PIB’s N500 million ‘promotion’ price tag

The proposed legislation, seen by many as a possible recipe to stabilize the nation’s corruption-ridden oil and gas sector, has been languishing in the National Assembly. Mr Danladi Kifasi, the permanent secretary, told the Senate Committee on Gas while defending his ministry’s 2014 budget estimates, that despite the Bill’s comatose status, the ministry was still […]

The proposed legislation, seen by many as a possible recipe to stabilize the nation’s corruption-ridden oil and gas sector, has been languishing in the National Assembly. Mr Danladi Kifasi, the permanent secretary, told the Senate Committee on Gas while defending his ministry’s 2014 budget estimates, that despite the Bill’s comatose status, the ministry was still spending money to promote it
Kifasi said that although he did not have the full details of the expenditure because he was only recently posted to the ministry, the records he met there indicated that the money was spent on radio and television jingles, newspaper advertisements, and erection of bill boards and purchase of monitoring vehicles.  Part of it was also to ‘facilitate’ its passage in the National Assembly.
 It is hard to see any wisdom in this kind of huge expenditure on an issue that has yet to be decided upon.  
There is a consensus that the PIB is one of the most important pieces of legislation the country has ever drafted. Still, the relevant branches of the government have not given it due attention to assure its passage into law. But its bloated publicity price tag adds little to mitigate the controversy that surrounds it.  
Moreover, the delay in the passage of the bill has merely provided additional pretext for some unscrupulous public officers to misapply funds. It should not the responsibility of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to drive the passage of that bill. That responsibility falls more appropriately to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the Executive Bill’s direct sponsor. Secondly, the Bill, considered to be crucial to the socio-economic development of the country, should have commanded the political will of the president and the presiding officers of the National Assembly to see it through, and not appeals to ordinary Nigerians through costly and misguided ads.
What has happened is that the 500 million naira PIB campaign bill once again draws attention to the opaqueness and barely disguised cases of corruption and misuse of money in the petroleum sector.
 The PIB campaign money and the many allegations of missing funds running into billions of dollars in the NNPC and other federal ministries, departments and agencies, also call attention to the effectiveness (or lack of it) of the Office the Auditor General of the Federation. This public office has enormous responsibilities to ensure probity, transparency and accountability, but has unfortunately not been living up to expectations and the spirit and letter of the constitution that clearly spells out its duties.  The conclusion is that it, too, has been sucked into the vortex of corruption that permeates government activities, especially the oil and gas sector. Where a handful of government officials illegally appropriate public funds for some projects of dubious value will not make this country move forward in its quest for transformation. When the public till is leaking from all sides, no meaningful progress can be made.
What needs to be done is to begin to stem this haemorrhage and commence an immediate investigation into the purpose and disbursement of the funds for the PIB promotion. A value-for-money audit is necessary to unmask those who authorized this type of expenditure and to establish some mechanism to retrieve all misappropriated funds from them.