Igunbor: The petroleum subsidy blackmail (1)   RECENTLY, Petrobras, the Brazilian State-owned oil company announced a net profit of $13.7 billion for the first half of this year 2011. The company is currently valued at N291 billion, and is competing favourably with other well established and efficiently run international oil companies, ranking next to companies like Exxon Mobil Corporation, PetroChina Company Ltd, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corporation in market value. The announcement of the impressive performance of Petrobras was coming about the same time that the Nigerian Senate ad-hoc committee on privatisation was hearing tales of woe and sleaze concerning our public enterprises. During the ad-hoc committee hearings, we were, among other things, told incredible stories of how and why 23 companies spread across various sectors of the economy, including three major oil marketing companies (namely Conoil, Oando and African Petroleum), banks, giant cement companies, hotels, etc were sold for N57 billion ($38 million ). It is worthy of note that the three major oil marketing companies involved in that exercise were originally, foreign multinational companies which were nationalised by the Federal Government during the indigenisation era. Those of us who still care to task the memory will remember that what is today known as Oando is composed of Unipetrol (originally ESSO Petroleum company) and Agip Oil company, Conoil (formerly National Oil) was originally Shell Oil marketing company, while African Petroleum (AP) was originally British Petroleum (BP). Up till today, ESSO, Agip, Shell and BP are still major players in oil marketing across the globe. What the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) privatised were actually nationalised multinational oil companies, and not just ordinary average players in the industry. It is the considered opinion of this write-up that of those 23 companies privatised by BPE under the leadership of Mr. Nasir El-Rufai, the three oil companies alone should have fetched the Federal Government more than $38 million, not to talk of the other 20 companies. But that is history now. We were also told that a certain Federal Government-owned company (ALSCON?) valued at $3.2 billion was sold for $150 million. On this transactions alone our very patriotic public officials caused us a loss of $3.070 billion. Again, the world got to know that Nigeria spent over $100 billion to establish a number of enterprises which at privatisation yielded a paltry $1.6 billion. Allegations and counter allegations were also made about bribes, undue interference and improper involvement of the Presidency, etc, but such things are not new to us. In the past, we had been treated to all sorts of things at similar ad-hoc committees and probe panels – things ranging from strange comic to embarrassing absurdities, and everything in between. Quite seriously, this is a sad indictment of our public officials and raises serious questions as to their competence, commitment, honesty and sincerity of purpose. In our chequered history, we have had almost as many dysfunctional policies as we have had even more dysfunctional public officials poorly implementing such policies, for reasons other than public interest. That largely explains why we impudently import just about anything from just about anywhere in the world, even when we possess the potential and capacity to produce them, even for export. That is why in the year 2010 alone Nigeria spent over N1.3 trillion on the importation of four food items into the country – N635 billion for wheat, N356 billion for rice, N217 billion for sugar and N97 billion for fish. That is also why the country spends $10 billion (N1.5 trillion) annually on the importation of petroleum products despite being one of the world’s leading crude oil exporting countries. That is also why we import petroleum products from Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal. Again, that is why Nigeria will soon start importing petroleum products from nearby land-locked, poverty-stricken Niger Republic before the end of the year, right under the nose of our own oil giant NNPC with all its crude oil and refineries. That the politico-economic leadership of this country has failed woefully and thus proved to be unable to run our affairs is clearly evident in the revelation at the Senate ad-hoc committee, the “import-mania”, highlighted above, as well as the general paralysis of productive ideas and actions demonstrated so far by the leadership in virtually all aspects of our national life, especially in recent times. There are many reasons for the establishment of public enterprises, but the underlying philosophy on which all such reasons are grounded is the utilitarian philosophy which seeks to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is therefore all about public interest. But given the peculiar circumstances of our experience with public enterprises in Nigeria, how much of public interest is really served? Can we honestly say that they have provided the greatest good for the greatest number of Nigerians? We are confronted with the hard choice between keeping state enterprises and privatising them. On the one hand, they have been known to often constitute drain pipes on public funds while the purpose for which they were set up is hardly realised. Our governments have usually ended up funding corruption and inefficiency for the benefit of a very few. Viewed against this background, it makes good sense to privatise them. On the other hand, our experience with privatisation has been such that the process is always so highly deficient in transparency that the result is usually nothing more than the legitimised criminal grabbing of our sovereign assets by a few privileged people in power. It has always been the case of a few individuals and their family/friends unjustly appropriating for themselves national assets and monuments which were built on what some have sentimentally described as “the sweat and blood of all.” Such public enterprises have been sold at give-away prices, sometimes even below their scrap values. The services provided under the new ownership are hardly better, and more importantly, unaffordable to the ordinary Nigerian. The new private owners have also been known to engage in asset stripping, profiteering, etc at the expense of the people’s pain. The sale of these state-owned enterprises by government officials and what happens thereafter in the hands of the new private owners can safely be described as acts of willful vandalism. These considerations have burdened the hearts of most Nigerians who are passionately opposed to the privatisation of our public enterprises, including and especially our oil refineries. A serious search for a viable alternative model has therefore become imperative at this point because