Between the broom and the rake (II): A peep into the cesspool

The depth to which they are stooping in a bid to get our votes seems truly frightening. A fortnight ago, when I was focusing on the lies regarding the health of Buhari, the main challenger to President Jonathan in next month’s election, little did I realise they could go as low as to fake a […]

The depth to which they are stooping in a bid to get our votes seems truly frightening. A fortnight ago, when I was focusing on the lies regarding the health of Buhari, the main challenger to President Jonathan in next month’s election, little did I realise they could go as low as to fake a medical report on the retired General. The funny thing though is that that cancer lie, along with the one claiming that the General did not attend any secondary school, backfired on them because now even the children are asking what it is about Buhari that frightens those now in power. Now they are mocking and dragging the deaths of his late wife and his first daughter (who died from childbirth complications after battling with sickle-cell anaemia for some 40 years) into their desperate, senseless, despicable and morbid de-marketing ploys.
Thinking then that I could try to bring back the campaign to concrete issues I promised to examine the allegedly “missing” N25 billion from the PTF, a task force the retired general chaired, which was first thrown around about 2002 and which even Obasanjo found to be baseless enough to disregard when he himself was campaigning against the man. Even though the alleged sum included fees paid to various consultants, and despite the sacking of the probe panel for wasting time and doing a shoddy job as well as the admission by Obasanjo that the whole matter has turned to a witch-hunt, it seemed to me, at first glance, that wasting about 10 percent of the roughly N 181, 795, 000, 000 (One hundred and eighty one billion, seven hundred and ninety five million naira) the PTF got in the four years of its existence , in alleged over-invoicing and contract reviews, was still significant, even if these days almost seventy percent of all monies voted for anything by government get looted.
A section of the media kept fanning the claims over and over, hoping the mud would stick, irrespective of all evidence to the contrary; so I thought we should re-examine that. Any amount missing or mismanaged is important because, to quote the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, “We all know the heavy toll taken by corruption. More than a trillion dollars stolen or lost, every year – (from developing countries) money needed for the Millennium Development Goals.”
I was going to remind us of the billions of dollars that have been stolen, got missing or simply “disappeared” under Jonathan’s watch, including the $20 billion still unremitted and unaccounted for, and the “forensic” audit report that is still to see the light of day.
Little did I realise then that I was going to be assisted by no other than the Jonathan Campaign team and some past and present “economic gurus” of the PDP itself!
Actually the joke started with the grading of Nigeria as the third fastest-growing economy for 2015, after China and Qatar, by the CNNMoney, a business analysis programme. Obviously, the producers were unaware, or too lazy to find out, that the IMF had lowered Nigeria’s growth forecast to 4.8, down from 7.3 percent.
The National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, hailed it as “a referendum on the prudent management of the Nigerian economy by the President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration” and described it as “a verdict of a disinterested party” and a confirmation of “a thriving performance and a bright future for our economy and … another sign that Nigeria is safe and well-led under the PDP”. President Jonathan started flaunting it as a score-card, probably because nobody pointed out to him that it was based on false projections.
So when Chukwuma Soludo, former Central Bank Governor under two previous PDP regimes delivered his verdict suggesting the Jonathan government is Nigeria’s worst as far as the management of the economy is concerned, and adding that: “My advice to President Jonathan and his handlers is to stop wasting their time trying to campaign on his job record. Those who have decided to vote for him will not do so because he has taken Nigeria to the moon. His record on the economy is a clear ‘F’ grade”, one could well imagine the katakata in the Aso Rock Villa that day.
The Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is also Coordinating Minister for the Economy, came out fuming, accusing Soludo of singlehandedly mismanaging the country’s banking sector between May 2004 and May 2009 and plunging the country into “an incredible accumulation of liabilities that will cost tax payers about N5.67 trillion”. She described him as “an embittered loser in the Nigerian political space” who is “so derailed” as to “commit intellectual hara-kiri by deliberately misquoting economic facts and maliciously turning statistics on their head to justify a hatchet job”, dubbing him the worst CBN Governor the country ever had, and wondered what job he was now gunning for.
Soludo has now fired back. He told, and I quote extensively for those who have not yet read the piece:
“Under you as Minister of Finance and coordinator of the economy, the basket of our national treasury is leaking profusely from all sides. First, you admit that ‘oil theft’ has reduced oil output from the average 2.3 – 2.4 million barrels per day (mpd) to 1.95mpd (meaning that at least 350,000 to 450,000 barrels per day are being ‘stolen’. On the average of 400,000 per day and the oil prices over the past four years, it comes to about $60 billion ‘stolen’ in just four years. In today’s exchange rate, that is about N12.6 trillion. This is at a time of cessation of crisis in the Niger Delta and amnesty programme. Can you tell Nigerians how much the amnesty programme costs, and also the annual cost for ‘protecting’ the pipelines and security of oil wells? And the ‘thieves’ are spirits? Come on, Madam!”
“Second, the minimum forex reserves should have been at least $90 billion by now. Rather it is about $30 billion, meaning that gross mismanagement has denied the country some $60 billion or another N12.6 trillion Now add the ‘missing’ $20 billion from the NNPC. You promised a forensic audit report ‘soon’, and more than a year later the Report itself is still ‘missing’. This is over N4 trillion, and we don’t know how much more has ‘missed’ since Sanusi cried out. How many trillions of naira were (sic) paid for oil subsidy (unappropriated?). How many trillions have been ‘lost’ through customs duty waivers over the last four years? As coordinator of the economy, can you tell Nigerians why the price of automotive gas oil (AGO), popularly called diesel, has still not come down despite the crash in global crude oil prices, and how much is being appropriated by friends in the process? Be honest: do you really know (as coordinator and minister of finance) how many trillions of Naira, self- financing government agencies earn and spend? I have a long list but let me wait for now. I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under your watchful eyes in the past four years. Since you claim to be in charge, Nigerians are right to ask you to account. Soon, you will start asking the citizens to pay this or that tax, while some faceless “thieves” were pocketing over $40 million per day from oil alone”.
Next week we shall come back to the issues arising from these glimpses into the PDP cesspit, (or salga, as my people would say). For now I challenge anyone to explain to me why we should not throw this lot out this FeBUHARI.