Aso Rock’s Math problem

To reword Malam Shakespeare: For never was there a story of more woe than this of Patience and her Goodluck.Only this week, the president told us (to show how his government has performed) that he opened up the oil and gas sector for the “big boys.”  Within the same week, the wife told the women […]

To reword Malam Shakespeare: For never was there a story of more woe than this of Patience and her Goodluck.
Only this week, the president told us (to show how his government has performed) that he opened up the oil and gas sector for the “big boys.”  Within the same week, the wife told the women of Kogi State to come out and vote her husband even if they’re at the throes of child-birth in the hospital.  “Even if you’re in the labour room, tell the baby,” Madam instructed, “you’re not going to die.”  
Which shows that Aso Rock doesn’t only suffer from math problem but also a logic problem.  For today’s purposes, however, we’ll concern ourselves with the math.
1.4 trillion = 170 billion
In the beginning of 2014, members of the House of Representatives sent some 50 questions to Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of finance.  In her response, the minister said that the country lost only 170 billion naira to import waivers.
First Sahara Reporters, and then Daily Trust exposed the government’s lie.  It’s N1.4 trillion, Trust wrote, not N170 billion that we lost through import duty waivers and concessions from 2011 to 2013.
Daily Trust of   22 January 2014 reported:  “The Customs documents indicate that about 65 per cent of beneficiaries received the waiver/concessions for goods not approved by the government, which ordinarily should be limited to raw materials, machinery and spare parts.”
Among the goods granted concessions included “fish, bullet-proof vehicles, kola nut, palm oil and others.”  Kola nut!
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi told Daily Trust “I don’t believe that the ordinary man derived significant benefit from (such waivers).”
The minister’s spokesperson wrote in reaction to Sahara Reporters’ version:  “the waivers and exemptions [were] to improve industrial competiveness and support job creation in the economy.”  In order to keep good company, the minister roped in South Korea and Malaysia.“This policy[is] also implemented by other emerging economies such as South Korea and Malaysia.”  Someone should help me ask them if South Korea and Malaysia give concessions for kola nut imports.
12 weeks = one year
When more than 20 people were killed last year during the Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment, the government promised three automatic job offers to the families of those who died.  Also, those who got injured at the stampedes would also get a slot each.  The government then gave a panel 12 weeks in which to achieve those objectives.  Nothing was done until now, one year later.  
Either the government didn’t know that there are only three months in 12 weeks or it has another motivation (e.g. election) for choosing to remember the victims one year after it promised to address the problem in three months.
$27 billion to $1 billion
Thanks to El-Rufai, we now know that President Jonathan squandered and has thus reduced our Excess Crude Account from $27 billion to a little less than one billion dollars.  “While the Foreign Reserve went down from $43 billion to less than $30billion presently.”  This is a government which made $200 billion from crude oil sales alone.  El Rufai also said that external debts have double, to say nothing of unemployment and poverty.
1 policemen = 20 Nigerians
Under President Jonathan’s watch, a police assistant inspector general (AIG) threatened to kill 20 Nigerians for every policeman killed.  The first time I heard it, it was incredible.  When it turned out to be true, I said the guy wouldn’t last a week before getting the sack.  Ask me where he’s now.  In his office, that’s where.
4 trillion = no equipment
For four years, the president budgeted one trillion naira every year to the military.  First Governor Kashim Shettima claimed that the Nigerian security agents fighting Boko Haram lacked equipment.  For the governor’s trouble, the president responded, on national TV to boot, to withdraw the federal security agents attached to the governor’s government house.  
Few months later, the government, all by itself, blamed the lack of equipment for the inability of the military to defeat Boko Haram.  In doing so, it also roped in the United States of America, for not selling us weapons.
They forgot that it’s a law in the US that the government can’t facilitate the sale of weapons to a country that will use them to abuse human rights.  The US only needed assurances from our government to protect human rights, instead, it threw tantrums like a baby.
22,000 jobs = 2 million or 12 million jobs?
He’s Daily Trust’s editorial to answer that question:
“President Jonathan said that 2,500 entrepreneurs empowered by his administration had also created an average of nine jobs each, bringing the cumulative total of jobs created to a probable 22,000. He said his administration at inception identified unemployment among youths as one of the greatest challenges to deal with. He said that his target at the time was to create not less than two million jobs annually.
If two million jobs was the target, it amounted to self-indictment that in the almost six years that he has been at the head of this administration, instead 12 million jobs that were expected to be created in the period, the president would be touting 5,400 jobs as achievement.
“Besides, the 5,400 jobs figure cast serious doubts on the earlier claim made by the Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the fourth quarter of 2013 that government had created 1.6 million jobs under its Subsidy Re-Investment Programme (SURE-P) within 12 months. The inconsistency in the statistics says a lot about government’s perception of the crisis of unemployment in the country and its commitment to tackle it.”
4 trillion = 16 trillion
Premium  Times reported this week that the House of Representatives announced that it had uncovered “what may turn out Nigeria’s biggest fraud yet, accusing the Jonathan administration of spending N16 trillion on its super offices yearly, while the entire country is given a meagre budget of about N4 trillion.”
The committeechairman, Adeola Solomon-Olamilekan, said Nigeria annual budget should actually be N20 trillion.“The N4.9tn, N4.6tn or N4.3tn, as the case may be, is the budget that the whole Nigerians are listening to but in the true sense of it, the budget of other statutory and extra-ministerial departments put together is about N16tn.   So, the total overall budget year in year out is over N20tn, which the executive arm operates, but nobody is asking questions as to the implementation of all these budgets,” he said.
The House also alleged that the Auditor General’s office has been deliberately underfunded, so that he wouldn’t know what’s going on.   “The office of the AGF has been short-changed and the budget has been reduced to nothing,”ý Mr. Solomon-Olamilekan said.
To say one thing and believe another. What a curse for a man to number (pun intended) that among his talents.