it is of critical importance that we strike a balance between the protection/preservation of public assets on one hand, and the curbing of seemingly unending inefficiency and drain to public funds on the other. Under our present model, head or tail, we the people lose. It is against this background that the recent persistent calls by state governors for the removal of petroleum products subsidies had not only caused heightened apprehension among the informed citizenry, but also made millions of Nigerians jittery. Now that the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has recently confirmed the intention of the Federal Government to that effect, this is the most appropriate time to find a lasting solution to what has become a ready blackmail weapon in the hands of successive governments in this country. For about two decades now Nigeria has continued to witness recurring incidence of scarcity of petroleum products which is traceable to the depressing state of our oil refineries. Government has continued to award contracts worth hundreds of million of dollars for the rehabilitation or turn around maintenance (TAM) of the refineries almost on yearly basis without any positive result. The country has had to depend on imported petroleum products to meet its needs, thereby not only incurring huge bills in foreign exchange and creating employment for citizens of other countries in foreign economies, but also expending staggering amounts of money each year subsidising the products for the domestic market. Records indicate that Nigeria not only spends about $10 billion (N1.5 trillion) annually on importation of petroleum products, but also spent a whooping amount of money in excess of N2.3 trillion subsidising them for domestic consumption between 2006 and 2010; N261.1 billion in 2006, N278.8 billion in 2007, N630.5 billion in 2008, N421.5 billion in 2009 and N621.5 billion in 2010. In spite of the huge financial resources government commits to making products available, scarcity has persisted. Like the successive ones before it, the present administration believes that the only panacea to the seemingly intractable problem is deregulation of the downstream oil sector, which simply means hike in petroleum product prices, removal of subsidies and eventual privatization or sale of the nation’s oil refineries. Government’s argument has always been that petroleum products are too cheap in Nigeria and therefore cannot attract requisite investment in the sector. To them, only market forces should be allowed to determine the prices of products so that it would be profitable enough to attract both local and foreign investors to the sector. By extension the sector would be run efficiently, smuggling of subsidised petroleum products out of Nigeria into neighbouring countries would be curbed, products would be readily available and we can even begin to export refined petroleum products. •To be concluded. • Igunbor lives in Edmonton-London, UK. |
Monday, 5 December 2011
 [Text of Address at Presidential Palace, Benin Republic, 19 November 2011] Mr President, Distinguished civil, political and religious authorities, Distinguished heads of the diplomatic missions, Dear Brother Bishops, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends, [Solemn greeting in Fon] DOO NOUMI! Mr President, you have given me the opportunity of this encounter with this distinguished gathering of personalities. I appreciate this privilege, and I offer you my heartfelt thanks for the kind words which you have just expressed to me in the name of all the people of Benin. I also thank the representative of the institutions present for his words of welcome. Allow me to express my best wishes for all of you who are among the foremost protagonists, in various ways, of Benin’s national life. Speaking on other occasions, I have often joined the word hope to the word Africa. I did so in Luanda two years ago as well as in reference to the Synod. The word hope is also found several times in the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus which I am shortly going to sign. When I say that Africa is a continent of hope, I am not indulging in mere rhetoric, but simply expressing a personal conviction which is also that of the Church. Too often, our mind is blocked by prejudices or by images which give a negative impression of the realities of Africa, the fruit of a bleak analysis. It is tempting to point to what does not work; it is easy to assume the judgemental tone of the moralizer or of the expert who imposes his conclusions and proposes, at the end of the day, few useful solutions. It is also tempting to analyze the realities of Africa like a curious ethnologist or like someone who sees the vast resources only in terms of energy, minerals, agriculture and humanity easily exploited for often dubious ends. These are reductionist and disrespectful points of view which lead to the unhelpful “objectification” of Africa and her inhabitants. I am aware that words do not always mean the same thing everywhere; but the meaning of hope differs little from culture to culture. A few years have now passed since I dedicated an encyclical letter to Christian hope. To talk of hope is to talk of the future and hence of God! The future has its roots in the past and in the present. The past we know well, regretting its failures and acknowledging its successes. The present we live as well as we can, I hope, for the best with God’s help! It is upon this mixture of many contradictory and complementary elements that we must build with the help of God. Dear friends, in the light of this experience which ought to encourage us, I would like to mention two current African realities. The first relates in a general way to the socio-political and economic life of the continent, the second to interreligious dialogue. These realities concern all of us, because this century seems to be coming into being painfully and to struggle to make hope grow in these two particular domains. During recent months, many peoples have manifested their desire for liberty, their need for material security, and their wish to live in harmony according to their different ethnic groups and religions. Indeed, a new state has been born on your continent. Many conflicts have originated in man's blindness, in his will to power and in political and economic interests which mock the dignity of people and of nature. Human beings aspire to liberty; then to live in dignity; they want good schools and food for their children, dignified hospitals to take care of the sick; they want to be respected; they demand transparent governance which does not confuse private and public interests; and above all they desire peace and justice. At this time, there are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and to death. These ills certainly afflict your continent, but they also afflict the