The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Apply pre-emptive lessons from AGF plea bargain case

    Apply pre-emptive lessons from AGF plea bargain case

    The former Accountant General of the Federation 2011-2015, Jonah Otunla is reported to have returned N6.392billion N6,392,000,000  following a plea bargain with EFCC’s former head, Ibrahim Magu, who is himself under investigation. Magu is reported to have promised avoidance of prosecution in return for returning the money to government. However, EFCC is prosecuting and he, in return, is seeking the protection for breach of promise. This case firmly demonstrates the flaws in the plea-bargaining tool as operated in Nigeria. We were told there were plea bargains with others including the Abachas.

    What is the guiding principle in terms of percentage of stolen funds that Nigeria gets back with plea bargaining? Nigerians are unaware of the total stolen sum found before the N6.3b was identified as returnable. What exactly was found with him?  What has been left with him, remembering that every kobo is a lifeline taken from the hopes and dreams and table of every single child, youth, girl, boy and adult in Nigeria? Every single stolen naira is bloodstained and soaked in the blood of Nigerians. Why can’t the thieves see this damage before they steal? Why is our financial security system so weak, that more than N6 billion can disappear with no alarm-N40/Nigerian assuming a 160m population?

    Then even the next Accountant  General [2015-2022] Ahmed Idris was identified recently having stolen N109+billion and was only caught, not by EFCC or ICPC, but because he was reported to the police when he sent an 18 year old girlfriend  to purchase a house for herself. Luckily, she informed her uncle who, shocked, reported to the security agencies. It was only after that investigation, stimulated by an honest and protective uncle, that such that huge amount was discovered. He returned N30b initially = N187.5/Nigerian at a population of 160m.

    The questions are several. What demon possesses such high office holders, gatekeepers of Nigeria’s financial existence that they should fail, and undetected, rape and pillage funds they are sworn to safeguard and inform government of any thieves. How does any official get the arrogance and boldness to access and remove such a huge quantum of money in multiple fraudulent acts, without raising any red flags. Most other countries would have collapsed under the burden of such monstrous serial thefts. But there are many more similar frauds at federal and state and LGA levels and in MDAs. We must recover all our money from such people and not a plea bargain even before we know the total stolen. Theft of even N1 is fraud, corruption and can kill someone somewhere in the country. So, there should be no percentages kept by the thieves when interrogated. In fact, we must remember that because of this particular ‘big man in sensitive and responsible office’ fraud, our naira has become toilet paper, more of our children are born dead and more mothers die trying to give birth in hospitals unfit to deliver goats, our children go to places miscalled schools lacking in every form of learning aid from a decent learning environment like intact roof and furniture and toilets, wall charts, sports equipment a laboratories and libraries, well-educated and well remunerated teachers using modern teaching tools and schools and pupils  and even teachers lacking text books. There is blood on the ground. If we equate each naira stolen to a drop of Nigerian blood needlessly shed, we have 6,392,000,000 blood stains and  6,392,000,000 drops of blood shed by our citizens.   

    Read Also: Tinubu committed to improving lives of vulnerable communities – Shettima

    All the main issues around plea bargaining, full evaluation of the theft and recovery of the stolen funds- 100% recovery or less – must be discussed in public. A plea bargain in an honest society can never include allowing the thief to keep even N1 of the nation’s scarce resources. We must reject every effort to collaborate criminally with the thief and allowing the thief to keep even a naira. We must say ‘100% recovery of all identified stolen funds must be done.’ PLEA BARGAINING STEP ONE: CALCULATE ACCEPTABLE VALUE OF POSSESSIONS, EARNINGS OF THE THIEF TO ESTABLISH HONEST FINANCAL PROFILE.

    STEP TWO: 100% RECOVERY OF ALL, EXCESS OVER EARNINGS, STOLEN MONEY. NO KEEPING OF EVEN A SINGLE NAIRA.

    STEP THREE: CALCULATE PROSECUTABLITY IN PROPORTION TO DEGREE OF COOPERATION/TRUTHFULNESS OR LACK OF IT.  In other words, all must go to punitive prison in my view for at least life if theft is more than N10m, to compensate for the lives lost due to the absence of the stolen funds in Nigeria’s financial system. But a shorter prison time may be recommended for a cooperative thief who saved EFCC/ICPC investigative time, while a longer prison time may be demanded for the thief who is slow to reveal full ramifications of the corruption net around him or her.

    STEP FOUR: THE CRIMINAL JOURNEY SHOULD BE STUDIED, LESSONS TAUGHT TO SERVING EFCC/ICPC OFFICERS FOR IMMEDIATE PREVENTIVE IMPLIMENTATION to prevent a recurrence.

    STEP FOUR: THE RESULTS SHOULD BE MADE PUBLIC. 

    What are the lessons learnt from the ongoing Emefiele vs Nigeria case. It involves unbelievable sums that could topple any government. Are they recovered and hopefully not re-stolen. Even NASS’s failed oversight function allowed no audited accounts for eight years. 

    Of course, such thieves had predecessors who may require screening. Such cases should be taught immediately in our universities.

    Finally, did he do all the criminal paperwork and banking of N6,392,000,000 alone? Was he a fraudster surrounded by saints or accomplices?

  • Ministerial lessons from jet crash; ‘Presidential what?’

    Ministerial lessons from jet crash; ‘Presidential what?’

    We thank God that the HS125 private jet plane crash in Ibadan did not kill or injure anyone including the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu. Plane crash victims are few, a special class of blessed citizen. I know a survivor of the 1973 Kano plane crash. There are questions. Did the minister hire the plane in his personal financial capacity as ex-CBN director, apparently a very good job, and ex-governorship aspirant? Or did the Tinubu government hire the plane to bring the minister home for the weekend? Does it hire a plane each for its 47 ministers every weekend x52 weekends =2,444 times annually x 4 years =9,776 two-way flights = 19,552 flights in four years. Governance is disgustingly expensive.

    How can such ministers ever develop better public air services, high speed rail and expressways when they never get stuck and just go by jet? Google says a jet is $4,500-6,000/hour. Will Nigeria, the minister, or the insurance company pay the damage? A jet is not repaired in Dugbe-Alawo. Last week we saw Wike on a jet. Maybe one day a minister will say ‘Thank you Nigerians, I will go commercial, to mingle, learn the truth and cut costs.’

