Amaechi’s golden opportunity to speak to the country’s problems
Many of the participants at the Conference on Fast-Tracking Ports Reforms held on Thursday, last week, at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, may have thought that the Minister of Transportation, , Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi was on the political podium when he was delivering his keynote address at the event. The conference, with the theme: “Making Nigerian Seaports World-Class”, was organised by the Federal Ministry of Transportation and its agencies, in partnership with this newspaper. Although the minister came with a prepared text, he spoke extempore, dwelling for the better part of the time on corruption, values that have changed and the change promised by the Buhari administration. Indeed, such is the gulf between what the minister said and his prepared speech that a reporter who was not at the event and was only given the prepared text would miss the side comments that eventually made the keynote address juicy and illuminating.
The way the minister defended the Muhammadu Buhari government at the event, one would think he is the information minister. The conference offered him the opportunity of articulating government’s position on several issues, particularly its change mantra, anti-corruption, and sundry issues. Amaechi said what the All Progressives Congress (APC) promised was change of values, not persons. The minister used a hypothetical example to show how corruption travels:
Take a governor that one of his relatives came to visit, for example. The visitor goes into lamentation over his mounting bills that he cannot pick due to lack of money. He tells his host of how things are so hard that his children had been sent away from school because he could not pay their school fees; of how the landlord has been harassing his family because of unpaid rent and all that. After listening attentively to the story, the governor tells him things are tight and gives him another appointment to come for money. Then the guest continues his lamentation: he says there is even nothing left for him and his family to eat now, not to talk of keeping them till the next appointment, probably adding, to boot, that he did not even have transport fare to take him back home!
At this point, because the governor has human blood in his veins, he has no choice but to ‘shake body’ and drop something. He asks one of his aides to bring some money, say $50,000, which he gives to his guest. The man is happy; he thanks the governor profusely and takes his leave. To him, the governor is a good man. He gets home and gives his wife a fraction of the money to cook soup; she too sings the governor’s praise. Then the man sends some of the money to his mother in the village who does the same on being told the source of the money, and so on and so forth.
All these people are happy with the governor but what they do not know (or pretend not to know) is that the money the governor gave them is public fund that should have been spent on some other things for the common good. When another person takes over as governor and he is not prepared to release money that way, he immediately becomes a bad man. That, apparently, is the situation the Buhari administration is facing.
The minister also spoke on the government’s efforts to dredge the River Niger, using a different template. While past governments had always awarded contracts for this, the Buhari administration has decided to retrieve the government-owned dredger from those it was given to by the previous government for peanuts on lease, in order to use it for the dredging, thereby saving a lot of money for the government.
Amaechi also told the participants what the government is doing about the security infrastructure, especially with regards to piracy. With the long list of sophisticated equipment he reeled out that are under way, pirates have to start redirecting their minds to something worthwhile. He told Nigerians to expect some new locomotives come May 29, to boost rail transportation.
Indeed, it was a rare opportunity that was well utilised for the kind of positive publicity the government needs, especially at this point in time when stories about the president’s health is generating controversies.
Of course, Amaechi did not allow the opportunity to slip by without commenting, once again on the allegation by his successor in Rivers, Nyesom Wike, that he (Amaechi) is the owner of the $43.4m, £27,800 and N23.2m found in a four-bedroom apartment at Osborne Towers located at 16, Osborne road Ikoyi, Lagos, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Wike had said it loud and clear that the money was part of what Amaechi stole from Rivers State coffers. Even after the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA) had claimed ownership, this meant nothing to the governor who insisted that if Amaechi was held well, he would sing. To the extent that this was not done, he believed Amaechi was being shielded because the government did not want to embarrass itself. The minister wondered, and rightly so, that an NIA boss, who is now on suspension over the matter, must have been such a wonderful person to soil his hard-earned reputation for a man he has never met.
As part of his alibi that he knew nothing about the money, Amaechi added, for effect, that he does not smoke and he does not drink, I do not know whether his silence on the third of the (tripartite) vices (women) was a deliberate omission or it was inadvertent. But he left the audience to fill in the missing gaps when he said he neither drinks nor smokes immediately after saying someone accused him of being the owner of the money.
Much as the minister knew that Nigerians do not like being told to be patient, he still solicited their support for the government because no student can obtain a first degree which takes four years in a year or two, no matter how hard the student tries.
Amaechi is the immediate past governor of Rivers State. He had been speaker of the state house of assembly as well as chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum. So, he has seen it all and was therefore competent to make the comments he made.
The minister may not have spoken directly to the theme of the conference, virtually everything of what seemed a digression that he made touched at the heart of our unending port reforms that have ended up reforming nothing over the years. When we talk of the many government agents scrambling to ‘partition’ the ports, it is not for any patriotic reason; it is to enable them feed fat on the decay there (corruption). A participant at the conference even suggested that those making the money for government at the ports should be given a certain percentage as bonus or commission to stop them from stealing. This, as the chairman of one of the sessions, Gabriel Amalu, a lawyer said, is corruption. The best way to motivate workers generally (and such workers in particular) is to pay them well. Giving them a percentage of what they realise can only fuel corruption.
The summary is; we must move away from all the identified negative values if the country is to witness any meaningful change. In like manner, we must take corruption and other vices identified by Amaechi out if our ports are to become world-class ports, in line with the theme of the conference. This, as some of the speakers said, is not only about having conferences or seminars or workshops. It is all about making use of the recommendations and suggestions at the forum because port reforms will not come by mere wishful thinking. Rather, it will come by making those who break the rules there pay for them.
Readers’ reactions last week
‘Jonathan needs political paracetamol’!
If Jonathan has no job to do, let him look for a fishing boat and return to fish farming instead of making an allegation that does not hold water. Jonathan organised election against himself and defeated himself. Let him look for a political paracetamol and drink if the election fever is still in his body. From Hamza Ozi Momoh, Apapa, Lagos.
Re: angst of an ex-president. Goodluck Jonathan would have the guts to make comments because heads of state in Nigeria, military or civilian, are a ‘sacred club’. Who did not commit errors against Nigerians? Was it N2.8bn? Was it $12bn gulf oil windfall? Was it an election result that was annulled? Was it the death of MKO or Abacha? Was it unjustified fuel price increases? Was it election result manipulations? Was it ethnic-based skewed federal appointments? Was it the kitchen cabinet decisors, etc? Nigerians only murmur and grumble. That is why Jonathan believes in ‘expose me and I retaliate’. From Lanre O.
From the way you and others, especially from The nation feast on Segun Adeniyi’s publication Against the Run of Play concerning former President Jonathan confirms indeed the conspiracy against him. While blaming him for Nigeria’s woes, remember also that your president left governance stagnant for seven good months after taking over. With the same zeal I want your reaction to Soyinka’s call for the president to declare his state of health. Anonymous.