rest of the world. Every people wishes to understand the political and economic choices which are made in its name. They perceive manipulation and their revenge is sometimes violent. They wish to participate in good governance. We know that no political regime is ideal and that no economic choice is neutral. But these must always serve the common good. Hence we are faced with legitimate demands, present in all countries, for greater dignity and above all for greater humanity. Man demands that his humanity be respected and promoted. Political and economic leaders of countries find themselves placed before important decisions and choices which they can no longer avoid. From this place, I launch an appeal to all political and economic leaders of African countries and the rest of the world. Do not deprive your peoples of hope! Do not cut them off from their future by mutilating their present! Adopt a courageous ethical approach to your responsibilities and, if you are believers, ask God to grant you wisdom! This wisdom will help you to understand that, as promoters of your peoples’ future, you must become true servants of hope. It is not easy to live the life of a servant, to remain consistent amid the currents of opinion and powerful interests. Power, such as it is, easily blinds, above all when private, family, ethnic or religious interests are at stake. God alone purifies hearts and intentions. The Church does not propose any technical solution and does not impose any political solution. She repeats: do not be afraid! Humanity is not alone before the challenges of the world. God is present. There is a message of hope, hope which generates energy, which stimulates the intellect and gives the will all its dynamism. A former Archbishop of Toulouse, Cardinal Saliège, once said: "to hope is never to abandon; it is to redouble one's activity". The Church accompanies the State and its mission; she wishes to be like the soul of our body untiringly pointing to what is essential: God and man. She wishes to accomplish, openly and without fear, the immense task of one who educates and cares, but above all who prays without ceasing (cf. Lk 18:1), who points to God (cf. Mt 6:21) and to where the authentic man is to be found (cf. Mt 20:26, Jn 19:5). Despair is individualistic. Hope is communion. Is not this a wonderful path that is placed before us? I ask all political and economic leaders, as well those of the university and cultural realms to join it. May you also be sowers of hope! I would now like to touch upon the second point, that of interreligious dialogue. I do not think it is necessary to recall the recent conflicts born in the name of God, or deaths brought about in the name of him who is life. Everyone of good sense understands that a serene and respectful dialogue about cultural and religious differences must be promoted. True interreligious dialogue rejects humanly self-centred truth, because the one and only truth is in God. God is Truth. Hence, no religion, and no culture may justify appeal or recourse to intolerance and violence. Aggression is an outmoded relational form which appeals to superficial and ignoble instincts. To use the revealed word, the Sacred Scriptures or the name of God to justify our interests, our easy and convenient policies or our violence, is a very grave fault. I can only come to a knowledge of the other if I know myself. I cannot love unless I love myself (cf. Mt 22:39). Knowledge, deeper understanding and practice of one's religion, are therefore essential to true interreligious dialogue. This can only begin by sincere personal prayer on the part of the one who desires to dialogue. Let him go in secret to his private room (cf. Mt 6:6) to ask God for the purification of reason and to seek his blessing upon the desired encounter. This prayer also asks God for the gift to see in the other a brother to be loved and, within his tradition, a reflection of the truth which illumines all people (Nostra Aetate, 2). Everyone ought therefore to place himself in truth before God and before the other. This truth does not exclude and it is not confusion. Interreligious dialogue when badly understood leads to muddled thinking or to syncretism. This is not the dialogue which is sought. Despite the steps already taken, we know that sometimes interreligious dialogue is not easy or that it is impeded for various reasons. This does not necessarily indicate failure. There are many forms of interreligious dialogue. Cooperation in social or cultural areas can help people to understand each other better and to live together serenely. It is also useful to know that dialogue does not take place through weakness but because of belief in God. Dialogue is another way of loving God and our neighbour (cf. Mt 22:37) without abdicating what we are. Having hope does not mean being ingenuous but making an act of faith in a better future. Thus the Catholic Church puts into action one of the intuitions of the Second Vatican Council, that of promoting friendly relations between herself and the members of non-Christian religions. For decades now, the Pontifical Council dedicated to this task has been creating links, holding meetings and publishing documents regularly in order to foster such a dialogue. In this way the Church strives to overcome the confusion of languages and the dispersal of hearts born of the sin of Babel (cf. Gen 11). I greet all religious leaders who have kindly come here to meet me. I would like to assure them, as well as those from other African countries, that the dialogue offered by the Catholic Church comes from the heart. I encourage them to promote, above all among the young people, a pedagogy of dialogue, so that they may discover that our conscience is a sanctuary to be respected and that our spiritual dimension builds fraternity. True faith leads invariably to love. It is in this spirit that I invite all of you to hope. These general ideas may be applied especially to Africa. In your continent, there are many families whose members profess different beliefs, and yet these families remain united. This is not just a unity wished by culture, but it is a unity cemented by a fraternal affection. Sometimes, of course, there are failures, but there are also many successes. In this area, Africa can offer all of us food for thought and thus become a source of hope. To finish, I would like to use the image of a hand. There are five fingers on it and each one is quite different. Each one is also essential and their unity makes a hand. A good understanding between cultures, consideration for each other which is not condescending, and the respect of the rights of each one are a vital duty. This must be taught to all the faithful of the various religions. Hatred is a failure, indifference is an impasse, and dialogue is an openness! Is this not good ground in which seeds of hope may be