    Years ago, I saw Governor Ladoja on an Overland flight. Times have changed, perhaps? But the citizens still suffer, unchanged. Serving ministers should be cost-cutting, please.

    Beyond jet use [or abuse], such near-death experiences may be divine messages for a moral upgrade. Only the individual will know what the Almighty stopped or what message was delivered as the minister alone knows his own heart – nefarious or nation-building, corrupt or incorruptible, legacy or illegal.  Nigeria is abysmally behind, deserving 100,000-1m/Mw. The minister must further power legacy projects and decisions against generator/diesel/petrol cabals. God has given him time. ‘We are landing’ changed to ‘We are crashing. Heads bent forward arms folded overhead’ and he changed from powerful minister to ‘I beg you God, spare me and I will transform the Nigerian Power sector’.  

    We thank God for answering. Now give us even more ‘Transformer Service’.

    Too many Ministers end up with EFCC/ICPC/court circus. Abacha loot still trickles in, $150m from Paris. To ‘Change Nigeria’ you will be discussing ‘all things honest and good’ which will be your and your President’s Power Legacy. Nigeria needs a truly visionary ‘Transformer Minister of Power’. Is it you? Let this be a Saul-to-Paul conversion. Is one required? Only the minister can answer that question. But we will all know in four years.

    A year or so ago, a minister died in a lone vehicle car crash. Instead of speed limit enforcement and fixing the potholes nationwide, the National Assembly, NASS mathematicians decided it needed better jeeps? Oh yes! We pay N160b, budget appropriation with no extra pothole filling except through dedicated, untouchable by NASS, SUKUK and other specifically targeted today, 15 loans. A political greed lesson but no real national lessons learnt.

    It is a miracle that the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is now motorable today, 15 years overdue specifically due to the NASS greed or insensitivity which diverted N150b Fashola/Buhari budget allocation in 2019/20+ cycle to more infamously corruptible constituency projects.  

    The minister should please share his story with his Federal Executive Council co-ministers in the hope mass ministerial reduction in transport costs, more legacy projects and erection of EFCC, ICPC, TI, NEITI early warning anti-corruption structures in their ministries.    

    Read Also: DHQ: 3 officers, 33 soldiers died in Niger ambush, NAF jet crash

    Presidential WHAT? So, the words ‘Presidential Yacht’ are not so simple. We are used to different interpretations for the same words by lawyers, liars, politicians, civil servants, et cetera. Even our language sometimes means the opposite. ‘I am coming’ means ‘I am going’ and ‘I may come back but do not wait up!’ The word politician means prone to thuggery, bribery, election malpractice and stealing. We imagine a Presidential Yacht is a large ship at the disposal of the presidential family especially the idle rich presidential children’s profligacy. History says that President Azikiwe was on a yacht. But amazingly we are told in our budget it is some kind of naval code for a super naval weaponised gadget with everything and accommodation for the President as Commander-in -Chief! So, when is a yacht not a yacht but a battleship? Is the code to deceive Boko Haram or pirates?

    President Buhari approved the N5billion yacht bill and President Tinubu is signing the cheque. Is it already being outfitted for Nigeria? Who to believe? Is the budget inflated? Politicians and the military, judging from Abacha and other generals, pad budgets, and even ‘saintly’ NASS is not buying and has cancelled the purchase and reallocated the funds to the national loans scheme. Maybe a good idea but maybe not!  

    The N160billion spent on NASS vehicles and the proposed billions for the presidency vehicles should be adding to the weak education and health budgets. The downside of this Presidential Yacht cancellation palaver could fearfully be one more lawsuit against Nigeria, this time for ‘Presidential Yacht Breach of Contract’.  Buhari’s first experience was when he forced Nigeria to pay £185m for cancelling the first Lagos metro- Jakande Rail in 1983 which was 1/3 of the £600m total cost. Now Buhari claims for himself the P&ID judgement liberating us from paying $11b. Thanks. Nigeria thanks ‘The Incorruptible Judge-Justice Robin Knowles. Law schools should name Halls and Prizes after Knowles. Babangida’s name could not account for $12.2b gulf war oil windfall money? Similar amounts. Interesting.

  • Accept corruption & die or reject corruption & thrive

    Accept corruption & die or reject corruption & thrive

    It is obvious at federal, state, local governments and private sector level and especially the contractor and finance/banking subsectors that corruption is ingrained in, and is a far too large part of our politics, bureaucratic, and private business lives in Nigeria. Almost everyone is forced to pay or is on the make, but definitely not everyone. Some may ask ‘where has honesty gotten my forebears?’ After all, their salaries and pensions have collapsed in value right before their eyes, crippling them financially and disgracing them in the eyes of the extended family.  

    The persistent fall in the value of the naira, from N1=$1.5 with no black market then invented or needed, back in the 1973 to N197=$1 in 2016 and then to N800-1,000 -1,300=$1 in 2023. These cataclysmically traumatic financial results defy logical explanation in normal societies bearing in mind that Nigeria was once such a society fortunately endowed with a hugely valuable export, oil -refined and unrefined. It also had generous foreign exchange inflows into the country from a large diaspora spectrum whose origin lies in national trauma.

    That trauma, all political or milito-political, can be recorded as the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth wave of economic migrants forced to flee. First for civil war reasons, then the draconic military rule under Buhari 1, then the Babangida exodus, then  bloodthirsty rule of Abacha/Al-Mustapha and then Buhari 2 and the aftermath of 60 years of military and civilian misrule culminating in the current post Buhari 2 japa syndrome. Too many countries are forced by their leaders to choose to stay and suffer undeservedly and die in near penury or flee for personal, family and social survival and actual growth and financial success. Stories of difficult journeys, disasters like terrifying drownings, imprisonment, slavery, organ harvesting and disappointment at destination country are rife and caused by political failure.  

    Let us not forget that almost every single one of the estimated 10-15million Nigerian Diasporas was forced to flee due to the fundamental and financial failures of the Nigerian state to offer a safe, secure and sustainable education and job opportunity and in order to provide a more normal, predictable, work-result oriented environment. Daily, millions of them remember Nigeria with nostalgia and weep at the memory of their journey- a journey they took because the government had murdered governance.

