On OBJ’s insatiable appetite for federal funds
The former president’s undue interest in funding agencies was infamously acknowledged during the PTDF slush fund saga at the peak of the Atiku-Obasanjo power tussle. The Nation’s expose only confirmed the tenacity of Obasanjo’s voracious appetite for federal funding institutions even out of office. This time he is drooling over the Petroleum Equalization Fund, the […]
The former president’s undue interest in funding agencies was infamously acknowledged during the PTDF slush fund saga at the peak of the Atiku-Obasanjo power tussle. The Nation’s expose only confirmed the tenacity of Obasanjo’s voracious appetite for federal funding institutions even out of office. This time he is drooling over the Petroleum Equalization Fund, the Education Trust Fund, the Universal Basic Education Commission, the Industrial Training Fund and, again, the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF). Aware of the average Nigerian’s uncharitable view of his statesmanship, the former General seeks to disown himself by wrapping his ulterior motive with an unbelievably deceptive concern about “poor performances of some federal government interventionist agencies” and “the need for leadership changes in order to achieve target goals”. Haba OBJ !
We only need to refer to the Education Trust Fund’s enviable recent performance ratings to unmask the former president’s hidden agenda. The ETF recently beat even the CBN to second place in a survey by the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group, a coalition of civil society organizations which recently assessed the service delivery performance of government institutions. Going only by the daily newspaper advertisements on ETF projects across the country, ETF in particular cannot be associated with “poor performance” because the adverts capture the fact that up to 80% of capital expenditure in the education sector is ETF related. It has also been revealed how ETF, in cooperation with the FIRS, has improved on the collection of education tax to unprecedented levels such that between 2008 and 2010 it collected more education tax than in the past 14 years put together. In terms of human capacity development more than 4,500 lecturers from mono/polytechnics, universities and colleges of education are currently attending ETF-sponsored courses out of which 1009 are studying overseas, a feat never witnessed in the history of education in the country. Poor performance indeed! The inclusion of UBEC in Obasanjo’s menu is even more ironic given the fact that the agency’s only problem with corruption stems from an Obasanjo-era contract scam that almost crippled it but for EFCC’s intervention.
The former president probably can’t shake-off the grand egotism of his presidential days but he just cannot wish away the reality of his being not just a cashiered general but also a discarded godfather of the Jonathan Presidency. The source of the leakage of his laughable letter needs no further speculation considering the fact that OBJ has himself severally breached presidential confidentiality by going to town with unedifying remarks about President Jonathan’s anti-corruption lethargy among others. Yet he has the audacity to couch his own pecuniary excesses in the ill-fitting language of pro-Jonathan transformation agenda fanatic and expect Jonathan to accept assurances of “high esteem and consideration”. It is doubtful if even President Goodluck Jonathan’s no-matter-never-mind lassitude will fail to see through Obasanjo’s subterfuge. When OBJ was imperial President who among his predecessors would have attempted writing such a preposterous letter without suffering an anticipatory heart attack? And what would become of President Jonathan’s executive powers if all his predecessors were to emulate OBJ’s style of beefing up the transformation agenda by getting their cronies to head funding agencies?
Our worst fears have however been excised by the categorical denial of authorship of the letter by OBJ and we can rest assured that President Jonathan will have no problem relying instead on the more objective and impersonal quarterly reports of security agencies on the performance of critical agencies of government. Besides, there are existing rules and regulations governing appointments into the agencies victimized by OBJ. For ETF, it is clearly stipulated that its chief executive must have cognate academic and administrative qualifications and experience from an academic institution. Ex-President Obasanjo’s preferred candidate to head the ETF not only lacks these qualifications and experience but is actually already Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and would be demoted to satisfy OBJ. Nepotism is a crude and unacceptable substitute for merit.
Beyond all these, OBJ’s letter provides an eye-opener into the impunity with which Baba Iyabo regards virtually everything associated with the Federal Government. We had more than enough of his insatiable megalomania in his two terms of office as president and we had to put all hands on deck just to get him to leave the stage at the end of his tenure which he schemed to elongate into eternity. It is intolerably repugnant that this most unpopular leader should be arrogating to himself even presidential prerogatives long after he has been consigned to the attic of national leaders. By targeting the nation’s foremost funding agencies for planting his cronies, OBJ has confirmed his shamelessly predatory interest in the ravaged resources of Nigeria of which he has been a prominent parasite. To know that he is supposed to be the political godfather to President Goodluck Jonathan raises grave fears about what this nation will be transformed into by 2015 unless divine intervention comes to our rescue again!
Baure wrote from Lagos