EXCLUSIVE: EFCC quizzes former Head of Service, Oronsaye over multi-billion naira corruption allegation

Ibanga Isine

A former Head of Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsanye, is currently being interrogated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, over allegations of corruption, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report.
The former HOS summoned Wednesday morning to the EFCC headquarters in Wuse 2, where he is being interrogated.
It is not clear as at the time of publishing this report whether Mr. Oronsaye would be allowed to go home after his interrogation or detained.
When contacted, the spokesperson for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, confirmed that Mr. Oronsaye is with the anti-graft agency.
Mr. Oronsanye was appointed Head of the Civil Service of the Federation by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in June 2009 and retired in November 16, 2010.
However, in September 2014, the office of the Auditor General of the Federation released a damning report that indicted him of N123billion alleged fraud.
The 169-page report, titled “Special Audit of the Accounts of the Civil Pensions”, found Mr. Oronsaye guilty of allegedly presiding over the looting of the nation’s resources during his tenure.
The audit by the Auditor General arose from the work of a Special Audit Team constituted by the Federal Government in May 2011 to conduct a comprehensive examination of the accounts of the Civilian Pension Department domiciled in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.
The audit, which covered the period 2005 to 2010, uncovered monumental financial irregularities, opaque transactions, irregular and abnormal running costs, and outright stealing and kick-backs said to have reached its zenith during the 18 months that Mr. Oronsaye served as Head of Service.
The Auditor General’s office, insiders say, completed its assignment and submitted its report to government in 2012. But no action has been taken to bring all those indicted to book.
While allegations of massive corruption hung around his neck, Mr. Oronsaye remained very close to then President, Goodluck Jonathan.
He also continued to occupy some of the most important positions in the country. He is, for over 10 years now, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Financial Action Task Force [FATF] and was board member of both the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC] and the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN], the two public organisations widely considered the most lucrative in the country.
Even more scams
Investigation by this newspaper however suggested that there are some corruption fronts that both the Auditor General of the Federation and the EFCC are yet to cover.
For instance, highly placed sources at the presidency and the office of the Head of Service showed PREMIUM TIMES documents detailing how Mr. Oronsaye, on June 30, 2010, transferred N113million from pension account No; 4501040012292 with Union Bank Plc to a Unity Bank account named Contingency.
The said Contingency account turned out to be a State House Account in the name of Principal Private Secretary to the President, which Mr. Oronsaye continued to operate many years after he was removed as private secretary to the president.
Further checks showed that a certain Shola Aiyedogbon withdrew substantial part of the illegally transferred funds for onward delivery to Mr. Oronsaye. It was only on January 27, 2011 that Unity Bank alerted the Permanent Secretary, State House, that Mr. Oronsaye was still operating the account before he finally let go

Exclusive: How DPR, Navy Collude with Asians to Defraud Nigeria

ESIMONE, an engineer and president of the Crusteam Group, is not a new comer to the oil and gas industry. An insider, Esimone, has garnered experience in multi-disciplinary engineering practice and management for 25 years. He also has been in top management in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria for 10 years. His deep understanding of the industry shows in his analysis of the state of the economy, current fuel subsidy challenges and the corruption in the sector. He also provides a perspective on how the fuel subsidy quagmire could be resolved in the interview he has with Realnews magazine in May. During the session which lasted for more than an hour, Esimone explained how the rot in the economy started and how to fix it, especially the issue of fuel subsidy which has generated a lot of controversy in the country.
According to Esimone, who is very conversant with project management and delivery strategies in Niger Delta environment with its unique community management challenges, “if government rightly identify that there is a fraud in the subsidy programme. …that fraud must be done in collaboration with tank farmer owners. Because in a supply chain there are police check points. Those check points include the Navy, Department of Petroleum Resourses, DPR, the appointed auditors, depot owners – those are the checkpoints. If the policemen at the checkpoints fail to do their job fraud will go through. So for that fraud to go through all these police men must have failed or collaborated for that thing to happen. If they did their job it will never happen.
“So when they start chasing traders for perceived fraud in the industry, the set of people to be jailed should be those policemen who failed in their duty. A trader is a business man who will do everything to make money. It is the laws that check them and those who are supposed to implement these laws at the checkpoints I mentioned to you; if those people are compromised fraud will exist,” he said.
