Tag: stealing

IN October, last year, the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, said the agency was able to recover billions of stolen funds in different denominations from some persons under investigation. Precisely, aside from buildings and other assets located in various places, Magu disclosed that a whopping N78 billion, $185 million, 3.5 million pounds and 11,250 Euros were in its coffers.

Then, stupefied Nigerians just couldn’t believe that such a humongous amount could be in the private pockets of few light-fingered but privileged citizens saddled with the responsibility of looking after our collective patrimony. Most importantly, the bulk of the slush funds were recovered from private homes, dingy crevices and hidden vaults in creepy places by these individuals made up high and low public officials, retired or serving military personnel and shady politicians whose main preoccupation was raping the public till. As at that period, Magu said the looted asset recovery was the largest haul in the agency’s 12-year history.

Although questions were raised regarding the operational mechanisms the EFCC deployed in the recovery of the funds, it was generally believed that Magu and his team’s ‘success’ story couldn’t have been possible without the ruling government’s commitment to strong political will in the fight against corruption. The recovery, which happened between May 29, 2015 and May 25, 2016, was not without its controversies, especially with the arrest and interrogation of politically exposed persons by officials of the anti-graft body.

The government was, justifiably so, accused of witch-hunting leading members of the defeated Peoples Democratic Party. There were also salacious stories about huge funds in billions of dollars being diverted for campaign purposes with the connivance of the then administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. The most popular in the series of the soap operas on the corrosive pillage of the national treasury was the $2.2 billion Armsgate in which money appropriated for the procurement of arms and ammunition to fight insurgency in the North- East transformed into a war chest for the prosecution of the 2015 election by the powerful hawks in the PDP. As things stand today, some are yet to recover from the shock of the slimy details about how the Office of the National Security Adviser to Jonathan, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.), became a disbursement agency where all manners of people throng, to make a kill. Astonishingly, the disbursements, in dollars and naira, were made without any shred of attention to the simple rule of accountability.

At the height of the madness, some funny character defended his heist of over N6bn as money justifiably spent on pilgrims to the Holy Land to pray for the success of the former president at the polls! At that moment, we had thought nothing could pull Nigeria lower than this. It was meant to be our moment of collective shame with benumbing revelations about how dozens of people collected money under spurious subheads and spirited same to their private accounts without as much as a jot of guilty conscience.

Somehow, we never knew that was just the beginning of the revolting tales of sleaze in high places. And so, as the nation’s currency continues to cave in to the life-threatening punches unleashed against it by the dollars, little did we know that a large cache of dollars (which could have been used to equip the military) was nestling idly in many locations in the country until the Federal Government activated the whistleblowers’ policy. According to the government, the policy has yielded unimaginable results with the expectations of more recoveries in due course. Specifically, the government says the policy resulted in the recovery of over $151m (N46bn) and N8bn.

Here we speak of cash traced to these economic saboteurs in banks, homes and farmlands. This is outside the billions of dollars that were used to purchase properties in choice locations abroad and within. The breakdown given by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, indicated that the sum of $136,676,600.51 (N42bn) was recovered from an individual’s unclaimed account in a commercial bank; N7bn and $15m from another person and N1bn from yet another. Add that to the princely sum of $9.2m and 750000 pounds in cash recovered from the fire-resistant vault hidden in a decrepit building in Kaduna State by a former Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mr. Andrew Yakubu and you would understand the depth of this primitive and mindless larceny.

This, I must say, is not just about how decorum was kicked in the groin while close associates and hangers on to the former president feasted on the national treasury. It started long before fortunes thrusted the Presidency on Jonathan’s laps. Graft, to my mind, is an ancestral inheritance bequeathed from one generation to the other since Nigeria became an independent nation. It just keeps growing in leaps and bounds where one had expected it to abate. However, a questionable strategy of naming and shaming has not in any way dissuaded people from following the tradition. Instead, the pomp and panache with which known thieves and prosecuted looters are celebrated by their communities have merely emboldened a new generation of hi-tech looters.

Till today, no one can put a figure to the real amount the late General Sani Abacha stole several years after billions of dollars had been returned to the country by different countries. I wonder if Abacha would not shout daylight robbery in his grave if he gets to know that a large chunk of his recovered loot had been re-looted without any trace. Shamefully, parts of the funds, we were told, were re-looted with presidential approval! Interestingly, the modern-day looters have an awesomely uncanny rash of excuses to justify the looting.

For example, Yakubu said the over N3bn that a court has ordered him to forfeit to the government was part of gifts he collected as GMD of NNPC. Some collected billions of Naira as consulting and professional fees. A former first lady also said the millions of dollars traced to her hidden accounts were gifts from various visitors to the seat of power at different times. Others simply deny any link with the seized loot even when they had apparently been making withdrawals from the accounts before they were busted. There were those who simply justify ownership of the money because it was with the approval of the authority at the time. We now have men of God who not only affirm the innocence of convicted thieves but also sanctify them as victims of their selfless goodwill to their communities! This is how systemic corruption had a firm root in our country. There are no limits to the blind looting.

It is that simple. And then, some still question why Nigeria slumped into recession. Why should it not? I ask. Perhaps if crude oil prices had not nosedived, we would still be romancing the fools’ paradise we lived for a very long time. The reality is that there was no free dollars that could absorb the shock of our irresponsible profligacy any longer. Like Mohammed noted, “it is doubtful if any economy in the world will not feel the impact of such mind-boggling looting of the treasury as was experienced in Nigeria.” We are presently reaping the sufferings that come with the callous greed in official looting. That is why our economy relapses into intensive care. It is the scary truth that most people hate to hear. Question is: will things get better with the efforts being made by the Buhari administration? Personally, I will not stake half my monthly salary on that possibility.

In fact, if care is not taken, this government’s economic recovery efforts might go the way of many others. While we cannot say for sure that the sort of maddening looting that was perpetuated in the past could still be happening now, one is deeply concerned with the kind of fraudulent paddings allegedly injected in the 2017 budgetary proposal. With the shameful scandal of executive padding that rubbished the 2016 budget and the subsequent sacking of the alleged culprits, it beats one silly that tales of humongous paddings still define the discourse in all the deliberations on the document at the two legislative chambers of the National Assembly.

Yes, it is possibly that corruption may have reduced temporarily under Buhari. Yet, nothing shows that it is in hurry to take a permanent back seat in governance. Bits and pieces of that are visible in the smuggled items in the 2017 budget including the N2 billion ‘regional housing’ fund in the budget of the housing ministry. In all, the National Assembly says over N300 billion worth of questionable items were embedded in the document.

That is aside the needless projected items in The Presidency’s list which include millions of naira that is projected as appropriation for packing human wastes! With a national legislative body whose budgetary expenditure is shrouded in absolute secrecy; an executive that has not given any hope that it was prepared for a new beginning from the dark past and a judiciary forever enmeshed in allegations of justice sold on the altar of mercantilism, one can only pray that we won’t get to the time when the economy would completely become dependent on the durability of a life support machine which runs on powers from a generating set. Sad enough, all economic indicators point to that grim prospect. Pity.