sown? To offer someone your hand means to hope, later, to love, and what could be more beautiful than a proffered hand? It was willed by God to offer and to receive. God did not want it to kill (cf. Gen 4:1ff) or to inflict suffering, but to care and to help live. Together with our heart and our intelligence, our hand too can become an instrument of dialogue. It can make hope flourish, above all when our intelligence stammers and our heart stumbles. According to Sacred Scripture, three symbols describe the hope of Christians: the helmet, because it protects us from discouragement (cf. 1 Th 5:8), the anchor, sure and solid, which ties us to God (cf. Heb 6:19), and the lamp which permits us to await the dawn of a new day (cf. Lk 12:35-36). To be afraid, to doubt and to fear, to live in the present without God, or to have nothing to hope for, these are all attitudes which are foreign to the Christian faith (St John Chrysostom, Homily XIV on the Letter to the Romans, 6; PG 45, 941 C) and, I am convinced, to all other forms of belief in God. Faith lives in the present, but it awaits future goods. God is in our present, but he is also in the future, a place of hope. The expansion of our hearts is not only hope in God but also an opening to and care for physical and temporal realities in order to glorify God. Following Peter, of whom I am a successor, I hope that your faith and hope will be in God (cf. 1 Pet 1:21). This is my wish for the whole of Africa, which is so dear to me! Africa, be confident and rise up! The Lord is calling you. May God bless you! Thank you |
| By Peter Claver Oparah With mouth agape, a friend of mine, on a first visit to Ghana, narrated how efficient the country works and how far behind we have been left as a nation. On another occasion, he was with a top Ghanaian player in the Nigerian private sector and the story was how perfectly efficient sectors that fumble and wobble in Nigeria work so well in Ghana. Even as there was this agreement that Ghana is a smaller country, there was no confusing the fact that she had managed to get her acts together and today, the people of Ghana are collectively enjoying the pay off from a conscious effort to get things right. My friend was even awed that Ghanaians ride big cars and live in well furnished houses and all and his Ghanaian friend was beaming with suppressed satisfaction at such patronizing remarks about his country. For me, I was in Ghana in March 1998, at the height of the Abacha tyranny. I sneaked into Ghana from the land borders on a Democracy and Human Rights Seminar in Ghana, together with some other notable pro democracy and human rights activists like the late Chima Ubani, Dr. Udenta O. Udenta, Tony Iyare, Comfort Idika, Jiti Ogunye, and many other fighters against the crude Abacha regime. We stayed one week in Ghana and after we came back, the late Wada Nas, that irrepressible propagandist to Sani Abacha alleged that he ‘uncovered’ a plot, hatched in Ghana, by Nigerian activists to overthrow the Abacha government. He went further to allege that the plot was hatched in a hotel in Ghana and all other bla, bla, but we knew he was talking of our seminar that merely centered on advancing human rights and democratic practices in Nigeria and was sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy. I found rhythm in the glee my friend demonstrated as he talked about Ghana, where attention of investors and foreigners to West Africa have shifted to and which shows resounding signs of growth in the midst of the bleak economic profile the region was facing. I had heard such enlivening stories about Botswana, Angola and (you can’t believe it) Equatorial Guinea and as I heard one encouraging story after another of sprouting African oasis of hope, my heart skips a bit about the floundering fortune of our dear country, Nigeria; a land so richly blessed yet so horribly afflicted by derelict leadership to the extent that it has become a stuff in contradiction and a looming negative travel advisory. My fear is that we may never get to witness how a country gets to be well governed in our lifetime, given the way out leadership is going and that is a certain death sentence for a country and its inhabitants. We may end up with an amenable leviathan that has defied all solutions, if nothing drastic is done to arrest the present predilection to disaster our leaders have busied themselves charting and this is a clear and present danger that lurks over the entire length and breadth of Nigeria. And talking about drastic measures, not a few people, most of them Nigerians, believe that Ghana’s reversal from uppity decay and moral crassness was prosecuted with the revolutionary action of Jerry Rawlings who sent a very clear message to future leaders when he tied three former heads of state at the stake and shot them for corruption. Not a few Nigerians believe that with the unrepentant manner Nigerian leaders are conducting themselves on the issue of corruption, we need the Ghanaian template to rescue Nigeria from certain perdition but this is a discourse for another day. Apart from the lip service we pay the issue of fighting corruption; we have not made any conscious effort to tackle this decibel. It has gotten to the stage where corruption is the only thing that thrives in Nigeria today and sadly governance is conducted in a manner that solidifies this stranglehold. At every level of government there is this audacious effort to ensure that the borders of corruption are widened to assume a pervasive influence over every aspect of Nigerian life and governance. One is assaulted at every corner by the putrefying stench of corruption so much so that nothing is spared of the corrosive effects of this pandemic. And official corruption, with its gargantuan size and its multiplier effects ranks foremost in the many variants of this decibel that afflict our country. Nigeria’s formal sector is firmly anchored on corruption such that the country has no prospect with the astronomical way corruption is being grown in Nigeria. The culture of corruption is the reason why, in utter disregard with our economic prospects, the country still insists on running a bloated government, a padded reward system that takes care of the gluttonous appetite of those in government. But lest we digress from our point of discussion. Time was when it was apt to say that the world is leaving Nigeria behind. Today, the reality is that Africa is leaving Nigeria behind and this is a fearful scenario that should pinch any serious people and government to action. We are doomed to repeating the same old, dawdy, corrupt ways of doing things and we don’t seem to be bothered that these return unending strings of dreary results that rather exacerbate the socio-economic problems of Nigeria, widen the gloom in the hand, provoke citizens to such deadly expression of disillusionment as we