Part of the fraud in the oil and gas sector is that traders collude with the policemen (officials of the Department Petroleum Resources, the Navy, etc) to cook up documents about importation of fuel that never was to collect money from government. The country also pay demurrage for non-existent vessels that purportedly brought fuel to the country. Esimone thinks the fraud in the system can stop if government hold the policemen at the checkpoints responsible for this action which makes the country lose humongous amount.
On the allegation that the Lebanese, Chinese and Asians are involved in these fraudulent activities in oil and gas sector, Esimone said: “If you look deeply into their operations you might find one or two acts untoward. … It’s all Nigerian activities.   What you can blame them for is that because of their nature, they don’t have strict integrity in doing business like I have mentioned about Mobil and so on who have integrity. They can decide to collaborate with people who have decided to circumvent the check points. They can co-operate with them and give them papers. That is what they can do for them. But they (Asians) themselves can’t initiate it.”
According to him, “it’s the locals who discuss with the policemen at the checkpoints. They can pass by and do this thing but you will need certain papers they will file. So they can’t initiate it. It is internally initiated. So how can you start chasing the man and holding him responsible when it is your policemen that failed”.
He also observed that the federal government stopped independents from participating in fuel importation to curb fraud in the downstream sector in 2012, saying: “Now that you have driven them away and allowed only tank farm owners, have they confirmed if that fraud still exist or not. If you take an action, you should measure whether it is working or not. With what is available now, are you sure that fraud is still not in the system?
He said: “none of those independents have the capacity to shortcut the process without active collaboration of the tank farm owners. You can’t do it. In order words, the tank farm owners are the custodians of the fraud base. So how can you send this other people out who could actually constitute some of your checks and balances. You sent them away so that these guys will settle down and use their power to manipulate the process. So, this is the major issue government didn’t see. Government was just reacting to the symptom without bothering to look at the cause.  So, these are the issues.”
On the issue of subsidy, Esimone, said: “Because of these backlogs of subsidy unpaid, the marketers are not able to import anymore because the banks cannot give them credit anymore. So they can’t import. They would want to import, they are business men. It is only when they import that they make money. So when people think they are holding government to ransom, they are not able to import. They can’t because they can’t access credit. That was why people would have noticed from the end of last year, they cried about this their backlog. The queues emerged but people were getting by with long queues. Just like the shutdown now. You know while people were getting by with long queues, there became only one source of product into the society. The Independents were castrated. The major marketers can’t import.”
Is there a way out of this? Yes. “Government should float bond, do whatever it takes to pay the marketers to enable them import and immediately hand off fuel subsidy,” said Esimone who has developed a model for successful project management in labour sensitive environment and has experience in contaminant plume mapping for both DNAPL and LNAPL using MUDFLO software and the use of special probe for oil-water interface mapping. Co-founder and pioneer president and chief executive officer, LLoyds Energy Group, a petroleum products supply-chain-management company with interest in refinery development, he became the first executive director operations of NESTOIL and later senior vice president, Corporate Affairs. He is the founding chief executive of Crusteam Group, an integrated energy and infrastructure development company with expertise in greenfield projects development, brownfield projects appraisal and resuscitation, business development, planning and management.  He is ardent at project viability analysis using compact and customised models.
Esimone has handled the upgrade of oil production facilities for Shell including platform and flowlines repairs; integrity survey of pipelines using non-intrusive techniques, DCVG; carried out API635 Inspection of ASTs for PPMC in MOSIMI and Shell in UQCC using TMI 150. OCTG Inspection services and organised and led the oil and gas industry team from Nigeria that comprised Shell, ELF, AGIP and NAPIMS to Russia for certification of OCTG and Linepipe products of TMK Mills. He has worked in several communities in Nigeria Delta: Tunu, Opokushi, Letugbene, Forcados, Ogoni, Warri, Bonny among others and created a large network pool of community leaders in these areas.
In the non-oil and gas sector, the chartered professional engineer registered by COREN, with a background in civil engineering and holder of post-graduate degree in Geotechnical Engineering, has carried out successfully, planning, field supervision and technical report writing for several engineering investigations for infrastructural development in water resources, geotechnics and environmental services. He has also represented Nigeria in the multi-national assignment on the integrity status of Lake Nyos natural dam in Cameroon; authored more than 30 technical reports, conference and seminar papers in engineering.