    But the current set of politicians seems immune to learning lessons from the criminal and profligate past political eras. This best manifestation of complete disconnect of the 2023-7 political class with the reality on the ground are the refusal of the members of either house or both houses of National Assembly, NASS to drastically cut their Salaries and Perks and also their acceptance of the 360 jeeps NASS at a cost of N160,000,000,000 . It seems no amount of citizen suffering will turn NASS from its chronic illness of greed manifest by its profligate ways.    

    Read Also: Bandits kill one, abduct 25 in Southern Kaduna

    Every kobo or naira the government groups steal is common criminal stealing. Have they no shame? Is the expected overwhelming desire to serve their citizens turned to so much hatred so quickly, the very next day after appointment? We the people are millions per state and over one hundred and fifty million nationwide. The population figure estimates are corrupted, criminally inflated by about 25-30% for sectional, political and economic advantage. Even the election could not get over 31m voters out of around 90+million voting card registrations. This even raises questions on the validity of the voters register. Where is everybody, every election?

    Nigeria cannot afford any corruption in the 2023-7 governance cycle because so very much has been stolen over so many years by so few representing the many making the foundation and superstructure so very fragile that it could collapse at any time. We really cannot endure as a functioning country any more of the huge number of N100multi-billion thefts reported regularly about the criminal leadership in far too many of Nigeria’s ministries, agencies and departments, MAD. If we continue like this, the country will descend into fiscal MADness.

    We must not allow one day more without initiating a huge fight against corruption while the new batch of potentially corrupt officials is still settling down into office and before this 2023-7 batch get used to or are inducted into the corruption machine.

    Corruption must be fought before it happens, not after it happens when the damage, death and disaster have already been done and the infrastructure is substandard and liable to collapse, when the patients, especially our pregnant women lose life’s delivery battle and have died sometimes with the child from lack of equipment  and medicines and facilities, when students are forced to under-learn and under-achieve and fail due to an uninspiring learning environment or when road crashes occur due to lighting lack and gaping hungry unfilled potholes.       

    All Nigerians must rise up to prevent and not just detect corruption. Nigeria can ‘ACCEPT CORRUPTION & DIE or REJECT CORRUPTION & THRIVE’ but there must be more frequent forensic auditing sometimes monthly as a prevention of corruption strategy by NEITI , EFCC, ICPC, SERAP etc. The disgrace to the Auditor General’s and Accountant General’s offices must be reversed.

     It is good that ASUU has received its withheld punishment for striking, no-work, no-pay, salary but all eight months backlog should be paid for justice as ASUU was fighting for improved tertiary education in general.  

  • Guess ‘who will be corrupt 2023-2027?’

    Guess ‘who will be corrupt 2023-2027?’

    It is important to encourage ASUU and NUT in Social Studies, political and social science courses, schools and universities to introduce a real time ‘Current Societal Corruption in the Curriculum’ and teach ‘Corruption Current Affairs’ about the recent conviction of a Major General, the publication of the large possessions of a deceased military officer, last week’s huge funds recovered in London Courts from a Nigerian governor and his collaborators, a minister in London for corruption, the ludicrously huge recoveries from several accountants general and auditors generals, the sums from the recent EFCC boss and lower corrupt officials under EFCC and ICPC investigation.

    Let us pay attention to a deadly serious game ‘Who will be corrupt in Nigeria 2023-2027?’ We cannot afford to find out after they have stolen billions. We must place an army of monitoring officers at major corruption points identified from the forensic lessons of past corruption investigations.

    We must prevent the theft of even one kobo in 2023-27. Nigeria must learn that ‘Prevention is better than cure’.  With the years of hugely costly corruption investigation and prosecution efforts ascribed to many years of vigilance by SERAP, TI, NEITI, ICPC, EFCC, we expect them to turn to prevention of financial crimes.  All the ministers and heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, are already appointed. Who among them will be corrupt? Our history tells us that many will be corrupt. Pray they prove history wrong. Will they surpass their predecessors’ conviction rate?

    Corruption at every level of society is the root of all evil in Nigeria. STOP CORRUPTION: START RECOVERY! Honesty and monetary and policy morality are personal decisions on one’s personal journey through life. They should not need to be taught but the effects of corruption need highlighting.  

    ASUU and NUT should link the amounts stolen to the lack of equipment, facilities, services and medical standards throughout the country and particularly in their own institutions. Realistically, can we be surprised that Nigeria is crippled financially now? Corruption has been a cancerous gangrenous ulcer. Enough is enough! Nigeria cannot survive another round of thieving leadership across the ministerial, banking, agency, auditing, accounting or financially monitoring spectrum.    

    Sadly, too many of those caught with unexplained funds and matching missing money from accounts, almost always manage to escape after miraculously falling ‘sick’ complete with drama props like neck collar, wheelchair, walking stick, crutches, sometimes a stretcher and the almost routine and well-practiced fainting attack or outright collapse for evaporated public sympathy. They never faint before they steal. They are never sick enough to stop them from stealing in the first place.

    We had a minister faint and fall to the ground in NASS. We fully sympathise with him for his hypoglycaemia or dehydration before the NASS interview. However, we earnestly pray that that was not a rehearsal for any EFCC investigation when he leaves office. We hope that politicians and civil servants will not use the video to practice ‘How to faint and collapse without injury to yourself’ after future corruption.

    The corruption cases above are all in the media spotlight but no longer stimulate revulsion or anger. The corruption cases have so traumatised Nigerians that we are immune to pain, the norm rather than the exception. Nigerians trivialise or disconnect from the enormity of the theft and from the impact of the loss of such huge sums on the Nigerian society, Nigerian economy and the lives of every Nigerian citizen.

    The thefts enumerated above of Nigeria’s wealth have nearly irreparably damaged Nigeria’s health but are the corruption iceberg tip, sinking Nigeria, raping and ruining citizenry in their beds, schools and hospitals, on roads and in workplaces.

    Read Also: A new paradigm in EFCC’s anti-graft war

    While some celebrate, we mostly must mourn the naira now at N1,150: $1, a naira which is of less value than a sheet of toilet paper, though it was given to us by our elders and obviously our moral betters at N1:$1.5. Why and who are responsible for this cataclysmic falling standard of living? The naira was destroyed by the action and inaction of those who could have saved it, over many years, but chose not to, preferring to contaminate the sacred secrecy of office and abuse the immunity of the positions they occupied, partly also due to impunity and a tornado of personal greed over citizen’s needs. Glaringly, the failure to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund in the 1970s has hampered the current economy. Add to that printing of unbacked naira notes, implementation what are now clearly crazy schemes, the refusal to prevent the massive theft and fraud across the oil sector, black market round-tripping of dollars by bank officials and their collaborators and the failure to implement long term strategies in preference of short term solutions for personal or other gain against the rest of us.  

