These days, I couldn’t but think of how much has changed in nearly six months of the Bola Tinubu presidency. With everyone talking of how much things have not only gone south and sour but have become utterly hopeless, one might be forgiven to imagine that the dreaded Armageddon has finally berthed on our shores.
Sure, things are bad – really bad. So bad that nearly everyone that one meets has something to say about how terrible the current situation is. Before now, Nigerians could write a book on the soar-away inflation, the record unemployment and growing poverty and immiseration; the corruption and self-interests and how these have hobbled the nation’s development.
Six months after, they have just enough materials to do wholesale book on the correlates of the new exchange rate regime and the fuel subsidy removal both of which combined, are believed to have brought the roof down on everyone’s heads. The town – as they say – is not smiling at all.
Of course, the naira – our beloved currency is down and under. Rather than bring respite, the liberalisation of the forex market would seem to have compounded its woes. Even with the best of assurances, there are, as yet, no cast iron guarantees of its imminent bounce back with consumer price index – no thanks to our reliance on imports for items ranging from food to basic household goods – already threatening to spin out of control.
The other day, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, released its October headline inflation report showing an increase in rate to 27.33% relative to the September rate of 26.72% with year-on-year headline inflation at 6.24% points higher compared to the rate recorded in October 2022 (21.09%).
With so much gloom abounding, it has become extremely hard to see any tiny flick of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Yet, one is constantly reminded of how a nation that barely escaped the Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) noose has a lot to be thankful for. It seems a measure of the changing tides that the P&ID vultures which once held the nation by the balls are currently stewing in their own juice as the one-time underdog has now been afforded the sweet song of victory.
Did I hear – free at last?
Not quite. Whereas the battle that finally ended at the English court may have brought relief at the passing of that nightmarish chapter, it seems early in the day to roll out the drums. At least, not with the other vultures – known and unknown – still lurking menacingly by!
In any case, if the P&ID saga and its aftermath is any revealing, it is how numbed Nigerians have become with their ever unending but dreary ‘drama of existence’; and from their apparent surrender to those dark forces massed against that very existence.
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It is precisely that drama that today’s piece is all about. Another dark chapter in the story of how – you guessed right – the same Nigeria – was allegedly defrauded by such an amount that reduced the whole P&ID saga to a mere child’s play. We are here referring to a tidy sum of $62 billion said to have been ferried away – without arbitration –while Nigerian officials conveniently slept!
Guess the culprits? The so-called International Oil Companies (IOCs), whose altars our so-called leaders are known to bow and worship!
P&ID, as you already know, was accused of seeking to reap without as much as turning the sod. How about actors who, after ploughing on another’s field, went on to harvest but chose to render nugatory, the articles of settlement choosing instead, to cart away what belonged to another, enabled by minions and fifth columnists?
Thanks to former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, for going public with it, hereunder is how the international wire agency – Reuters – reported the affair on October 10, 2019.
“Nigeria is seeking $62 billion from oil companies under regulations that allow the government to revisit revenue sharing deals on petroleum sales if crude prices exceed $20 a barrel, the attorney general told Reuters on Thursday”.
The medium, quoting Malami said: “Computing the amount that should be credited to the Nigerian government if the law was effectively applied, that translates to around $62 billion against the IOCs (international oil companies).
All options are on the table and there is no limit to what we can do in terms of engagement, in terms of settlement, if the need arises”, he was further quoted to have said while also conveniently short of naming the offenders!
In truth however, it is the governments of Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa that deserve the plaudits for going to court to enforce the PSC contracts. The apex court in 2018 had ruled that the federal government take steps to recover all outstanding amounts due under the PSC.
At issue most certainly, was not the regulation. Rather, at a time of low oil prices and the government in the bid to incentivise the oil majors, had deservedly availed the operators sufficient fiscal leg-room to allow them breathe and to recoup their investments. Only that the sharing contract would automatically change should oil prices exceed $20 a barrel – as it later did!
The problem was that our officials chose to look away even when oil prices rose. And for whatever reasons, neither of the parties that drew up the agreement – not the government and certainly not the IOCs – pretended that such an agreement existed let alone the thought of bringing it up. Not even when oil prices hit the $80 mark! In fact, at some point in 2014, oil prices actually hit the $100 mark.
Unfortunately, while the IOCs and their Nigerian enablers smiled to the bank, the Nigerian government was too distracted to call for the books or went on Rip Van Winkle sleep. At least, not until Malami made the computation public through the highly publicised demand notice!
And so far from being a call to charity, or even a play at brinksmanship, it was, ordinarily, something of a straight forward demand for equity and fair-play on behalf of a short-changed people and on which the Supreme Court as the final authority had pronounced upon!
As one might imagine in such circumstances, the real scandal would soon follow. Like they say of the death of an elephant when all manners of knives suddenly spring out for a piece of the action, one such was the emergence of one Trobell International, described as the recovery agent with the letter of authorisation from AGF Malami to collect five percent (or $2.15 billion or N774 billion) commission on performance(?)!
Surprised, President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered the contract whose commission he also described as “excessive” suspended. Indeed, the president’s then Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, had also insisted that the government did not even need the help of the company to recover the debt as the Supreme Court had already directed the companies to pay up! And so the matter was rested. That precisely is where we are today.
Think of what an inflow of $62 billion can do to the value of the naira as indeed the economy as a whole. We are talking of non-debt, unencumbered cash, which the law already deem to belong to the federation account, but is being withheld by a cartel of lawless operators. The least the Tinubu administration can do for the country at this difficult time is press for the recovery of every dime of that money.
