Spin
doctors who aren’t fond of President Muhammadu Buhari may slant it one
way; unrepentant loathers of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan even out of
power may spin it another; but there is something wrong with the
fundamentals of Nigeria’s economy that remains swathed up in
putrefaction and putrescence, and no one yet seems able to rectify and
debug.
There is pus in the nation’s purse. The pockmark has
given birth to a virulent virus which is slowly killing our economy.
Anxiety level among the citizenry is daily driven up. We haemorrhage
daily because the country is in the jarring jaws of corruption, and we
have become like sheep without a shepherd.
We
have always had an idea about the spread of stench in government; but
President Buhari’s trip to Washington which ended Wednesday further
revealed the viscousity of the pus in Nigeria’s purse. Buhari did not go
cap-in-hand asking the Americans for a handout; he was there, among
other reasons, asking that our stolen loot over these many years be
repatriated back home pro bono publico. Nobody is sure how much of the
blood money is stashed in closets and corners of banking institutions
all around the world; we are just sure it is a behemoth! In the United
States of America alone, it is put at $150bn.
I am not making an
inclusive reference to the $700,000 that was the value of the mansion
of a former South-South governor who is greatly revered by our former
President; I make no reference to this same former governor’s $400,000
investment account recovered on behalf of Nigeria in the Northeastern
part of the US some years ago. I allude not to the $480m Abacha loot
later ordered forfeited to the US by a court in the country. I make no
allusion to the $458m in thieving profits hidden by the former Head of
State, Gen Sani Abacha, and his conspirators in different countries.
There
are fresh loot over the last six years or so now tracked down. Some
former governors, some former senators, their wives, their children, and
their conduits may become culprits. The President just told us that
some ministers of the Federal Republic in the last dispensation
regularly illegally sold one million barrels of crude oil per day. As of
today, Nigeria is still losing 250,000 barrels of oil per day because
those who should hunt down thieves have become thieves that must now be
hunted down. Our treasury is like a perforated basket leaking cash into
private pockets of public servants and their accomplice hoodlums all
across the nation.
In June 2014, it was reported that
Liechtenstein returned $227m to Nigeria; Switzerland has previously
returned to Nigeria more than $700m that Abacha hid in Swiss accounts.
The United Kingdom Government reportedly returned 1.2 million pounds out
of the eight million pounds confiscated from a former Delta State
Governor, James Ibori, and an additional 80 million pounds confiscated
from him and his associates. Nobody is sure what became of all the
recovered loot. Recovered loot in the hands of discovered looters remain
unrecovered loot.
Who said Nigeria is broke? The country is
buoyant, instead! Not with the whopping N41.6tn revenue generated from
crude oil proceeds and taxes, as well as duties between fiscal years
2011 and 2014. Nigeria is far from broke. Not with the potential N12tn
per year that will come from the nation’s maritime industry alone. What
comes in monthly into the nation’s coffers is enough to tackle Nigeria’s
challenges for 10 generations to come. But there is pus in the nation’s
purse because the corrupt in high places among us are committed to
nothing else but corruption. Stolen funds in the hands of a few
Nigerians may as well be double the annual income of the Nigerian
nation. Why must a nation so blessed manifest such signs and symptoms of
a nation accursed?
In Nigeria, the Law of gravity has been
suspended. Whatever goes up here only keeps going up and never comes
down. At the advent of democratic rule in 1999, the US dollar was sold
for N21.89; on May 29, 2015, it was N199. Last week Monday, one US
dollar sold for N245. Exchange rate keeps going up, and corruption is
the underlining menace and the pus in our nation’s purse.
Vice-President
Yemi Osinbajo told us in May that Nigeria’s local and international
debts are now pegged at about $60bn. Servicing the monstrous albatross
will cost us N1bn. But I learnt that 60 Nigerians who are illegally
holding on to the country’s treasure may be able to pay off the $60bn in
less than 60 days if the noose is put around their necks to cough up
what they have stolen. That noose stage is where we are now.
A
renowned economist told me that even if one barrel of oil is sold for
$25 in Nigeria, and our population is 250 million, the accruing revenue
should still be able to sustain the country comfortably. But half of
what we realise as revenue is not reported but wriggles its way into
pockets of powerful looters.
You have not heard the last of the
Sambo Dasuki-style of shaking. By the time the wind of scrutiny and
indictment blows all around, there will be gnashing of teeth. Between
now and the end of August, culprits and masterminds of orgies of pillage
will be named and be made to face the music. When the untold story of
the last six years is fully told about Nigerian Maritime Administration
and Safety Agency, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Boko
Haram insurgency funds, Nigerian Port Authority, Customs, and much more,
ears will tingle.
Bit by bit, a historical crackdown has begun
on the corrupt and corruption and it will spare no man. The President
just fired a warning missile across the Atlantic to members of his
party, the All Progressives Congress, who intend to use the governing
party as an umbrella for corruption and looting. He told Americans in
unequivocal terms that whatever form of justice is good for thieving
non-APC members will be applicable to his own buddies too in the APC.
This is not about party politics, it is about Nigeria.
This
President’s wave will also visit the Nigerian civil service. Many of its
members are volunteer teachers of thieving tricks to politicians and
motherboards of entrenched depravity. Nigerian civil service is a silo
of profligacy; a sleazy and skanky assemblage of men and women groomed
as petrifying principalities unleashing doom on the Nigerian economy.
The
President can jail all politicians in Nigeria today; but one deftly and
dexterously corrupt civil servant left behind the desk is a human
academy that breeds more corrupt politicians. Many of them have manuals
in their heads from where they spew out tutorials on how to plunder
without leaving tracks behind. They are writers of money-milking memos,
disbursers of stolen loot, and connoisseurs in how to circumvent
existing rules and laws.
No comments:
Post a Comment