have seen in various forms and guises all over the country. The bottomline to the country’s many problems is corruption and any attempt to recover the mileage we have wasted in the rudderless maze of the last fifty years must start by tackling corruption, not as a road show but in such decisive way as to discourage prospective generation of leaders from having their hands permanently glued in the public till. Perhaps, because we have not been decisive enough to do this, most Nigerians have seen no road outside the purview of revolution. In essence then, Nigeria and Nigerians must do something else we will soon be loners on the paths of decay. The leadership must wean itself of this pervasive inclination to enrich its members and lead the citizenry on the paths of uprightness. The nation must do something radical about corruption for if we fail to do so, that pestilence will do us in sooner than expected. The red lights are on and the signal are that Africa, yes Africa, is leaving Nigeria in the quest for development and this certainly is the very nadir we can get as a nation. Something must certainly give or else, we are permanently doomed as a nation. |
 By Human Rights Watch (Lagos, November 23, 2011) – The sudden dismissal of Nigeria’s controversial anti-corruption chairman will not fix the troubled agency she led, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should carry out broad institutional reforms if Nigeria is to make real progress against corruption. On November 23, 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan dismissed Farida Waziri, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The commission’s record in fighting high-level corruption has been consistently disappointing under both Waziri and her well-regarded predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu, Human Rights Watch said. Partly due to the commission’s own failures, it has been largely unable to secure convictions against senior government officials charged with corruption. As Human Rights Watch showed in a recent report on the institution’s problems, broader institutional failures – such as executive interference and judiciary inefficiency – will need to be addressed if the commission is to improve its anti-corruption record, Human Rights Watch said. “The EFCC’s mandate is to fight corruption that the political system actually rewards, and to accomplish that by working through institutions that are either broken or compromised,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “That’s an almost impossible job no matter who is in charge.” The commission, established in 2003, is the only government institution that has publicly challenged the longtime impunity of Nigeria’s ruling elite. It has arraigned 35 nationally prominent political figures on corruption charges, including 19 former state governors. But many of those cases have made little progress in the courts, and not a single politician is currently serving prison time for any of these alleged crimes. The commission has secured four convictions of senior political officials since 2003, but they have faced relatively little or no prison time. The Jonathan administration should present legislative amendments granting tenure security to the commission chairman, Human Rights Watch said. The institution can never be truly independent if the president can dismiss its chairman at will. The government should also bolster Nigeria’s other key anti-corruption institutions, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission and the Code of Conduct Bureau. Nigeria’s weak and overburdened judiciary has also been an obstacle to effective prosecutions. Most of the corruption cases against high-level political figures have been stalled in the courts for years, with their trials not even begun. In early November, Nigeria’s new Supreme Court chief justice, Dahiru Musdapher, took a long overdue initiative by instructing judges to expedite corruption cases, giving them a six-month deadline to complete these cases. The government should build on this promising initiative by beginning the long-term process of repairing the battered federal court system, reforming federal criminal procedure, and examining ways consistent with due process rights to establish special courts or designating specific judges to hear only corruption cases, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch has also called on Jonathan to pledge publicly not to interfere in the EFCC’s work and to support aggressive efforts to fight corruption no matter who is implicated. Past governments have openly interfered in key anti-corruption cases, discouraging the commission from acting as aggressively as it otherwise might. “One of the EFCC’s greatest weaknesses has been its lack of independence and susceptibility to political pressure,” Bekele said. “President Jonathan’s sudden firing of Farida Waziri will only make that problem worse unless the government pushes through reforms to bolster both the EFCC and the other institutions it depends on.” Waziri was appointed in 2008 in controversial circumstances after Nuhu Ribadu was forced from office in apparent reprisal for his attempted prosecution of a powerful former governor, James Ibori. Waziri has been widely criticized as ineffective and politically beholden, but in the months leading up to her sudden ouster she initiated a flurry of prosecutions against senior political figures. In October the commission arraigned four former state governors and a serving senator on corruption charges, and in June the agency filed corruption charges against the former speaker and deputy speaker of the House of Representatives – all of them members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party. During Waziri’s three-and-a-half years in office, the agency arraigned 21 senior political figures on corruption charges but only secured two convictions in these cases. Her four-year term in office was due to expire in May 2012. Endemic corruption at all levels has kept Nigerians mired in poverty despite the country’s considerable oil wealth. Human Rights Watch research has documented how political corruption in Nigeria fuels violence, police abuse and denial of basic health and education services. |