    Yes, you will certainly find billions, even trillions, in your portfolio as president, vice president, Head of Service, minister, NASS legislator, CBN governor, CBN director, CBN official, Auditor General, Accountant General, Agency Head, Governor, State legislator, commissioner, LGA chairman. But not a kobo is your money. How do we get it through to your souls and spirit, that all that money, every kobo and naira has Nigerian baby’s face on it and is our collective Nigerian money? Don’t become a common thief stealing the future from Nigeria’s babies, please.

    To be called Excellent, Distinguished and Honourable, you must be HONEST with Nigeria and Nigerians. 

  • CBN; TSA killing university grants; FERMA

    CBN; TSA killing university grants; FERMA

    It is hard to think through the CBN’s decision to cancel its banned list of 43 items, the most infamous of them being toothpicks which we spent $18m importing in one year. It seems to defy logic. Perhaps it is based on the presumably credible CBN-researched assumptions that these 43 items have always been imported even during the ban and paid for by CBN dollars extracted out of CBN disguised for other purposes and sold at black market rates decimating naira value.

    Bringing the CBN 43 black market into the open dollar market may be a part of the rescue mission by reducing pressure on the dollar and shrinking the available black-market size. So, it could be a strategy to strengthen the dollar. But this is Nigeria where economic planning and results differ dramatically. The black-market cabal will not give up their lucrative stranglehold easily even though they decimate our one proud currency from $1.2: N1 to $1:1,000 dashing the dreams of our forefathers and creating a currency crisis, economic paralysis, massive poverty and shame in the population.

    The CBN should also quickly study the negative impact of TSA, Treasury Single Account, on reducing foreign exchange inflows and advise government that federal government (FG) will lose the contribution of millions of dollars annually in foreign inflows as well as millions of corporate naira for research grants across universities. Abuja has just been freed from the stranglehold of the TSA making it a de facto state. The TSA modus operandi needs re-examination by stake holders including an enlightened team of CBN, users, enforcers and abusers to plan the way forward. The TSA requires re-assessment to see if it actually controlled corruption during the Buhari regime. It can still be used to control FG finances against corruption in the university system. However, the attempt to also control private donations and international grants and purpose-directed donations for buildings and other programmes has backfired and instead created a huge funds-retrieval problem breaking contract timelines. CBN, the Nigerian Academies Science and of Arts, the Community of Retired Vice Chancellors should come together and collectively engage enlightened members of government and National Assembly, NASS, to provide government with evidence of TSA problems and losses by the university system before they fall even further behind in grant and project funding inflows. 

    Read Also; Reps want FG to channel fuel subsidy savings to healthcare

    The new minister of works is insisting on concrete federal roads from now on. Good. The naming of a 24year old BSc Bristol & Masters graduate as chairman of FERMA has jarred many, especially the professional civil engineering family, regardless of the professional cost of the political payback debts necessary to keep the job of president. No doubt he is a brilliant UK 1st Class degree holder. As a public figure now, tell us where and what he did during his NYSC posting. Did he actually work or was his NYSC certificate thrust upon him? With this appointment, his CV will, under his Future Plans probably read ‘Next step: become a minister in Nigeria’ by 2027 while other Nigerians wallow in the ‘Joblessness so no experience’ and ‘No experience therefore jobless’ for years.  Indeed, it appears obvious he is being groomed for the highest office. But is it to Nigeria’s and Nigerians collective advantage that this job is seriously devalued to ‘No experience necessary’ by the Tinubu government? It is not a youth appeasement job and has nothing to do with youthfulness or brilliance!

    So, our roads carrying millions of citizens, vehicles and a million lethal motorcycles aka okada daily with preventable multiple pothole deaths can be managed by a 24-year-old with zero experience? However, we demand 15years of security experience for ‘thief-thief catching’ in EFCC. Strange to say the least. The nation is in shock, but the bottom line is ‘can he deliver?’ And if he can actually deliver, will he deliver? Ability and actuality are always two different things in Nigeria. We live in hope and are raising our expectations slightly above ‘no expectation’. Last week we saw the devastated roads in and around Edo State which have defied funds and older engineers for years.

    Nigeria’s trucks are unregulated and truck owners are too greedy, avoiding two trip shipments. Today’s trucks are almost always overburdened in axle-weight for the capacity of our roads, destroying them. We had weighbridges on a few roads, especially the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, but they were quickly rendered useless, much like our refineries were destroyed by corruption, with deliberate destruction of the technology through deliberate damage, corrupt maintenance ‘wayo’ and simple greed.

    Can the new FERMA leadership enforce a load-weight 25-50% reduction for our trucks and lorries, which is a main cause of road damage apart from the corruption and some deliberate poor engineering standards in road construction. The new FERMA head, should not take the job in the interest of Nigerian moral. If he does, he must remember seeing UK roads dug up and repaired by the next day, potholes being filled daily, lorries watching their weight. Will he address these deficits in the Nigerian Federal Road network? He should!

    Will he raise up the next generation of 100+ Nigerian road construction companies to speed up road repair, spread the wealth and curtail the monopoly of the current big 5 in 2023-27? He should! In 2023 we are old enough to uplift construction companies run by and employing Nigerian born and bred engineers and technicians.  

  • CBN: ‘What is the exchange rate of the Nigerian???’

    CBN: ‘What is the exchange rate of the Nigerian???’

    Perhaps the security forces would prefer not to announce operations ahead of time as it affords the enemy the opportunity to escape or ambush our gallant forces. Secrecy and silence were paramount in security. Maybe the announcement is a cunning military strategy?         