Other national assignments Esimone did include serving as a resource person to NUC in a private university development committee and member of the federal government visitation panel to Universities and Inter-Universities Centre. He is in good standing with several professional engineering bodies both locally and internationally as a fellow of Nigeria Society of Engineers, FNSE, member, Nigeria Institution of Civil Engineer, NICE, member, Nigeria Geotechnical Association, NGA, member, International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, ISSMGE, and Member National Association of Corrosion Engineers, NACE, and member, American Society of Civil engineers
A specialist consultant in Geotechnics to WADSCO, a World Bank accredited water resources consulting company in Nigeria providing geotechnical services for most of their project, Esimone made time out of his busy schedule to give deep insight into the challenges facing the oil and gas sector in Nigeria and how the current fuel subsidy crisis can be resolved. He also painted a vivid picture of how fraudulent activities happen in the downstream sector of the economy, describing tank farm owners as the custodian base of fraud in the oil and gas sector.
——————————————————————-
Barry Esimone, an engineer and President of the Crusteam Group has varied experience in the oil and gas having worked there for more than a decade providing services and build infrastructure in the sector. He shares his deep understanding of the goings on in both the downstream and upstream of the industry as an insider in an interview with Maureen Chigbo, editor, Realnews on opical issues such as fraudulent activities in the sector, why they persists and who should be held responsible, describing tank farm owners and regulatory officials as the custody base for fraud.  Excerpts
Realnews: Can you talk about the state of the economy in the Nigeria right now that we have a new government?
Esimone: The truth of the matter is that situation is pretty gloomy. The economic state of the nation is in a very bad shape. That’s facing the fact. It probably will not be the lowest we have dipped through our journey but we are in a bad state.  And this state is a product of previous bad leadership. It is not the immediate regime’s problem only. It is not the immediate party’s problem only. It is not the immediate past political party that has ruled the country in the past 16 years. It is a culmination of events; of improper implementation of policies, lack of focus on how to get us developed. So, maybe we have been running from pillar to post all this while.
You recall we have always had national planning and all that. Rolling plans have all come and gone. The NEEDS were developed at a time. All those programmes as robust and as promising as they were never transformed anything. So, I think that what we are seeing now is a destination that we have known must come. I know that this destination will come. I have always known that. And I am always doing an analogy of where we are going to in Nigeria as a trailer loaded with very heavy load and ascending the hill and suddenly before it gets to the peak to level out it started developing engine problem. The natural thing the bodyguard or the motor boy will do is to jump out of the vehicle and take a wage and put so that the vehicle doesn’t role down. And so he will do that and they will manage to go up a little bit, he will put another wage. But after a while if the engine now packs up completely and you will find that you have gone so much and the retraction force is so heavy that it can tumble over and crash with everything in the trailer. So, the option is to repair the engine or replace the engine so that it can drive up to the top level. What is our best option in the repair of the vehicle in that instance? I have posited that the best option is to allow that trailer come down to the floor where it will not go down anymore. At the floor it’s cheaper to change the engine, cheaper to have mechanics work around it and fix it for good and you put the key and drive it up the hill again. Rather than trying those adhoc mid-way as it was coming down. If you even want to repair at that point how do you bring in the engine at that point? It is even more difficult to manage it there than to let it come down. I suspect that’s where we are going. We are coming down to the ravine. That’s where we are. And I think this is a beautiful opportunity for us to fix it. All the while the previous governments have been the boy dropping the wage to try to fix it; that’s what we have been doing and it has not worked. And so we have a situation now is that things have slipped down. When it has hit rock bottom, we can now begin to build. We can now get more hands to build. People will contribute and we will go up the hill. For that thing to happen you must be sure you have the right engine, worked on properly and fixed for good. So that you won’t have that same problem mid-way when we begin to climb, that’s my analogy of Nigeria.