Nigeria’s new governmentGroping forwardOne and a half cheers for the economy. None for security Thank goodness it’s not an electric blanket It is the sort of story Nigerians like to hear about their president, following his re-election in April. He spent several months in purdah, putting together a cabinet. He lured Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the World Bank’s managing-director, back home from Washington to act as a super-minister for finance and the economy. Olusegun Aganga, her predecessor at the ministry who was once a Goldman Sachs banker, swallowed his pride and stayed on as trade and investment minister. The central bank’s outspoken governor, Lamido Sanussi, completes what some call a dream team, others a “scream team”. Rivalries among the triumvirate were inevitable; turf boundaries are unclear. But after three months in operation they are generating a new sense of momentum in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. On October 18th they set up the country’s first sovereign-wealth fund, hoping to curb the perpetual plunder of oil revenues. They seem willing to pull out the stops to create jobs and raise incomes. Despite global woes, the economy keeps growing by around 7% a year. The Standard Bank predicted on October 17th that it will overtake South Africa’s by 2015 as Africa’s largest. All the same, the high expectations that came with the president’s re-election may not be met. His signature policy, a plan to liberalise the electricity industry, has plainly fallen behind schedule. The start of privatisation has slipped from this year to next. Most Nigerians have no more than a few hours of mains supply a day—the economy’s single biggest bottleneck. Africa’s most populous nation gets as much grid power as a mid-size European city. If power reform fails, the country’s hopes of becoming a G-20 economy in the next decade will remain fanciful, despite its vast size, plentiful resources and undoubted entrepreneurial spirit. Warning lights are flashing. The unemployment rate in the formal economy has reached a new high of 21%. Inflation has spiked. The currency, the naira, has fallen out of the exchange-rate bracket set by the central bank, which in turn has raised interest rates to a growth-slowing 12%. A proposed phasing out of fuel subsidies is making people tense. The plan is sound in theory. The government spends billions of dollars every year on refined fuel it buys on international markets and retails for only 60 cents a litre at home. Smugglers take some of it to neighbouring countries for resale at full value. Better to spend money on roads and power stations, says the government. Yet poor Nigerians fear that corrupt officials will pocket the savings. The subsidies at least benefit us a bit, they say. Demonstrations and strikes loom. The economy apart, the outlook is no better. Public security has sharply worsened. Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist group, was once a nuisance confined to the far north-east. It has now extended its reach across the country. In September it blew up Abuja’s main UN building, killing 23. In October it assassinated a member of parliament. On November 4th it killed more than 100 people in a series of bombings. The American government later warned of attacks against big hotels in the capital. Boko Haram has dominated Mr Jonathan’s second term. Its attacks bear witness to growing ambition and sophistication. Foreign and Nigerian officials believe it has linked with al-Qaeda’s north-African wing. During his election campaign the president talked of improving relations between the country’s Muslim north and Christian south. Instead the gulf is deepening. A former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, a notorious back-seat driver, says he would hold direct talks with the group if he were still in charge. The president is not sitting on his hands. Road-blocks have gone up around Abuja and some parts of the city are blocked off. But co-ordination is poor. The checkpoint at the airport’s entrance has turned into a toll-booth where women collect fees but armed guards are absent. Ministers argue that economics is a higher priority than security. The central-bank governor says extremists mostly want economic growth and that Nigerian Islamists differ from Arab ones, though they say they want most of all to impose sharia law. “The problem will fade if we create jobs,” he says. Alas, creating employment in the poor north is a distant prospect. Government reforms will mainly benefit pockets of development in the south, where investors want to go. There is no sign that the machinery of government will soon be able to bring improvements across the rest of country. Still, many Nigerians remain optimistic. They are used to bad news, and there is still a bit of the good sort. Millions are being lifted out of poverty every year, though at a slower rate than in some other booming African countries. The president has also had some foreign-policy successes. Unlike his South African counterpart, he backed the winners in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. But Mr Jonathan still needs to switch on the lights. Apart from his dream team, he has attracted few bright new minds. And he still seems bent on repaying election favours to a rapacious old guard. He should hand out a lot more brown envelopes. |
How Jonathan Got His GCFR-Reuben Abati Reuben Abati By Rueben Abati He reportedly demurred citing an extant law (possibly the National Honours Act No. 5 of 1964) which says only a sitting President can confer the title of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic or Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger on another. A former Chief Justice of the Federation, Alfa Belgore then advised that his was a special case in the sense that he, Jonathan, took over from a dead President. But so did Obasanjo in 1976. In 1983, Buhari deposed a sitting President. And so did Babangida in 1985. Abdulsalami Abubakar also succeeded a dead President. But everyone at the meeting, particularly the state Governors felt persuaded that Jonathan should take the GCFR. They then started begging the man. “Please Your Excellency”; “Please Sir, GCON is too small for you.” They begged. Oh, how they begged! Imagine all those big men begging one man to become a GCFR; and so, Dr. Jonathan, ever-so-humble, capitulated. How could the President taking a GCFR title have created so much drama at a meeting of the Council of State? Why couldn’t such trifle wait? All of a sudden, President Jonathan who in 30 days had clearly demonstrated that he is in charge and in power was no longer in charge. His award of a GCFR was signed by all former Heads of State, with General Gowon saying: “we signed it”. Under what authority was he and his colleagues acting? They have no such powers. And how many more actions would the President be persuaded to take due to overwhelming pressure, or expediency, but more because of his failure to obey his own moral intuition? The President is the highest authority in the Council of state and so, all that contrived histrionics notwithstanding, the truth is that President Jonathan after only 30 days in office has conferred upon himself the highest honour in the land. The Council of State is, in a strict sense, an advisory body. It is a creation of the Third Schedule Part 1, Sections 5 and 6 of the 1999 Constitution. Section 6(a)(iii) defines the role of that Council in relation to the “award of national honour,” and