    The CBN team must put a notice in CBN offices asking ‘WHAT IS THE EXCHANGE RATE OF THE NIGERIAN, NOT JUST THE NAIRA? ’. We cannot divorce the naira from the lives of Nigerians. It is a financial fatal mistake for CBN and financial institutions to ignore the Nigerian holding the naira. In medicine and education, we know that naira value determines the quality and quantity of care and education. By now, the CBN leadership would have had a rude awakening from the congratulatory media spotlight having successfully scaled the sometimes-odoriferous political screening procedure. The dream of high office is over, the nightmare of office-holding has begun, or perhaps ‘daymare’ or sleepless ‘night-and-day-mare’? One can only imagine the ‘true talk’ revelations the CBN team face daily especially with the corruption by inactivity and unconstitutional over-activity revealed by the federal government’s forensic investigator, as frightening financial facts are dug up. The team has become fully conversant with funds or the lack of funds and the ever-deepening account of the void in the vault[s] of the deeply wounded or actually raped apex bank.

    The team must know the answer to the first question for the new CBN leadership: ‘Does Nigeria have $3.4billion or $34billion in Foreign Reserves?’ What is the foreign reserve figure? The CBN needs to answer ‘Who or what is the black market in Nigeria?’ The CBN should have a black-market imitator presenting the mind, method and machinations of the black market to predict the cabal’s actions to the CBN’s Daily Emergency Strategic Meeting’.

    The foreign exchange black market is a major cancer in Nigeria and a very expensive debilitating disease, difficult to eradicate and very deadly to the citizenry. Everyone finally realises that everything for transporting life’s daily needs like kerosene, petrol, diesel or gas and food require foreign exchange. Manipulated or not, foreign exchange rate is very relevant to everyone, from baby on powdered milk to grandparent on imported diapers. The stupid saying that ‘good foreign exchange rates and fuel prices only favour the rich and cheat the poor’ is now exposed as the ludicrous lie we have been trying to expose for years.

    Nigeria has managed to create many jobs non-existent elsewhere and refusing to create jobs that exist elsewhere – the ones which make countries great nations. We have an army of aboki forex mules, a cabal to make the dollar crazily more expensive than it should be and ‘fresh naira note sellers’ on the creation side. There is a complete lack of dedicated maintenance staff on the other hand.

    Read Also: eNaira no threat to financial stability, says CBN

    Nigeria demands that the ‘Nigerian Forex Cabal’, a key culprit in our financial wows today, must, like any illegitimate organisation,  voluntarily wind-up operations by being starved of CBN funds needed by legitimate corporate and private individual needs. The cabal must be neutralised, prosecuted and imprisoned for financial terrorism against Nigeria. The CBN collaborators deserve no mercy. The cabal only thrives because someone, somewhere, created an artificial scarcity atmosphere.

    CBN high officials cannot claim ignorance of the source. CBN in collaboration with other relevant agencies especially ICPC, EFCC, etc. must conduct a high-powered investigation to neutralise the kingpins and end this third force assault on Nigerian naira. Can the CBN wrestle the demon of the black-market cabal to the ground or will its corrupt shadow forever dwarf the CBN? Will more dollars fall out of the CBN net, under the radar allowing the cabal to create naira even less valuable than it is now with to crashing through the N1000:$1 ruining pension, salary and manufacturing plans? 

    No doubt the increase in oil price to $92 per barrel should increase our foreign exchange earnings handsomely especially as we majorly reduce oil theft and approach the limit of legal barrels per day to recover from our 44% shortfall. Sadly, even with this anticipated increase in earnings, we have been told that the immediate past government secretly forward-sold our oil and perhaps [mis]spent the foreign exchange in advance and for an undisclosed period. If true, those who did this should be tried for financial mismanagement and abuse of office. The side effect of what should have been a celebratory high oil price $92 bringing much needed massive foreign exchange into Nigeria and the rubbish naira value concocted by the greed-driven foreign exchange cabal is the high market price of oil products.

    Will government have to reintroduce subsidies or give more palliatives to reduce the escalating fuel and transport costs ruining Nigerian families?

    Of course, if CBN could pay off Nigeria’s legitimate corporate and individual immediate accumulated dollar debts as it claims, create the miracle of providing enough dollars for daily legitimate markets with adequate dollars which requires better dollar inflows from oil etc., starve the leakage to the black-market cabal, eliminate the black market and deliberately strengthen the naira, then poverty figures would drop. We need made-in-Nigeria fuel, better power supply, destruction of oil smugglers, elimination of the forex cabal, and immediate ease-of-doing-business promotion of dollar earning enterprises which earn rather than burn foreign exchange. These will demonstrate that the government and CBN at last value the ‘THE EXCHANGE RATE OF NIGERIANS’.

  • Nigeria @ 63; ‘maintenance’; ‘no plea bargaining’

    Nigeria @ 63; ‘maintenance’; ‘no plea bargaining’

    As we celebrate the 63rd year of Independence remember that the people of Nigeria have a much older history- good, bad, oppressive and being oppressed. Some countries reject their independence day from colonisation and celebrate earlier historical references even changing their colonial name. We should remember those Nigerians whose actions have held us back and pray and work so we get back on track to changing our country into a great nation. Citizens do not flee from great nations. We will know we are a great nation when we have 24/7 power 60-100MW, generators fall silent, foreigners visit, japaed Nigerians return from abroad, our sports heroes train in Nigeria and the tide of death-risking illegal migrants stops while tourism to  Nigeria swells to a tsunami.  

    The deliberate abandonment of history in school, has largely suppressed our past glory and even the gory from our memory, conversation and education coursework. This suppression of history, first colonial, then reversed by know-your-history early post-colonial reactionary political leadership and then suppressed again by the military coup policies, have caused an identity crisis. ‘If you do not know where you are coming from, how do you expect to know where you are going?’ History is ‘His story’ + ‘her story’= ‘Our story’. Without a story, what are we? ’Who are you?’ History is not always palatable. All people and nations have stories best kept secret.  

    Beyond our varied history, Nigeria faces leadership and followership corruption from dirt poor to filthy rich life. Sadly, the anti-corruption organs charged with stopping corruption have failed to reach expected successful prosecution rates. The absence of early warning preventive measures like financial alarms triggered by small thefts to alert anti-corruption organs like the Police, EFCC and ICPC is a major problem similar to refusing to put measuring devices on Nigeria’s oil pumps. Nigerians are angered by absence of deterrents or no early capture of corruption criminals while their crimes are in infancy. No spotlights or close monitoring or close marking of ‘potentially corrupt officers’ in ‘financially juicy offices’ to frighten them into honesty. It is only when most culprits leave office that they are discovered to have links to sometimes N100b theft each, cumulatively amounting to trillions of naira losses from budgets.

