Mixed Metaphors: Happy New Year Nigeria!
As has become the practice, the Christmas season has been ruined for millions of Nigerians by yet another petrol shortage. The Internet is littered with sad pictures of a nation that, one decade after another, has found in the oil sector a parody of the blessing it is for others. This is a disgrace because […]
As has become the practice, the Christmas season has been ruined for millions of Nigerians by yet another petrol shortage. The Internet is littered with sad pictures of a nation that, one decade after another, has found in the oil sector a parody of the blessing it is for others.
This is a disgrace because everyone knows not just why the so-called scarcity is happening, but that it will happen again next year. It is the Nigerian way, and the petroleum marketers and profiteers, along with entrenched power interests who know the game, will work the template and grow even richer and more powerful.
There will be a lot of talk about a government investigation and how to ensure that this never happens again. But it will. It is a product of our choices which are sadly always between no standards, poor standards, false standards and double standards.
As Nigerians, we often act as if we are dealing with a multiplicity of problems, but that is untrue. What we have is a chronic cultural inability to pursue what is right and fair to all. It is as simple as that: the dog in the hunt hunts for itself.
Implementing a system that is right and fair not only guarantees that your brightest and your best earn pride of place and thereby invest society’s best, it prevents the crooked and the self-serving from taking control and making society unworkable, as ours has become.
For almost 50 years, Nigeria has not been able to get off the ground and run at anything close to one-tenth of her potential. Instead, we have made a few parasites incredibly rich at the expense of the vast majority; and made the nation a macabre comedy for the entertainment of serious nations.
That is why we have an unspoken calendar whereby, at this time next year, we are almost guaranteed to suffer the same crisis, and the same speeches, and the same ‘resolution.’
Speaking of right and fair, the government has announced it will deploy the $321m Abacha loot now being recovered from Switzerland on “social protection programmes.”
To that end, Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu, a senior presidential assistant on Justice Reform and Open Government Partnership (OGP), challenged civil society organizations and the mass media to monitor the use of the money.
The truth is that in Nigeria, there is no such thing as social protection programmes. That is simply code for the same smoke-and-mirrors spending plans in which billions of dollars have disappeared. Poof!
Speaking at a press conference in September 2005, during her stint as Olusegun Obasanjo’s Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala affirmed that Nigeria had recovered from the Abachas the sum of $458 million, and “about $2 billion total of assets…”
In December 2006 in Switzerland, La Declaration de Berne cited “irregularities” in Nigeria’s handling of funds being repatriated to it, asserting that Switzerland had repatriated $700m, of which $200m had been ‘siphoned’ off. Nigeria did not rebut that assertion, and it is noteworthy that in July 2014, the Associated Press similarly reported Swiss and Nigerian advocacy groups as saying that $250m already returned was unaccounted for.
In February 2007, Nenadi Usman, who succeeded Okonjo-Iweala as Finance Minister, responded to public concern. She explained that Nigeria was investigating the spending of the recovered funds. In effect, her government was investigating itself.
In March, just months before her government expired, she declared that the money-all $2.5 billion-had been given to five ministries: Power, Works, Health, Education, and Water Resources, 50 projects. I know of no Nigerian-including Usman who is currently receiving medical treatment abroad-who knows where any of those projects is. Little surprise we still lack the roads, housing, hospitals, schools and potable water being enjoyed by many African countries. It is safe to say the Obasanjo government investigated, and reported to itself.
Later, in 2014 as Goodluck Jonathan Minister of Finance, Okonjo-Iweala would say that only $500m was recovered during her time under Obasanjo, explaining that it was “channeled into rural projects.”
In 2012, however, Swiss Ambassador Hans-Rudolf Hodel said his country had returned to Nigeria $700m in Abacha loot. In March 2014, Switzerland repatriated another $380m.
It is against this background that in July 2014, following the repatriation to Nigeria by Lichtenstein of $227m, I wrote that the money would be re-looted.
“I predict that three years from now, all of that money would have disappeared…I predict that no project worth the name, let alone the money, will be completed, and that nobody will account for their role in the disappearance of the money…”
It is now three years later, which is why I plead that the new $321m from Switzerland be spent on specific, identifiable capital projects. If not, it will disappear, and within 15 months.
Finally: Yusuf Buhari, the son of Nigeria’s leader, was in a road crash in Abuja on Tuesday night, and required emergency surgery for head and limb injuries.
Preliminary reports suggested he may have been illegally bike-racing in open city streets. But that is a contradiction in terms: Nigerian history shows that if you are rich and powerful enough, the law does not apply to you. That is the reason the government, not criminals, is the biggest protector of sleaze and criminality, and why the police rarely charge certain people with wrong doing. Such recent scandals as the Okija Shrine registers, Halliburton, Wilbros, violations of the electoral register by politicians, the NNPC reports and the Panama Papers prove the point.
That said, I wish Yusuf a full recovery. It is not unusual for children of the rich and powerful to seek unusual-and sometimes risky, dangerous or even illegal-expressions of their riches.
Mercifully, Yusuf suffered his mishap close to home, and close to his family’s limitless political real estate, and the rich and powerful have been lining up at the hospital and in the media to demonstrate how much they care. Yusuf enjoyed immediate surgery, which is a miracle if you consider that the accident could have happened far away; or on one of our terrible roads, or where there was no ambulance to take him to the hospital; or where, upon arrival, there may have been no hospital, or doctor or drugs or electricity.
Consider then, one of the other road crashes of the period: the Simon Onwubalili family. The Jos family of eight was traveling home by road to Enugu Abor, in Orumba North Local Government Area of Anambra State for the wedding of one of its members.
According to reports, four members of the party: Mr. & Mrs. Onwubalili and two of their daughters-Gracious and Ijeoma-were killed in a horrible accident in Benue State. The traditional wedding of Ijeoma, also a recent graduate in Medicine, was scheduled for today.
Hopefully, the lesson of 2017 for 2018 for the Buharis, and us all, is that there is only one way in which Nigeria can work: by being made to work for all. Happy New Year!
• Twitter: @SonalaOlumhense