nowhere is it stated that former Heads of state can constitute themselves into a superior authority conferring National Honours on a sitting President. Whatever General Gowon and co may have signed is therefore inappropriate, if not illegal. Arthur Schopenhauer is right: “Honour is on its objective side, other people’s opinion of what we are worth; on its subjective side, it is the respect we pay to this opinion.” (Position, 1851).This raises an inevitable moral question: should President Jonatahn award himself the highest honour in the land? The honour that he should seek is not an additional suffixation to his name but such general opinion which by the end of his tenure would advertise his deeds and achievements in office as truly deserving of honour and celebration and a place in the people’s hearts and memory. General Sani Abacha also had a GCFR. Does anyone today think that he truly deserved it? Every Inspector General of Police in recent times has had a National Honour while in office. If anyone is looking for a list of those who have damaged Nigeria in the last 50 years, the place to begin the search is the National Honours List. Here lies an instructive difference: the Nigerian National Honours list is driven by an entitlement mentality. The day Namadi Sambo became Vice President, he was automatically decorated with a GCON, the second highest honour. As soon as Senator David Mark became Senate President, he also got one of the country’s high honours. Every year, state Governors nominate their friends, family, contractors who donated money to their political campaigns, and traditional rulers who helped to deliver the votes. A few persons of substance show up on the list, but you really have to scratch your head to figure out why certain names have been considered worthy. Because of the emphasis on entitlement and patronage, the award ceremony is ever so bland; the citations say nothing significant. A review of the National Honours Act and system is overdue. Nigeria must be probably the only country where people are given national honours for work not done, or in anticipation of what they would achieve. National honours should be reserved for those who through hardwork and extraordinary achievement have helped to raise the Nigerian profile and its place in the world. If this be the case, the highest honours in the land should be reserved for the Wole Soyinkas, the Kayode Esos, the Chinua Achebes, the Chukwudifu Oputas, the Dick Tigers, the Fela Kutis, the Margaret Ekpos, inventors, entrepreneurs, great promoters of the Nigerian dream, including the honest average Nigerian, but not politicians and their sponsors, not every civil servant who manages to get to a certain position, not coup plotters, not traditional rulers, not government contractors and certainly not similar rent collectors. President Jonathan missed a good opportunity to raise the standard on the award of national honours by quickly promoting himself to the GCFR rank. This is reminiscent of the military era and the vaingloriousness of the political elite. When the late President Umaru Yar’Adua was decorated with the same GCFR on the day he assumed office, by the then outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo, he had remarked that he would have preferred getting such high honour after his tour of duty as President. It was a useful point. Once more, President Jonathan has failed to eschew the business-as-usual syndrome. I should not be surprised if in due course, the Council of Traditional Rulers unleash all kinds of chieftaincy title offers on him, including that notorious, eponymous one in Yorubaland: OTUNBA. He would of course, demur. But the Council of chiefs from this or that community will beg him. And beg him. And of course, he will accept. The moment may also soon arrive when some Nigerians will beg the President to run for office in 2011. And they will beg and beg. And of course, he will accept. That after all, is the story of how Jonathan got his GCFR. Reuben Abati was the Guardian newspaper editorial board chair when he wrote this last year |
For the attention of General Buhari – By Reuben Abati
Friday, April 22nd, 2011
Leadership is what will make Nigeria, it is also what will break it; leadership failure is precisely what is responsible for the crisis that the country is now witnessing after a Presidential election that was adjudged successful by local and international observers and which has received high praise from the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Cote D’Ivoire (!) and France. Since April 16, there has been an outbreak of violence in the Northern parts of the country, with 59 persons dead, thousands injured, many churches, homes and mosques destroyed. It is leadership that can save the country at this very moment, and prevent the fulfillment of the apocalyptic prediction that the present electoral process will result in an implosion of the country. And one man on whom history beckons to play the role of statesman and sportsman, is General Muhammadu Buhari, the Presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), former Nigerian Head of State and three-time Presidential candidate since 1999.Buhari’s CPC came second in the Presidential election of April 16, with 25% of the votes in 16 states (all in the North), and a total of 12.2 million votes out of a total valid votes cast of 39. 5 million. But since the announcement of the results which recognized incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan as the winner of the election with 25% of the total valid votes cast in 31 states and 22. 4 million votes, Buhari’s supporters in the Northern states have been on rampage. Mostly young, poor and unemployed, they are united by the anger that a Southern Christian, an unbeliever in their reckoning, and a product/promoter of Western education is now president-elect. A geographical picture of the voting pattern in the Presidential election has indicated how that election threw up primordial ethnic, religious and identity questions, the same questions that have been responsible for the inability to create a truly united nation out of Nigeria. Buhari got sectarian votes in 16 Northern states: they voted for him because he is Muslim and Fulani, Jonathan received high votes in the South South, the South East, and the South West and captured the Christian votes plus PDP votes in the North, an indication that his Southerner kinsmen were not willing to forsake him either. Nuhu Ribadu who got 25% of the votes in four Yoruba states did so because he was candidate of a largely Yoruba party. If anything, Jonathan’s victory would seem to prove the point suggested in Section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution to the effect that whoever wants to be President of the country must receive the people’s votes across the country. Buhari failed that test.