Barry EsimoneThe economy has been treated with such ad hoc measures, that they never really got it right. Now the immediate past regime unfortunately came towards the dying days of the vehicle; the last time they could fix the engine anymore that was when they came on board. My analysis is that rather than fix it at that location, they allowed it to start coming down so they can get it at rock bottom and then start to fix it. For me, it is positive as they realised that it cannot be fixed mid-stream, it has to come down. Coming down means the devaluation of the Naira you are seeing, the inflation, the restructuring they are doing, the insufficient fund coming from the crude, all these agric development programmes they are running, those are the programmes using to wind it down to rock bottom so that it can be fixed. So, their action cannot be seen as being totally negative to the economy. So, you can’t give that judgement because it is important that the thing comes down before we can go up. So, they have taken those actions. We should consider it positive.
Meanwhile, on the net effect of the destination is negative the destination is up and you are going down but you know that you want to gradually bring it down and when you fix it, it can drive up with speed to anywhere you are going to. So, that credit should go to them. And that’s what you see them talk about their achievement, we have done this. We have done this. They have done those things. But those things while not in the process of taking us up, it is in the process of managing our coming down so that when we are on ground level we can fix it. The fuel crisis which manifested just recently is just one of them. The absurdity of depending on imported petrol for fueling the nation cannot be put better. It is total absurdity. No nation does that. Nations that don’t have the feedstock – crude oil even build refineries because it is cheaper for them to buy crude oil and refine in their country for their own use first of all and if they have excess they will sell. It is a cheaper thing to do. While they are refining it they are creating job for their people. We could have done same with our refineries but rather our four refineries have been run down to ground zero. For how many months none of the refineries is functioning. None, as I speak to you now (in May) No refinery is refining anything. So, how are you going to cope so you now depend on importation for all your fuel need? Meanwhile, your source of revenue for importing is dwindling. It has crashed from above $100 per barrel down to $50, down to $60. And meanwhile you are continuously importing.  You see the danger. That’s why we are in this position. Now because of the deep corruption in the system, there are some of the funds that would have gone into the developmental processes have been frittered away under corruption. You know those in the team, have not helped matters by their attitude, bloated bureaucracy and all kinds of thing that they do. So, we were pretending and living on borrowed time, thinking that we will sustain the action of using imports to fuel Nigeria. The same revenue from their sales of crude oil is needed for every other development of the nation and yet what you could do locally you throw that pressure to the same revenue we make abroad and so we ended up where we are now.
So, government is unable to meet their obligation under the subsidy and they will not be able to do that. All your revenue, truly speaking, may not be sufficient to pay the subsidy. It is very simply arithmetic. Maximum permissible sale by the OPEC is 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. That’s our OPEC quota. Meanwhile, we don’t meet this OPEC quota because of sabotage in the Niger Delta. We barely sell 2 million barrels, sometimes, a little above 1 million barrels. All the calculations are based on the OPEC quota to you which we don’t meet. If you don’t produce that much you won’t sell that much. You can only sell what you have produced. So, that is the major challenge they have. So, the only revenue source has so dwindled. Therefore, it is putting pressure on everything.
Now, the programme of importation didn’t help either. Now, the activity of the government in supplying the fuel, their programme or process of making fuel available are from three key sources. One, the Pipeline and Product Marketing Limited, PPMC, that belongs to government has responsibility to provide fuel. And they provide their fuel from two sources; one, from the local refinery output; two, they augment by importation because the local refinery output is not sufficient for local consumption. So, they are supposed to import the balance. That is the government strategy for getting fuel to us. The PPMC is responsible for that particular function. The pipeline side of their name is dead. So, it’s only product marketing that is there so the name should have been changed since there is no pipeline. But the product marketing is the statutory responsibility of the PPMC to take over all the refined products from the four refineries. Refineries don’t sell. Theirs is to refine and the do custody transfer to the PPMC. That’s why in every refinery you see the PPMC depot around. The refineries refine and push over to them to sell. So, when it is insufficient they are supposed to import to augment. So, nobody should get involved in import if they function efficiently. They are supposed to be responsible for all the importation and everything. Now because they have not functioned well, it has created a lot of problem in the past. There are queues everywhere and because of that government created another window, the PPPRA to support that process by inviting private marketers and allowing them to import part of the requirement of national consumption. That’s how private people got involved.
