How that the fuel queues are shrinking and the black marketers as well as their filling station collaborators are returning home to wait for the next harvest, it is fit and proper to relive the season of anguish and anger. Who knows, those fellows who visit such hardship upon us may be touched and choose not to trouble the land this way any more. Who knows.
As the fuel stress eases, nature has coincidentally chosen to be merciful. The rains seem to be here – so is the rainy day, again coincidentally – after a long, harsh break occasioned by an unusual heat wave worsened by a collapsed electricity system which, we are told, succumbed to vandalism that drained the plants of gas. The long years of neglect by rapacious adventurers and marauders posing as leaders have finally come to torment us all. Pity.
It is cool now. Plants have found their flush – fresh, lush and flowery once again, their sheer greenery exciting the mind and bewitching the eyes. The cool breeze hits the body in a refreshing lullaby that only mother nature is capable of working.
Oh! If man could learn a little from nature and enrich humanity with some kindness. Pardon my digression.
No matter how bad a situation is, it will have some redeeming feature. And so it is with this latest encounter with the fuel scarcity demon. Long after we had forgotten that the mother of former Minister of Finance and Co-ordinating Minister for the Economy Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was kidnapped, the secret behind the crime has been revealed.
Thousands of kilometres away from the crazy queues that partly symbolise the anger of the subsidy lords, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala has told the French newspaper Le Monde of her experience in the fight against corruption. She said sharply: “Nigeria subsidises fuel. About $67billion that it costs. We found that $1.5billion was fraudulent. … I told the President that we would stop paying. What happened? They kidnapped my mother, 83 years. During the first three days, their only demand was my resignation. I was supposed to go on television and announce my resignation.”
“This was one of the worst moments of my life. Can you imagine what happens in your head if you have to be responsible for the death of your mother? I will not go into details but you must understand that in a country like this… in the fight against corruption, we must be prepared to pay a personal price.
“My father asked me not to resign. The president asked me not to resign. At the end, everyone began looking for her, and the kidnappers released her.”
What a revelation!
Instead of appreciating the former minister for this prized information, which an analyst has rated in the class of the Panama Papers, many have been lashing her for not going the whole hog. They have been asking: Is Madam telling the truth? Why was it difficult to stop the daylight robbery that the fuel subsidy had become? Who were the men and women behind this criminal mask? How much was paid for the old woman’s freedom? Was that why we couldn’t stop the subsidy and the sharks held the nation to ransom? Did we taxpayers eventually pick this fraudulent bill for our minister’s mum to be released? C’mon Ma, tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Those are the fair and objective observers. There are others who challenged Mrs Okonjo –Iweala to answer the age-long question of what became of the $2.1billion Excess Crude Account cash which Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole said was unaccounted for. In fairness to Madam, she once said that the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) was aware that the money had been spent. Even then, she was quickly reminded that FAAC was a mere assemblage of finance commissioners created for administrative convenience and not a constitutional body, which can elbow aside the National Economic Council (NEC).
By December 2012, the ECA had a balance of over $10 billion. By May, 2015, the balance had gone down to $2.07 billion. Crude oil was between $100 and $108 between 2011 and 2014 when the budgets had a benchmark of $77 and $79. Why was the account not fattened by the excess?
This is among the numerous questions they are asking Mrs Okonjo-Iweala to answer.
President Muhammadu Buhari has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of not saving for the rainy day. They ran the country as if it was Hollywood and movie stars, living a Champagne life of opulence and obscene luxury while the people starved.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala disagreed. She spoke of how governors did not allow the Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration to save for the rainy day. Her first tour of duty, she said, saw the establishment of a stabilisation mechanism and opening of an account for surplus oil earnings of $22billion.
“In 2008 when prices fell from $148 to $38 a barrel, no one heard of Nigeria because the country was able to tap into this fund. And that, I am very proud of. When I returned in 2011, there remained only $4billion on this account while the price of oil was very high. I tried again to put money aside. The president agreed, but the governors did not accept. I suffered a lot of attacks from them and now that the country would really need this account, these same people accuse me of not having saved.”
Poor woman. How could they have forgotten those lofty schemes that political opponents dismissed as scams? The SURE – P, You Win I win and the icing on the cake, Rebasing – the one that catapulted Nigeria’s economy from the depth of mystery to which its former managers had dumped it to the peak of affluence, the best in Africa. All by the mere ingenuity of our dearest minister who just adjusted the figures and put us where we rightly belong economically. Doesn’t she deserve a trophy?
At a point the fuel problem bred some tragedies. An expectant woman was delivered of her baby as she walked for hours. In Lagos, a Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) officer shot dead two persons at a filling station. One, an 18-year-old boy, was accused of hawking fuel, a charge he vehemently denied. Unsatisfied by his pleas to allow him go, the officer fired a shot that killed the boy, simply identified as Ikechukwu.
As the poor boy fell, the officer and her colleagues fled the scene, shooting into the air. Three people were injured.
The situation also witnessed a massive exhibition of the fecundity of the Nigerian mind. Laughter became the fuel of life. A fellow recalled: “After Buhari won the presidential election, people started to trek for him. We thought they were insane. We never knew they saw the future; they were being prophetic. Now, everybody is trekking. Now it’s mass trekking for Buhari.”
The sarcasm was as biting as the situation it was meant to illuminate. The fellow adds a Pentecostal clincher: “Not to worry, the children of Israel trekked to the Promised Land from Egypt. Be of good cheer, fellow Nigerians. Tell your neighbour, ‘I will get there before you’.”
The story is told of a man who goes to a filling station throbbing with people. Some, fagged out and dozing, have their heads on their steering wheels. Others have their power generators, mostly the tiny ones derisively called I better pass my neighbour, on their bare heads. There are also those holding jerry cans of various sizes – all waiting for the long-awaited sales to begin.
Suddenly a voice rings out: “They have started o! They have started o!”. As the fellow runs across the road, still screaming “they have started o”, many leave the queue and start running, some also crying “they have started o”. A few kilometres away from the filling station, a motorist and one of the first to run after the screaming man catches up with him, grabs him by the collar of his shirt and asks: “What have they started?” The fellow replies: “El Classico. Barca versus Real Madrid.”
Of all the rib-ticklers on the Nigerian situation, including a man’s Facebook announcement that he has bought a horse to finally settle the fuel problem, none is as striking as this, part of which appeared on this page a long time ago.
“Some former leaders died and went to hell. The British leader asks the devil to allow him make a phone call to London to know the welfare of his people. He spends five minutes. Satan bills him $5000.The United States leader makes his call for eight minutes and Satan bills him $8000. The Nigerian leader calls Abuja and spends two hours. He is briefed about the fuel trouble, Boko Haram, kidnapping, budget brouhaha and the anti-corruption war.
“After his call, he asks Satan, ‘How much is my bill?’ Satan replies: ‘Your bill is $1.’
Surprised, the Nigerian leader says: ‘How come my own call is cheaper than the other two leaders’? I stayed longest on the phone.’
Satan, smiling, replies: “What’s the difference? Calling hell from hell is not expensive; it’s a local call.”