    Imagine if that money had never been stolen across the governance structure! We would have had the positive effect of affording more humane salary and pension expectations especially when compared to the embarrassing bloated political salary, perks and support structure costs which should be cut by 75%! That stolen money would have given us 21st Century electricity, schools, universities, hospitals, roads, travel and transport. Modernising our ports, railways would have been accomplished years earlier without strangulating foreign loan repayment rates.

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    Politicians should never have been allowed to think that they had power to ‘give or refuse’ books, classrooms, laboratories, desks, chairs, salaries, pensions, culverts, pothole filling, bridges or rubbish clearance or make them worthy of press coverage. They should never have dared to wildly celebrate their responsibility to spend the citizens’ budgets on the citizens’ needs including scholarships, bursaries, development training courses et cetera which were standard in the 60-70s but have been denied to today’s youth with the money diverted. Remember the names of governors who reduced workers’ rights to salaries or pensions? In private business that is prosecutable theft and breach of contract. Without punishment evil continues, forcing subsequent governments to pay the inherited debt burden.

    What the totality of money stolen from budgets could have done developmentally for Nigeria ‘I cannot tell it all’ but I can shout ‘we have suffered Oh’ and ‘Enough is enough’. At 63, our development has been stunted by colonisers followed by uncaring milito-political class, especially at governor/state level, supported by a criminal cohort from all professions and society strata.

    Now instead of getting this corruption money back, we hear of plea bargaining. Did they plea bargain with us when they stole our budgets aka development funds? So why should we plea bargain to get 10-20% of our 100%? It is also corruption by plea bargaining agencies if they fail to retrieve 100% +interest from criminals. ‘All we are saying…get all our money back!’  SECRET PLEA BARGAINING CAN BE CORRUPTED & MUST BE ‘OPEN PLEA BARGAINING’ IN PUBLIC. Emefiele is being offered a plea bargain. Nigeria and Nigerians must not lose their money to corruption twice. STOP PLEA BARGAINING IN NIGERIA FOR NOW!

    Corruption is in thought, word and deed causing a cancer reducing societal survival. People die! CORRUPTION KILLS BRAINS, BODIES AND ESPECIALLY BABIES IN THOUSANDS PER N100M. PERIOD!

    The cost of development has been hyper-inflated by corruption, cutting kilometres built and quality and buildings quantity and quality across the social spectrum. This reduces Sustainable Developmental Goal scoring by Nigerian budgets.

    Dirt is a social and medical enemy of development combated by an inherited colonial  ‘MAINTENANCE CULTURE’ making small budgets stretch, filling potholes and making toilets, offices and clinics  cleaner, safer and more hygienic, allowing them to be used for longer with improving the work experience. Visit ministries to see holes in ceilings and dilapidated chairs cutting into walls and with torn fabric with protruding foam and dirty corridor and office walls and stairwells where hands, heads, feet and chair-backs have marked walls. Just paint please! Maintenance oils the development wheel. Without maintenance, we move backward. Nigeria can be poor but clean or rich and dirty. Our choice.

  • NYSC, students; CBN: Stop ‘Clean vs Dirty notes’ scam  

    NYSC, students; CBN: Stop ‘Clean vs Dirty notes’ scam  

    Again, more attacks on youth – students, undergraduates and corps members. When will the Nigerian Armed Forces execute a pincer war strategy encircling and capturing terrorists, preventing an escape, since there is a war against Nigeria?  

    Nigeria has good people. Read obituaries. Congratulations on President Tinubu’s choice for CBN special investigator, the CEO of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria Jim Obazee, and team  for  following CBN’s paper and electronic trail of meetings, social media [?doctored] financial approvals and inflows/outflows leading hopefully to prosecutions which will motivate the new team.  

    Imagine a whole past CBN management team criminally neglecting audits for six years- breaching CBN anti-corruption law. This ‘Forensic Auditing with Culprits’ model is underutilised in the Nigerian corruption-infested governance structure. To stop the corruption pandemic infecting the new CBN, Nigeria must insist on a COMPULSORY ‘PUBLISHED QUARTERLY FORENSIC AUDIT’ compiled into the ‘THE ANNUAL FORENSIC AUDIT’, within two weeks of year end giving immediate online results. Impose this on each government organ immediately and involve ICPC and EFCC and make it Lesson 1-0-1 creating alarm bells for early detection/prevention of Nigeria’s annual trillion-naira fraud. 

    We welcome the new governor, Yemi Cardoso and the deputy governors’ team to the stinking/sinking apex bank ship in Nigeria, a metaphor for citizens’ economic woes and the institutionalisation of the decline and fall of our tormented naira. That naira fall is CBN’s yoke especially as CBN is said to have printed unbacked currency, ignored or facilitated round-tripping of forex inflows with collaborators masquerading as corporate and murky oil industry gurus. Today’s nefarious activities of the recent CBN board forced every Nigerian to become a mini-economist reducing the revered ‘CBN’ to a swear word ‘Come Bastardise Naira’! Is ongoing Forensic Audited CBN activities a Police, EFCC, ICPC matter? If not, why not? The country demands justice and reparation. Immunity and impunity will only perpetuate corruption.

    Nigeria cannot afford a Nollywood-like sequel to CBN pre-2015-2023 financial meltdown film or stage play entitled “2015-2023- CBN Fiscal Fiasco”. The new CBN team must study the wrongs from the past CBN management team and jettison bad precepts of bad predecessors to avoid being stars in the ‘Annals of Nigeria’s Fiscal Failure and Economic Emasculation’.

    Indeed, all Nigerians in leadership positions must reassess their positions, roles and legacy and determine to reduce their greed-expectations for power over OPM-Other People’s Money. Most Nigerians inexplicably happily disgrace their parentage, pedigree and old school for ‘filthy lucre’ which deprives the needy. Today, Nigerians, following the currency collapse disaster from Babangida to 2023, need every naira, and dollar, monitored and spent appropriately. Some with poor parentage and no memory of family having suffered war, weather [climate catastrophe wiping away any family memory] and wickedness [murder of family members], retained their ‘omoloabi’, humanity and self-worth without stealing a kobo. Reputation is personal, not institutional and goes beyond the title and pedigree.  

