There are tens of such massive thefts you begin to wonder what exactly any minister is coordinating in this corruption cesspit of a government
The more you look at literally every department of government becoming a cesspool of corruption, the more you wonder if anybody is truly in charge of the Nigerian economy. Add insecurity, and you wonder if the country itself is simply not on autopilot. The more you see seemingly untouchable mandarins messing up key sectors of the economy, the more confused you are about whether or not President Jonathan knows that the buck really stops at this table. Happily, one area where there could be no confusion, however, is in what exactly should constitute the responsibility of a so-called Coordinating Minister of Economy. Who then is a coordinating minister? By my Encarta Dictionary definition, this should be the one who organises a complex enterprise in which numerous people are involved and brings together their contributions to form a coherent or efficient whole. So, how effectively or competently has Dr Okonjo-Iweala performed her functions of coordinating an economy in which almost every funding initiative has been turned to a cesspit of corruption? Or to ask a more direct question: was she promoted over and above her competence? Is her supervisor, the president, adequately or properly overseeing her work or is the Nigerian system that congenitally corrupt that it is impossible to make a success of the job?
Where exactly lies the problem of an economy that presents with so many fault lines as the one we have?
It will be extremely difficult to question the qualification of Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, a PhD holder in Economics, former World Bank President who has also had several years of cognate experience part of which involved shaping up the economies of some third world countries like ours. Is she otherwise being undermined by more powerful colleagues who she dares not as much as attempt to question, however perfunctorily they are performing in their equally key ministries?
If that is the problem, why would she not, as she once did when serving under an imperial President Obasanjo, simply resign, head back to the U. S or elect to go into the murky waters of Nigerian politics? Only Mrs Okonjo- Iweala can answer these questions but she needs be told that the more she hangs on amidst this bravura of kleptomania, the more she risks a diminution to her integrity since the economic leakages occurring thereby are opening Nigeria up to international opprobrium. A good example of this embarrassment is the recent hasty suspension of the Central Bank Governor. While I hold firmly to the belief that there shouldn’t be any public officer the president cannot discipline, the process is of great moment and it must be seen to conform with constitutional provisions. I wonder if the Coordinating Minister is aware that, had she been alive to her responsibilities, there should have been no argument,
whatever, about the balances on the country’s bank accounts or about how much NNPC made or how much it remitted to the federation account. These are figures she should obtain by the mere pressing of a computer button. Let us briefly quote Professor Bolaji Aluko in his Mid-week Essay on the Sanusi conundrum in this regard: ‘Oil is the life-blood of Nigeria, and NNPC its conduit – and a JP Morgan account, its custodian. But she is sure that NNPC has a foreign account – or foreign accounts – since it trades abroad, but NOT sure whether it is JP Morgan or not, nor has she EVER seen such a statement. Granted she is not the Auditor-General, but, for crying out loud, this is where the greatest single amount of money that goes into the Consolidated Revenue account comes from. I would be curious to see that statement of account – either directly from NNPC, from the Auditor General’s Office or, indeed, from JP Morgan itself. Episodically, I shall see/ask, why out of the X trillion Naira in the account, only Y trillion Naira was paid into the federation account last month. NNPC should be infinitely more transparent, and the Finance Minister, much more curious.’
Given the Coordinating Minister’s less than serious engagement with her responsibilities therefore, should it surprise us that literally every funding initiative of the Jonathan administration has been turned to a watering hole by these smart Alec’s? When you see the oil subsidy racket of 2012 and think you had seen the worst, then pops up the humongous multi-billion naira pension scam. As you are wondering what exactly your president is doing in office, then comes the totally bewildering NNPC accounts. They are so bewildering you know neither how much oil is pumped or exported daily, nor how much of what was received had been credited into the NNPC’s open or shadowy accounts or transferred, as constitutionally prescribed, into the federation account. But you are actually just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg in this circuitous corruption racket that now runs the national government.
Going by The Nation’s Editorial of Monday, February 24, 2014, titled ‘Plundering Woes,’ none of this government’s mind-boggling rogueries equals what they have been doing with the Service Wide Vote (SWV), especially in its devil-may-care impunity, in the sure certainty that nothing will happen to them, the perpetrators which could go right up. Designed primarily to make provision for financial emergencies of government, the SWV has been turned into a criminal conduit pipe. And we have the House Committee headed by Hon. Solomon Adeola to thank for discovering how N4.7 trillion was spent, as against a vote of N2.1 trillion approved between 2004-12. To give only two examples, the authorities of the National Teachers’ Institute, Kaduna, were alarmed when, on December 31, 2012, they suddenly had a bank alert informing them of a credit of N791M at a time it had not requested for any financial assistance. They promptly paid it back into government coffers. More amazing, however, was the Budget Office claim that it paid N5 billion to NAFDAC whereas the agency claimed it received only N365 million. The National Boundary Office would later completely deny ever receiving any N2 billion from the same Budget Office just as Chairman Giade of the NDLEA said the agency received nothing of the N65 million penned against it. There are tens of such massive thefts you begin to wonder what exactly any minister is coordinating in this corruption cesspit of a government. Concluding, the editorial said “if the presidency does not account for, and punish the felons who perpetrated these acts, we doubt whether the new vote of N1 trillion will be deployed for its rightful purposes by entrenched gluttons of government believed to be working in cahoots with the presidency’. If the Jonathan administration ever wanted to fight corruption, this should be the starting point. Just allow the anti-corruption agencies take
in the appropriate Director-General of the Budget Office and officials of the respective banks which transferred these sums and they should be singing like a canary. The National Planning Office cannot even account for a penny of its own N400m largesse since it has, apparently, all gone into thin air.
With these non-exhaustive instances of leakages in the economy, it is obvious Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has been coordinating nothing. And if she had been doing that, it has been so poorly coordinated that she hardly deserves a day’s pay. She is too highly regarded, home and abroad, to continue to play at this level.
