Between criticism and national interest

Ordinarily, the sensational letter from the CBN Governor to the President raising worrying issues indicating the diversion of earnings from the lucrative crude oil sales by the NNPC is a classical scoop that no newspaper will fail to publish under banner headlines. In this case both the message and the messenger combine to lend credence […]

Ordinarily, the sensational letter from the CBN Governor to the President raising worrying issues indicating the diversion of earnings from the lucrative crude oil sales by the NNPC is a classical scoop that no newspaper will fail to publish under banner headlines. In this case both the message and the messenger combine to lend credence to the typical Nigerian hear-say and the added spice of a leaked letter could only have proved irresistible to even the most conservative of editors.
So on the face of it, the media splash of screaming headlines and crusading editorials literally canonizing the CBN Governor for such a patriotic spilling of the beans and simultaneously bashing not just the NNPC but the entire Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, was to be expected.
With the House Speaker’s blame game on corruption and former President Obasanjo’s hell-raising letter all hitting the headlines within a few days interval, it was indeed the opposition’s delight.
However, the post-leakage euphoria was dramatically deflated when the CBN governor made a u-turn following the humiliating outcome of a rather belated reconciliation of accounts that provided damning evidence of the CBN Governor’s flippancy.
By professional reckoning, the news value of the initial leaked letter from the CBN governor was just as sensational as his factual somersault before the Senate which confirmed not only that the CBN governor misled the nation but that he did so in spite of having the facts of the matter right under his nose.
The Press that was also clearly culpable, as the chosen weapon of mass deception by flagrant disregard of the ethics of news reporting, should have been more outraged by this fiasco than the initial “scoop” that never was. Instead, it was as if the news instincts of the editors had been suddenly turned off. Those that reported the CBN governor’s gaffe at all tucked into inconspicuous portions of their reports, others callously stuck to the CBN governor’s discredited whistle-blowing posturing.
Such a bizarre twist in professional standards of news reporting and brazen adoption of bias and prejudice as hallmarks of journalism was most distasteful coming from leading newspapers that flaunt pious slogans of objectivity and fearlessness on their mastheads.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Press deliberately played down the excesses of the CBN governor who sought to out-do the political opposition in their notorious tendency to smear and sleaze the incumbent President and government and all agencies of government obsessively and more often than not, without justification.
The incontestable fact is that the reconciliation process including the CBN governor was satisfied that there was nothing like a $49.8bn dollars of unremitted proceeds from crude oil sales diverted by the NNPC from the Federation Account. It was also confirmed that the CBN is in possession of the accounts into which the remittances were duly paid.
As if this attitude is not bad enough, weeks after the CBN governor has himself expressed remorse over his indiscretions and the sensational press hullaballoo forced into acquiescence by the share weight of corrective information, one of the national dailies comes out with an editorial on NNPC and Oil Revenue Transparency rehashing discredited statements disowned by the CBN governor.
In what appears to be an irrational fixation with vilifying the NNPC, the newspaper falsely describes the CBN governor’s climb-down figure of 12 billion dollars as “missing” in a futile bid to sustain the punctured propaganda.
Discerning Nigerians were aware that the 12 billion dollar figure was not only corrected to about $10.8billion dollars by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, but further clarified to represent the amount yet to be reconciled at the time of the briefing to the Senate Committee but certainly not “missing.” The needless controversy was CBN governor’s face-saving effort following his admission that his phantom figure of $49.8bn dollars was in fact a huge misinformation that the Minister promptly debunked with convincing finality.  
The NNPC has declared that by the time the reconciliation process is completed, it will be established that the amount represents some of the responsibilities that it carries out on behalf of the Federal Government such as the unpaid subsidies on kerosene and premium motor spirit (PMS). Dr. Okonjo-Iweala earlier reported to have stated that no subsidy on kerosene has been paid since she assumed office.
It is also on record that since January 2012 NNPC has been importing a bulk of the PMS used in the country as most of the private oil marketing firms stopped importing the product. NNPC has successfully kept the nation well stocked with products, especially PMS, these past two years and the national budgets in the period did not capture subsidy to the Corporation.
Similarly, the NNPC is required to maintain huge petroleum products reserves in the national territorial waters as strategic reserves in the national interest and at the rate of 40 million litres of PMS national consumption per day, NNPC currently maintains 32 days’ sufficiency of products. The cost of pipeline vandalism and oil theft are security issues affecting over 5000 kilometers of pipelines across the country on which NNPC expends huge resources on pipeline protection and repairs, operational downtime and outright revenue loss from crude oil and product theft and willful spillage. All these make up the yet-to-be-reconciled balance of $10.8bn known to all the parties in the reconciliation process.
With all this verified information in public circulation for weeks it is incomprehensible why a national newspaper will adamantly continue dishing out the falsehood. One can only conclude with hindsight that there is a covert collusion between certain sections of the Press and the political opposition to the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, which benefits most from disparaging even the best efforts of the government in advancing the national interest.
Sadly, there is little or no hope that the errant fringes of the Nigerian Press can be called to order in what is clearly a disservice to the citizenry. The wise citizens should therefore protect themselves from press freedom without responsibility henceforth.
Gwazuwang wrote from Abuja.