    Jesus Christ asked his apostles “Who do men that say I am?” We must apply this ‘Jesus Question’ to ourselves and value non-monetary wealth and our ancestors’ reputation above greed. My father, Dr Abayomi A Marinho’s picture in my office daily reminds of my family honour, responsibility and the dignity of labour. Try it. Even those who lost parents in childbirth or youth can be Faithful, Loyal and Honest-FLH- to Project Nigeria. My family was honoured, and terrified, when in 1978-9, while I was a resident doctor in UCH, Dr Marinho and Mr FB Cardoso came to stay in our UCH flat for a function. They chose family and friendship over Premier Hotel luxury.   

    There are many corruption problems facing CBN. The one hiding-in-plain-site enraging Nigerians is not the rubbishing of the naira before the dollar but the uniquely Nigerian 30year old ‘CBN Clean vs Dirty notes Scandal’. CBN routinely issued new notes to replace dirty notes regularly but refused to investigate the customer complaint that clean notes were not reaching the tellers and bank customers who were left with dirty notes. In fact, clean mint notes were only available to the rich direct from banks managers and through a uniquely Nigerian bank, new illegal business chain, third party girls parading wads of mint notes and bank doors, and social functions, who broke the law by perhaps acting as fronts for managers and selling those clean mint notes at above the currency face value- a currency crime, legalised by CBN’s refusal to act.   

    Surely this is “SALE OF THE CURRENCY NOTES ABOVE THE VALUE IS FINANCIAL TERRORISM” making our banking system a laughing-stock among international bankers sniggering”. That is Nigeria where they actually sell their own currency to each other at a profit. I hear a N1000 mint note can be sold for N1,100 dirty currency so the mint notes can be pasted, they call it spraying actually, on breasts of brides and birthday celebrants only to fall to the floor and be picked or swept up by minions. Madness! But someone replied: “Maybe they are wise, creating a mint new notes currency scarcity causes a demand and supply crisis? Criminal creativity? Making money out of nothing. Banking entrepreneurship!”

    The new CBN governor can remind banks to obey the clean-dirty note law. It is a serious credibility step. It will send signal to every bank manager that normalcy is back. It will end a blot on our dear currency.  Just as if the IGP can stop police checkpoint extortion nationwide costing citizens N24-40b annually.  

  • Wanted: ‘War on terrorism dismantling new infrastructure’   

    Wanted: ‘War on terrorism dismantling new infrastructure’   

    There are many groups of thieves, bandits and terrorists with different agendas. We see trillions disappear into VIP pockets attested to by numerous mostly unsuccessful ICPC and EFCC prosecutions. We must also focus is thieves who terrorise travellers by dismantling any progressive infrastructure development provided as part of the cloak aka mantle of democratic development in the struggling country failing SDGs or other targets.

    Years ago, we were shocked when the aluminium railing on the Third Mainland Bridge began to be dismantled and disappeared only to appear in the market as spoons and plates. No arrests or conclusive police investigation, no night patrols until the entire bridge was stripped. The lesson was that new bridges have concrete railings.

    Before cell phones, we all suffered telephone cables dismantled and stolen by criminal gangs masquerading as pseudo-telephone NITEL staff, killing the conversation. One had to pay dearly to replace the stolen cable, probably with one’s own stolen cable, standard practice at the time, sold by the thief network back to the contractor through the back door.  We have all witnessed similar gangs dismantling Nigeria’s electricity infrastructure through similar terrorist attacks targeting power cable and armoured cable theft, pylon destruction [paralysing the country – terrorism] and even transformers countrywide. Many have knowledge of the dismantling and theft of metal manholes in busy roads, killing citizens, or dismantling metal culvert grills and even concrete culvert covers to steal the iron rod inserts.  

    Sadly, add to this already disgusting list the inexplicably wicked dismantling and theft of highly specialised airport landing and take-off lights. Suppose a plane had crashed? Terrorism! Just when we thought things could get no worse, some terrorist transport thieves dismantled and stole the junction metal buffers on the newly opened Second Niger Bridge which though costing N336billion, 40 years in the dream and five years in construction, remains inaccessible due to failure to adequately police red flagged security issues and construction peripherals like road access failures.

    As if all these terrorist dismantling activities against the Nigerian state’s disorganised efforts at developing the long overdue mantle of development infrastructure, are not debilitatingly destructive enough, we face a major terrorist assault dismantling our still 60 years late renewed railway network. Imagine an army of terrorist leaders leading nocturnal assaults to dismantle and vandalise rail lines across Nigeria, especially the Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna, Nasarawa (where two truckloads of sleepers were arrested) and the Southeast. And once stolen, they move the rails, sleepers and collateral railway equipment, thus endangering, callously Nigerian children, youth and adults merely taking a train.

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    The question must be asked as to where the iron and aluminium smelters are who buy and recycle these stolen items? Once stolen, where are the items taken for smelting which requires skill, not to talk of remodelling and reselling? Who is displaying and selling the end products – stolen goods? As yet, no smelter has been identified. Shame. As with the trade in body parts for fertility, political and other power and pregnancy, until we get the traditionalist, cultist and religious [mis]-leaders who demand such human sacrifices for body parts, such murders will continue unabated and even increase as poverty and need for instant cash miracles rise disproportionately.

    When will Nigeria gear up to the responsible 2023 police task of capturing the well-connected kingpins, smelters, financiers, major terrorists probably mingling with us? Will we continue to arrest easily replaceable petty thieves like lorry owners, drivers and porters of terrorist booty? Where is our Police Investigation?

    The police must first demonstrate commitment with 2023 cathartic leadership accountability by STOPPING CHECKPOINT CORRUPTION 2023.-through a morality drive and better pay and conditions of service please.  

    The National Orientation Agency must be reinvented, expanded and multi-focused because Nigeria has descended into the abyss of new nauseating dimensions of economic immorality crime – an abyss filled with 419, One-chance, baby factory, organ-and-human trafficking, cyber-criminality, cyber-identity theft, video-and-naked-selfie blackmail as well as mega-theft by mega-greedy public servants-especially ministers, governors and high government officers et cetera.

    Nigeria needs total NOA led, but CBN-CSR supported ‘NATIONAL REORIENATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST NIGERIAN INFRASTRUCTURE TERRORISM’ for citizenry, social media, each educational strata, community, society, NYSC, the workforce, trade unions and prisons. This 2023-2027 NOA campaign for development protection should focus on the need to protect, preserve and promote efforts at creating the mantle of development. It should highlight the danger, to youth and children of terrorist vandals and future generations, of maliciously dismantling the current development efforts.