So, the PPPRA began to give private people allocation. They will collect the national need from national planning and subtract the one the PPMC said they would provide and give the balance to marketers to import. Initially, only the major marketers were providing that service. That was the standard. Due to political pressure they broke up that cartel and allowed others to be part of it and called them the independents. So, the independents joined the importation through allocation from the PPPRA. It means, therefore, we have the PPMC, major marketers and the independents. These are the three who bring fuel to the nation. Now, independents were given a condition precedent before they can participate they must own a tank farm. Naturally the major marketers own tank farms because they were the original distributors and have storage facilities where they store products the PPMC sell to them which they put in their tankers and start distributing. By this initial structure the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was not part of the trading group. They were not part of the distribution group. They don’t have filling station. So, these majors that have filling stations – Mobil, the Total, Oando, Forte oil – they had the filling stations. And then the independents began to own filling stations. So, these Independents were encouraged that if you are to participate you have to own tank farms. So, they started building tank farms so they can have the statutory requirement to participate in the trade. Somewhere along the line they dropped the condition for participation and said that if you have a thorough-put arrangement you don’t have to have the tank farm to participate which in my own opinion is a beautiful programme. But after the crisis of 2012, government reverted back to only tank farm owners to participate so those independents, those traders who didn’t have tank farms who were using peoples tank farms through thorough-put arrangement to import were thrown out of business. This people constitute major employers of labour. In my opinion, it wasn’t necessary to throw them out on the pretense that they were the ones who perpetrated the subsidy fraud. But I tell you this, none of those independents have the capacity to shortcut the process without active collaboration of the tank farm owners. You can’t do it. In order words, the tank farm owners are the custodians of the fraud base. So, how can you send this other people out who could actually constitute some of your checks and balances? You sent them away so that these guys will settle down and use their power to manipulate the process. So, this is the major issue government didn’t see. Government was just reacting to the symptom without bothering to look at the cause. So, these are the issues. I just want to give you this background to understand. Because of these backlogs of subsidy unpaid, the marketers are not able to import anymore because the banks cannot give them credit anymore. So, they can’t import. They would want to import, they are businessmen. It is only when they import that they make money. So, when people think they are holding government to ransom, they are not able to import. They can’t because they can’t access credit. That was why people would have noticed from the end of last year, they cried about this their backlog. The queues emerged but people were getting by with long queues. Just like the shutdown now. You know while people were getting by with long queues, there became only one source of product into the society. The independents were castrated. The major marketers can’t import. So, you are left with the PPMC. In other words, the PPMC can only take from the refineries if they are working or import to supplement. So, if the refineries are not working it means that they have to import everything. Now the PPMC do not import directly the import through contracting. They award contract to international traders to bring cargoes for them. That’s their process of importation. Of which by my own opinion the PPMC should be an international traders itself and should not rely on contracting. Yes, they should have grown to be international traders going to other countries to trade and supply products to them; go to other international market place and bid for products, have contracts with refinery owners across the globe. Because that’s what international traders do, have long term contract with refiners so they can pick off their cargo and distribute it around the world. The PPMC should have grown to that position. They never did and they relied on contract. You know what goes with contract. In the contracting process, all the systemic fraud will go into it, you understand, and so costing us more, much more. And they do not have the detail logistic capacity to manage the imports thereby accruing another heavy cost of demurrage. You see those big traders – they will not schedule their window so there will not be a waiting time. But they will all come and line up and by international best practice, you will keep paying them for the vessel until you take your cargo. So, proper scheduling would have avoided those expenses because the vessels carrying the cargoes would only come in when there is space to discharge. But this planning was never done. So, huge payments are made on demurrages that are not related to the prices of the product. It is a reflection of incompetence in the supply chain management. That’s how that comes.
The local refinery component they came up with a creative idea. This other import by international traders is a cash based transaction. You pay them, open letters of credit, LC, you pay them cash. If you don’t pay cash they don’t give you. They are not father Christmas so you need to have cash to do that one. The same way the majors marketers need cash, independents need cash and the PPMC needs cash to do that. If the refineries were working the PPMC will not need cash to take the products. They take it by statute. Now what they did, since the refineries are not working and the refineries are allocated 445,000 barrels per day by law, they decided to sell the products, get people to do basically trade by batter; carry this crude oil and give us refined products because the refineries are not working due to gross inefficient process; because it’s what they tell you, you take. Cost of crude oil is much more lower than cost of refined products. By this act it opens also opportunities for fraud. So, that’s the issue. Now because this particular arm doesn’t require cash they have been the ones bringing the fuel we are using. This fuel you are seeing now through that little pact out of the whole chain. Those people run what they call swap programme. You swap crude for refine products. Some companies were licensed, contracted to do that. And they are indigenous companies.  So, meanwhile what everybody used to operate and bring to fuel the nation suddenly it is only one little tribe that brings it. That’s why typically you have queues because you have availability in trickles. Since January you have been seeing queues. They are the only sources of product in the economy through the swap pact of the PPMC programme because the international traders pact with the PPMC is so affect by cash flow.
