There
cannot possibly be anything as troubling as the fact that some of our
leaders are trying so hard to confuse Nigerians and take us on a
tiresome bus ride to nowhere. To be more specific, what transpired at
the Presidential Banquet Hall, last Tuesday, where Vice-President Namadi
Sambo presided over a short ceremony meant to commence the distribution
of the purported 750,000 units of eco-friendly cooking stoves and
18,000 wonder bags procured by the outgoing administration, can only be
described as abracadabra.
Sambo, who represented President
Goodluck Jonathan, was billed to commence the distribution of the items
to rural women who were pencilled down as the beneficiaries of the
scheme, but the Vice-President merely unveiled a few of the items on
display.
According to one telling media report from journalists
who covered the event, “On arrival at the venue, Sambo cut the tape and
was conducted round the tables on which a few of the stoves were
displayed and left almost immediately. No beneficiary was present at the
hall which was dominated by officials of the Ministry of Environment.”
Did
I hear that no beneficiary of the much taunted “people-oriented”
project was on the ground to receive even if it is one stove, as
symbolic offering of the project?
With the type of controversy
surrounding this obvious white elephant, one would have thought that the
outgoing administration would disabuse the mind of sceptical citizens
by showing in all transparency how the project is moving right from the
contract award to the distribution. It is already six months since the
Federal Executive Council approved the purchase of N9.2bn worth of clean
cooking stoves and wonder bags for rural women under the National Clean
Cooking Scheme, and yet, there is nothing to show to Nigerians apart
from a few sample stoves on an event table.
Ironically, a few
days ago, the Minister of Environment, Mrs Lawrencia Laraba-Mallam, was
reported to have challenged Nigerians and journalists to come to the
unveiling event to see the procured cookstoves. In that news report, the
minister was perceptibly full of fury for those journalists she said
“kept writing lies” about the project without coming to verify the
actual facts from “myself and the Permanent Secretary.”
So,
having read that report (by Daily Trust of last Monday), I was so sure
that the unveiling event was going to be a huge truth-telling event in
order to prove to the so-called lying reporters, and environmental
activists, that they had been wrong all along. But, alas, it was
business as usual! A few stoves were displayed to show, or is it
confuse, Nigerians that the environment ministry and the Federal
Government have done a great job.
Therefore, it is obvious that
this is another waste of Nigerian people’s money. It is N9.2bn flushed
down the toilet. How can we know the so-called rural dwellers that will
receive the imported stoves?
To start with, the cost of the
project was budgeted on a very wasteful procurement plan. Effectively,
what the government did was use the people’s money and buy energy
efficient cookstoves at the rate of approximately N12,000 per stove.
Meanwhile, the same stove of the same quality and durability is sold for
N4,000.
At the inception of the project, I wrote in this column
that this project would effectively do two damage: Close the emerging
market for energy efficient cookstoves in Nigeria as the entrepreneurs
in the sector are shoved off their turf; and erode people’s confidence
in the nation’s ecological efforts as the stoves are now seen not for
what they are, but as campaign gifts to be torn down by the opposition
and misused by the (handpicked) beneficiaries – who would automatically
see it as their share of the national cake.
Today, these two
have happened. The Nigerian clean cookstoves manufacturers are shouting
on top of their voices over the project. They are not happy that the
government has taken a thriving and eco-friendly business off their
hands. Secondly, the group set up to come up with a model for the
distribution of the cookstoves is now confused on the right path to toe.
Most of them see it as an opportunity to share the national cake, and
because of this, they are no longer thinking green; they are thinking
political patronage.
And the sad part is that this is absolutely
unnecessary. If the government had thought through this rash plan and
the mad rush to share stoves, it would have utilised those billions of
naira for more sustainable and job-creating green plans. N9.2bn is more
than enough to start a government-owned factory to manufacture clean
cookstoves.
Last year, the Kenyan government launched its
eco-cook stove national factory, which employs 300 Kenyans and shall
supply 3.5 million stoves in the next 10 years. They are now
manufacturing the stove from scratch in Kenya; nothing is imported.
Ironically, the amount for setting up the factory is 500million Kenyan
Shillings, an equivalent of N1bn.
In any case, I think the most
important issue here is that nobody counted the stoves that have been
procured by the government so far. And this is the key to transparency.
Having accused journalists and activists of many sins, the outgoing
minister would have allowed them to count the stoves in order to clear
all doubts.
In the Daily Trust report I earlier mentioned, the
Ministry of Environment said that the procured stoves were stored at the
Abuja National Stadium. That was the reason I got the impression that
the unveiling ceremony would be at the stadium in order to actually
“unveil” those stoves packed at the site.
Meanwhile, it gets
more confusing when the details of the execution of the project clearly
differ from what Nigerians were told at the onset of the programme. In a
recent report filed by the News Agency of Nigeria, the Managing
Director of Integra Renewable Energy Services Limited, the beneficiary
of the contract, Mr Boma Young-Harry, said the company had supplied over
120,000 gas cylinders and 12,000 ecostoves to the ministry. Nobody told
anybody about gas cylinders before now!
In another development,
the Secretary of the company, Mr Clinton Biragbara, stated at the third
stakeholders’ meeting on clean cookstoves monitoring and financing, in
Abuja last week that the company had not been able to import wonder bags
from South Africa because it had not been able to get import waiver as
promised it by the ministry. Hmmm, did I hear waiver?!
This is
disturbing because of the obvious rot in the waiver bazaar that has
trailed our financial system and which is a signpost of the rent-seeking
rot in our ailing economy.
Nevertheless, the upside to the
whole sordid affair is that Nigeria is evolving rapidly. The people can
now ask questions and the government will answer; or at least put up an
act to suppress the fact that they are rattled by the demand of the
people. The way I see it, whistle-blowing shall soon become part of our
national modus operandi.
In fact, thinking about the whole
affair, we cannot help but realise that, had it been that this project
was left to be prosecuted like other government projects shrouded in
secrecy, we would not have seen any stove at all, not even the few shown
to us on that table at Aso Villa.
Interestingly, when some
Nigerian youths initiated that revolutionary resource-tracking project
known as Follow The Money, it seemed they would soon hit the brick wall
of our socio-political reality tainted by ingrained corruption. But
today, it is obvious that the brick wall is cracking, and soon it shall
give way to a New Nigeria.
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