    No country can provide development to its citizens if some citizens, terrorists overnight dismantle all the daily wheels of developmental progress. It takes a special deadly or murderous breed of terrorism to systematically specialise in paralysing Nigeria by dismantling its highly expensive [inflated contracts], long overdue, infrastructure for a petty monetary mess-of-pottage in gains. For Nigeria to have its bridges, railways, roads, electricity pylons and cables, communication towers and runways targeted, stripped and paralysed by terrorists is to have WAR DECLARED AGAINST IT. Nigeria needs to reciprocate and DECLARE WAR AGAINST DISMANTLING INFRASTRUCTURE AND CLASSIFY NON-WEAPON TERRORIST ATTACKS ON NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE AS TERRORISM WITH APPROPRIATE WARTIME PUNISHMENTS-long prison terms etc.

    Why do terrorists dismantle and steal iron grills and manholes? A lack of iron? Perhaps a working Ajaokuta Steel Mill would have prevented the need for iron at murderous cost. Perhaps soon thieves will be dismantling and stealing petrol tanks from cars just to get the expensive petrol???

  • Ibadan Youth Aquarium/ Museum/ Exhibition Stem Park Pls.

    Ibadan Youth Aquarium/ Museum/ Exhibition Stem Park Pls.

    Governor Seyi Makinde is reported to be considering making some areas in Agodi and Trans Amusement Park into housing estates. Over the last 30 years, we have informed each governor that Ibadan requires modern city public entertainment facilities like enlightening museums, aquaria, exhibitions of type Nigeria’s children abroad are availed of in Dubia, London, New York etc. Ibadan is awash with hundreds of amazing active and retired brains in and around intellectual, agricultural and scientific institutions with famous acronyms UI [with 75 departments], UCH [with 25 departments], LCU, KDU, FRIN, CRIN, IITA, IAR&T, all sadly out of reach of Ibadan’s two+million children yearning for an intellectual career exposure. As an engineer, will Governor Makinde stamp his visionary intellect on Ibadan by spearheading a legacy project – an Ibadan/Oyo State AQUARIUM/EXHIBITION/MUSEUM/ARTS/SCIENCE/TECH/MATHS EDUTAINMENT PARK by allocating and approving a building with cubicles 10-20 square metres for each one of the 100s of departments in the aforementioned institutions? Housing estates are good and needed. Inspiring youth inquisitiveness is necessary.     

    The murder and mutilation on duty of the distinguished DPO Bako Angbashim in Rivers State by cultists is a heinous crime and the subsequent offer of N100m bounty by Governor Fubara is justified. Many security personnel have died gallantly which requires an onslaught. 

    Nigeria has lost N16.25 trillion or N16,250,000,000,000 for 150,000,000 citizens i.e., approx. N125,000/person to oil theft. Imagine where our foreign reserves, education, health, transport and airlines etc. would be with that money?

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    How has Nigeria survived the trillion-naira+ theft annually? We survive because of the many millions of poor daily paid workers who, combined are a huge economic net countrywide as they feed their families daily from financial exchanges at their own level somewhat bolstered by the few crumbs falling from the rich man’s table which are mopped up mostly by immediate government hangers on. This economic net is very strong as testified by the fact that by doing the menial and low-level jobs they are servicing the essential supply chains supporting lives of every Nigerian from farm, village to villa, from playground to palace and from market to mansion and daily requiring daily transport to work, daily food for self and family, daily support services.

    These are mostly menial jobs, the orange, bread, tea, akara, amala, newspaper viewing vendors who are all involved in the nationwide hidden-in-plain-sight micro-markets which together form a huge sub-bank cash economic safety net blanketing and comforting the ordinary citizenry asking the morning question just before dawn – ‘Can I feed myself/ my family today?’ and every night comforted again by saying ‘I fed myself/my family today’ as he and mostly she closes tired eyes at night. At that level, goals and achievements are daily not annually. And that daily income is destroyed immediately by a nationwide strike. Government office workers will probably get paid. Many workers are self-employed or employed by the private sector formal and informal. There will be no multi-million worker daily spending, demand or income on or from local transport, corner-corner feeding, semi-free readers’ association newspaper vendors. 

    That daily income will be zero for millions who will not get that money back unlike for salaried workers. Such strikes have a far greater impact on the daily paid workers than the monthly paid government and many private sector workers as the millions of daily paid workers are denied the income and will bring home zero income leaving millions of hungry mouths and minds at the level of sleepers on the street, under bridges, hamlets and low-income homes nationwide. Of course, many private businesses are also impacted as they provide food and transport services and the owners will often lay off or just not pay for ‘No Work Days’.  

    Living only day to day is a bitter reality of a lopsided economy and polity where politicians have arrogated to themselves an ‘unbelievable political sense of financial entitlement’ at the direct expense and loss of income for the generality of the citizenry. This is a serious greed-as-a-drug addictive-like disease which thrives because there are never any serious sustained exemplary punishments or countermeasures. The disease is totally resistant  to the usual treatment of calling out and public humiliation, which like Trumpian crimes, has been turned into self-promotional media frenzied circus activities especially when such accused find themselves in court. 

    Politicians have resisted appeals to cut their salaries and perks. Every iota of Nigerian common sense screams against such illegally legal treasury robbing miscalled ’entitlements’. How come such greed-driven politicians stiffen their backs and harden their hearts, when they see the quagmire of poverty caused by their greed-driven plenty in their palatial homes filled with fine vehicles paid for by depriving the poor? Why are most Nigerian politicians not moved to repent and offer services at costs equivalent to similar rates to those of politicians elsewhere in the world? Since politicians have used every subterfuge, legal, illegal, legally illegal and illegally legal to maintain their stranglehold on the Salary and Perks, and reject simple logic of poverty and needs of our country, we must suggest new strategies.

    The major trade unions should come together and demand what we demand – that Salaries and Perks should be cut by 75% with a similar cut in pensions in proportion to what high grade level civil servants earn.

    Indeed, major trade unions should during strike negotiations insist on politicians taking a 75% salary cut or only modest sitting allowances and one house chamber, preferably House of Representatives.