Still, General Muhammadu Buhari and his CPC have rejected the results of the April 16 Presidential election. The only other party which is protesting loudly is the FRESH Party led by Pastor Okotie. Okotie’s party scored 34, 331 votes and did not win the required 25% in any state of the Federation. The pastor wants the results of the election to be rejected and an interim government instituted to review the “entire democratic process.” The ACN also refused to sign the results sheets of the Presidential election, but that party’s protest has been half-hearted. It is Buhari’s CPC that has literally been on the offensive. There is no iota of doubt whatsoever that the angry youths who have made a section of the country ungovernable believe that they are acting on behalf of the CPC. They have been chanting: “mu ke so, ba muso hanni” (It is Buhari we want, we don’t want an unbeliever”). General Buhari has been quoted in the media saying that he deplores the violence, he has also spoken on BBC Hausa service, and he has issued two statements in English language to that effect. General Buhari has to do much more than that. His responses to the electoral process and his party’s have been at best contradictory and mischievous.It will be recalled that in the first week of March 2011, General Buhari advised his supporters to “lynch” anybody who tries to rig the April polls. In his words: “you should never leave polling centres until votes are counted and the winner declared and you should lynch anybody that tries to tinker with the votes.” Subsequently, with his supporters having been so incited, General Buhari disclosed that he did not intend to go to court as a person, but that his party could do so, in the event of his not winning the election. In the same month of March 2011, Buhari’s running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare also allegedly declared that there would be a “wild wild North” if the elections were rigged. Buhari and Bakare were strongly criticized for this, with pointed insinuations by a group called “Coalition for Transparency and Integrity” that the CPC duo did not have the right temperament for the job that they sought. On April 16, General Buhari after voting complained about unusual aircraft movement and the distribution of ballot papers that had already been thumb-printed: “Buhari said that it was the responsibility of young people as major stakeholders to ensure that the elections were free and fair. If they allow the ruling party to mess them up, it is they who will suffer for the next 40 years.” (The Punch, April 17, at page 14). There has been a lot of lynching in the North since then! Today, we also have on our hands, a “wild wild North”. So, what exactly does General Buhari want? And what should he do?
I think he should place national interest above personal ambition. If indeed he does not believe in the violence that has erupted in the North, he needs to go on radio, and on television and advise his supporters to stop fighting now and to allow the next elections on April 26 to hold peacefully. He must say so pointedly, and unequivocally. This is a message he cannot afford to bury in the midst of complaints about electoral malpractices. And he must convey that message in his own voice and repeatedly in Hausa and Fulfude, the languages that the rioters are more likely to understand and appreciate. He must in doing this, enlist the support of the same emirs that his supporters are denigrating, and the imams and ulamas. Today being Friday, the sermon in all mosques in the North should be a sermon of peace, the angry youths must be told that there is nothing gained by the CPC, the North or the “believers” through the slaughtering of youth corps members and other innocent Nigerians. General Buhari is obviously a folk hero among his supporters. But he must realize that the whole of Nigeria is his heritage having served once as the Head of State of this country. He must not allow himself to end up as the man who would be remembered as the catalyst for a third implosion of the country, a possibility that is signposted by the reference in the President’s speech on the crisis to the Civil war of 1967-70, and June 12, 1993. Today is Good Friday, a day that symbolizes sacrifice. The meaning of Good Friday needs not be explained to either Buhari or Bakare, except that both men are at that same crossroads where they are required to make sacrifice for their country: a sacrifice for unity, peace and stability.
I have read the statement issued by General Buhari titled “Message of Peace and Hope.” There is very little about hope in that message. A speech in which the General writes off the entire election as fraudulent and Jega as insincere, and shows no sign of reconciliation with the opposition says nothing about hope, rather it says everything about the likely dangers ahead. General Buhari should realise that it is precisely this kind of attitude that led to the current crisis in Cote D’Ivoire. In the US Presidential election in 2000, Al Gore could have put his feet down over Florida: the margin between him and George Bush Jnr was so close, but in the end, he conceded defeat so America could move on. In 1979, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who commanded like Buhari, a cult-like following chose to go to court to contest the results of the Presidential election in part, his disciples insist, in order to prevent violent protest in the South West, and the occurrence of another “wild wild West phenomenon.” It is such statesman-like conduct that is required from Buhari at this moment.
The Congress for Progressive Change has declared its intention to go to court. While it is doing that, the party should also help to educate its angry and violent supporters in the North about the meaning and nature of democracy. In a democracy, the minority may be right and wise, but it may lose to the majority, and once it does so, the majority is allowed to have its way. On April 16, the majority of Nigerians spoke in unison across 31 states and gave victory in the Presidential election to Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP. It is only the tribunal or the courts that can upturn that result, not the mob, relying on self-help. Clearly, voter education remains a problem in our emerging democracy. The CPC did not help matters by arguing that it approached INEC and asked that Professor Jega should not go ahead with the announcement of the Presidential election results without addressing the party’s complaints. Didn’t the CPC big men know that no political party has such powers to order the abortion of an electoral process mid-way?
The CPC has every right to go to court. But they should stop telling us that it is the party going to court, not General Buhari. In my view, there is no difference. The CPC is General Buhari’s special purpose vehicle. He set up the party in 2010, after disagreeing with his former colleagues in the ANPP. He deserves credit for building up a new political party into a formidable force in less than ten months. In terms of performance, the CPC in fact did well, capturing 12.2 million votes. It lost the big prize due to its special handicaps: it lacked a strong structure as well as financial resources; it also adopted on a strategy that relied on Northern demographics, and third, the party failed to take advantage of the proposed merger/alliance with the ACN which could have been a game-changer in the Presidential election.
Now weeping uncontrollably before and after the election, the CPC alleges that there were malpractices in the South South and the South East and a total of 23 states across the country. The party alleges that its polling agents were chased away from collation centres and that the Excel software used by INEC was deliberately configured to sabotage the CPC. Ironically, the same CPC had earlier praised the National Assembly elections of April 9 as “free and fair.” The party is talking about malpractices, but it has not said that it won the election or that Jonathan did not win. Even if the elections in the South South and the South East were cancelled, and a re-run ordered, Jonathan will still win in those states. If CPC’s ambition is to defend the credibility of the process, then why is it not protesting the large turn-out of under-age voters in all the states where it won its 25% in the North?
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