastery of social psychology of the ordinary Nigerian – particularly his instinctive penchant to rise in defence of the underdog during moments of unrestrianed use of power as we continue to see in Rivers where the governor and his loyalists are under siege.

    However, beyond the attempt by the G-7 to play the spoiler, where is their case for a different PDP that is less arbitrary less contemptuous of the people?

    The prospect of a shrunk presidency in the event that President Jonathan decides to run is however more frightening. The issue clearly isn’t so much about the right of President Jonathan to run in 2015 but whether in the current circumstances, it is in the nation’s interest for him to run. I must say here that part of the unfortunate consequences of the PDP’s war of attrition isn’t just the diminished aura of the most powerful office in the land but also the diminution of its moral authority. Surely, the squandering of the pan-Nigerian mandate of 2011 for what is now a full-blown Ijaw Presidency is the stuff of which anti-heroes are made.

    The bitter truth remains that those expecting the PDP to go the way of the fictional Humpty Dumpty are in for a rude shock; the party will pull back with or without Nigeria and Nigerians. As for Jonathan, he will run; the inexhaustible gravy in Abuja will ensure that every opposition to his running will be smothered just in time to ensure he enjoys his smooth sail. Win or lose; it does not really matter, at least not with the vote-harvesting PDP machine primed to deliver. Whichever way it goes, out nightmares can only continue.

    It is something for those seeking to pray the PDP out of existence should ponder over. Didn’t the scriptures say that heaven helps those who help themselves? Who says that the battle to retrieve the dignity of the citizens from the PDP taskmasters could be achieved by wishing the party dead? And this in a multi-party democracy?

    Nigerians ronu!

  • Suntai: Not always about the law

    Suntai: Not always about the law

    Nearly 10 days after, I have sought in vain to locate the lacuna in the 1999 Constitution as amended on which those behind the contrived crisis in Jalingo can sufficiently stake their case. Not only does the issue seem so cut and dried that required no invocation of the doctrine of necessity; that we are at this point is partly explained by our boundless tolerance of political delinquency and the ingrained culture of impunity that has metastasised beyond measure.

    Now, I have heard some people describe the arrival of Governor Danbaba Suntai first in Abuja and later in Jalingo last week as a public relations disaster. I consider that an understatement. Clearly, those who though very little of dragging the man through the motions of that ‘feigned consciousness’ have helped in no small measure to confirm our fears of how serious the incapacitation of Taraba’s chief of state is. Vegetative state may appear too strong to describe the man as we saw him on TV being brought down from the aircraft; nothing of his appearance – including his laboured address on TV (which could have been staged anyway) – presented him as anything near the fit-as-the fiddle individual that his hordes of supporters claim he is.

    So, the man is back? No one argues that the individual brought down from the aircraft on August 25 is Danbaba Suntai. However, it must be disappointing for the throng gathered to welcome their governor, both at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, and at Jalingo Airport, that the man who alighted from the aircraft looked pathetic, worn and lost after 10 months of medical sojourn in German and United States hospitals. Contrary to the high drama of his return, he certainly didn’t cut the picture of someone eager to return to his desks in months!

    It is therefore understandable that those who scripted his return would seek a dramatic way to prove that their man is alive and well. Never mind that their principal could only take a fraction of three minutes of broadcast time to thank the people of the state for their prayers, support and understanding; he apparently had just enough reservoir of energy left subsequent to transmit a letter to the state legislature intimating them of his return to his duty post after 10 months of absence! And all of these barely 24 hours after his return!

    But that is not anything near the Thursday’s overdrive – the order purportedly issued under the name of the governor dissolving the state executive council, an exercise that also swept away the Secretary to the State Government and the Chief of Staff both of whom were summarily replaced with new hands.

    Was the apparently shell-shocked lawmakers right to have insisted on having the governor address them at plenary as pre-condition for returning to his desk? Or even the more dramatic step of countermanding all the steps taken by the governor, and reaffirming Alhaji Garba Umar as the acting Governor only on the strength of their doubts which from all appearance looks well founded?

    The answer to the first question is that the constitution is unambiguous about its provision on a returnee governor: a letter transmitted to the legislature is what is provided for. Much as the House would seek public understanding for what it considers a well-intentioned move, their doubts about the fitness of the governor to continue in office would certainly not be resolved by any steps taken outside of the law. The exception is if the House can prove that the letter was a forgery – an impossible task.

    The other step of reversing the steps taken by the governor is not only ridiculous but an invitation to anarchy. While the governor remains in town, how does the House back up its resolve to keep the acting governor in charge? And what happens in case of contradictory orders from the executive branch?

    What the Taraba farce does, just like the Umaru Yar’Adua tragedy, is present the nation with a Hobson choice, neither of which is desirable. No matter how one looks at it, the idea of a cabal –acting in proxy and purporting to be at the behest of the legitimate authority whose decision-making power appears impaired – is obviously beyond the contemplation of the constitution. But then, there is also the danger of indecent haste by constitutional do-gooders to assume the powers they clearly lack under an assumed exigency particularly when such steps end up subverting the same institutions they are supposed to make work.

    I did not think that we had a grave constitutional problem in 2010 anymore than the actors in the Taraba drama can today claim difficulties in interpreting the relevant provisions. What we had was human problem – what I often describe as the delinquent antics of the operators of our laws. In 2010, it took the invocation of a superfluous doctrine of necessity to transfer executive powers from the terminally-ill President Yar’Adua to President Goodluck Jonathan when the Federal Executive Council could have acted promptly to stave off the looming constitutional crisis. The same failures are playing out in Taraba today.

    The summary of course is that the option available to the Taraba House is rather limited in the circumstance. To be sure, that option does not include power to reject the letter from the governor informing the house of his return to office. The power to determine the governor’s state of health resides with the executive council of the state. That power is exercised under Section 190 of the Constitution as amended. Surely, the House could have done better by working with the executive council, or, if it so chooses, proceed with impeachment.

    That leads me to the final point – the decline in the standards of public conduct and morality. I think that we have invested too much energy in the laws without commensurate attention to values in public conduct. It seems to me that the only enduring lesson from the Yar’Adua and Suntai saga is how those serving in executive positions are unrepentantly beholden to their principals as against their sworn public duty. A good way to start with their re-orientation is to remind them of the oaths they swore at inception of office. At the moment, it does not seem that many appreciate the weight of those sworn declarations. Time to bring them to their attention.