The governing elite according to, Wilfred Pareto, (1848-1923), an Italian social scientist, governs society. It is made up of ‘conservative lions’ and an ‘adventurous but unscrupulous foxes’, according to Nicollo Machiavelli, (1469-1527) another Italian writer and philosopher. Membership in Nigeria is often through inheritance, the high military command or the trader-capitalist. Many of their members occupying elective positions today are offspring of NPN stalwarts that wrecked the Second Republic, (1979-1983), colluded with military adventurers to destroy our boarding industries (1985-1998) or Babangida’s ‘New breed’ PDP politicians who openly engaged in looting and confiscation of our national patrimony (1999-2015). Like its counterparts elsewhere in the world, the Nigerian governing elite remains the bane of our society.
Criticising the governing elite in Greece and Spain for its periodic tax increases to satisfy IMF bailout conditions, Charles Kadlec, in a piece in a recent issue of the Forbes magazine, accused it of ‘self love, sense of noble entitlement and arrogant belief in their good intentions which has succeeded only in destroying jobs and businesses in the productive private sector, intensifying the government debt home and abroad”. It was as if he had Nigeria in mind. Because of its self love, greed and sense of entitlement, the Nigeria governing elite has continued to behave as if Nigerians owe it an appreciation for its miss-governance of the nation. Between 1999 and 2015, Policy formulation and implementation by the Nigerian governing elite were designed as instruments of corruption to serve the greed of its members.
Last week on this page, we made reference to how cash-strapped members of the governing elite after openly claiming they sold personal houses to contest election went on to create PPPRA which in turn appointed its members as fuel importers. They embarked on systematic looting of the nation’s resources through a fraudulent subsidy regime. They sourced from the CBN about 30% of our foreign reserve to import fuel half of which never got to Nigeria. Some of them who never supplied a pint of fuel forged documents to collect subsidy. Nigerian government paid demurrage charges whenever there was a force majeure at the ports. Government also paid interests on loans importers obtained from their banks. Government with its control of awesome apparatus of power had no clues as to those who vandalized 4000 kilometres of oil pipelines and government tanks farms and had to patronize Independent Marketers’ state-of-the-art tank farms and their fleet of trailers where some individuals were said to own as many as 700.
Similarly, a probe of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) from 1999 to 2007 by ‘Senator Ahmed Lawan was told how Public Corporations were sold at rock bottom prices. For instance, the Aluminum Smelting Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) established at a cost of $3.2 billion was sold for $130 million. Similarly, the Delta Steel Company, which was set up in 2005 at the cost of $1.5 billion was given away for $30 million. At the end, from total investments of about $100b Nigeria made between 1960 and 2007, what accrued to the nation from the ill- implemented privatization programme was about $1billion. Individual members of the group and their families who bought the assets at next to nothing, instead of fulfilling terms of purchase which by the World Bank projection would have created 7m jobs, they embarked on assets stripping, with the proceeds deployed to massive importation of the labour of other societies.
We now also know that there was a massive rip-off in the energy sector. For instance ex- President Obasanjo had during the theatrics of the seventh National Assembly declared “when our administration came in 1999, we met seven power stations – we have added six new stations as with the seventh almost completed at Alaoji; In other words, in eight years of our administration, we have provided six new power generating units of almost 2000MW, with capital expenditure and running costs between 1999 to 2007 (of) about $6.5 including outstanding letters of credit:”. We have not been told of what came out of an estimated $8b sunk into the energy sector in the Yar’Adua and Jonathan years (2007-2015). The nation has not been told what was recouped from the members of the ruling elite who benefitted from the sales of PHCN. They approached government for bailout funds and also secured waivers on importation of equipment. What the people got in return is increase in tariff and estimated bills sometimes for energy never supplied.
We have also seen how the members of the governing elite in the guise of monetization policy shared the national patrimony they were expected to keep in trust for our children. Outgoing senate presidents, Speakers of the Lower House as well as principal officers of the National Assembly bought off their mansions built by taxpayers at next to nothing.
Unlike its counterparts in developed economies that realized a long time ago that it was in its enlightened self-interest to ensure the poor lives above poverty line and the middle class enjoys decent quality of life, our ruling elite doesn’t seem to realize that the well-being of their members can only be guaranteed by the well-being of the marginalized, the exploited including their cooks, cleaners and drivers. It also doesn’t seem to understand that for its members to hold on to the disproportionate share of the national resources they have cornered, they need the middle class, the salt of life without whose intervention society decays.
The Nigerian governing elite is the greatest threat to its own survival because it is at war with both groups. The lots of the poor and marginalized are worse today than it was in 1999. The middle class seems to have simply disappeared.
And as if to demonstrate it is on a suicide mission, its members are at war with themselves over the sharing of looted resources. It was they that called our attention to what some of their members fraudulently acquired through the ill implemented privatization programme. It was one of their own who became the whistle-blower in the N1.7t fuel subsidy fraud and it was their members that identified some of its leading lights that allocated prime properties to their family members through the monetisation policy.
Added to this internecine war over looted national resources, our governing elite equally awarded themselves not only scandalously high salaries and allowances but also accompanied that with what the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (GNPP) has described as indefensible severance packages which Revenue Mobilisation allocation Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) put at N200m for two-term governors and N3.24b for ex- President Jonathan, Sambo his vice and other non returning federal lawmakers. This is in a country where about 75% of the people live below a dollar a day.
As if ‘those the gods want to destroy, they first made mad’, governors under probe or facing EFCC charges in court are drawing pensions. Governors turned senators are drawing double salaries or pensions as Senate President Saraki has described it. Lawmakers spent N300b on toys called state-of-the-art SUVS. Taxpayers that fuel their cars and pay for their energy consumption are today called upon to pay N145 for a litre of fuel to power their cheap Chinese generators without prejudice to estimated bills for energy never supplied by the new owners of the power sector who after negotiating bailout also got tax waivers on importation of machineries.