Realnews: There is something you said about major marketers being custodians of fraud….
Esimone: That’s not what I said. Don’t misquote me. I said if government rightly identify that there is a fraud in the subsidy programme. And I am saying that fraud must be done in collaboration with tank farmer owners. Because in a supply chain there are police check points. Those check points include the navy, the DPR, the appointed auditors, depot owners – those are the checkpoints. If the policemen at the checkpoints fail to do their job fraud will go through. So, for that fraud to go through all these police men must have failed or collaborated for that thing to happen. If they did their job it will never happen. So, when they start chasing traders for perceived fraud in the industry, the set of people to be jailed should be those policemen who failed in their duty. A trader is a businessman who will do everything to make money. It is the laws that check them and those who are supposed to implement these laws at the checkpoints I mentioned to you; if those people are compromised fraud will exist.
Realnews: Part of this fraud is that traders collude with the policemen you have mentioned to cook up documents about importation for fuel that never was to collect money from government. The country will also be paying demurrage for non-existent vessels that purportedly brought fuel to the country. Does it happen in the industry?
Esimone: Yes, it is possible.
Realnews: How can the government stop this?
Esimone: I have said this, the checkpoints, hold them responsible for this action.
Realnews: How much do you think the country loses to these fraudulent acts?
Esimone: I can’t give you a number now but it is humongous. It is a major loss. Now, the question I asked is this: now that you have driven away and allowed only tank farm owners, have they confirmed if that fraud still exist or not? If you take an action, you should measure whether it is working or not. With what is available now, are you sure that fraud is still not in the system?
Realnews: Do you think the fraud is still there?
Esimone: I think so. The fraud is still in the system because they have never punished any of the policemen. So, they are safe. They can only refine their approach with their collaborators, because if they had sanctioned…
Realnews: The DPR officials are also there
Esimone: They are the police people. They are the police people
Realnews: When we are talking about this fraud it also not limited to the downstream. In the upstream too does the fraud in the downstream confirm the allegation then that nobody really knows the amount of crude oil being lifted in the country and that the police people also collude to short change the country?
Barry EsimoneEsimone: Let me say this. Ignorance abounds in this society and people fathom things. I don’t belong to people who say all kinds of things. The reason is this. One, there are policemen again in that line and some of them are diligent policemen because the exports are handled by the multi-nationals. And so, there is a limit to which they can collaborate in a fraud because the laws of their land hold them accountable if they are indicted and so they will not risk losing their license. They can be recalled out of Nigeria.  For example if ExxonMobil is caught in that kind of fraud, their home country will shut down their operation in Nigeria and they will not want to risk that. So, they will do everything to protect that. People don’t understand this side to it about Shell, Mobil, Chevron and all that. And there only few export terminals in Nigeria. It’s is not that everybody put their trucks to carry crude oil. Bonny terminal is owned by Shell. Forcados terminal is owned by Shell. Excravos terminal is owned by Chevron, Quoa Iboe terminal is owned by Mobil. They are the people who invested and developed the export facilities from where the crude oil will go. And the places are manned by the DPR representatives and the representatives of these multinationals. I am saying in effect that such fraud may exist but not to the level of what obtains in the downstream because there are people who are involved whose integrity are important to them.  The downstream is all Nigerians affair.
Realnews: There is also an allegation that the crude oil that is taken out to be refined abroad that nobody accounts for the by-products when they are refined. The idea is that all the by-products of crude oil are also sold and money accruing from that is stolen and not remitted to the coffers of the country.
Esimone: Again, professionally, it is not possible. It doesn’t make sense to us professionally. The reason is this. When you are negotiating a swap programme – crude oil for refined products – the terms of engagement is very clear. This is the crude oil and you give me this amount of PMS. What you are exchanging is crude for PMS and not the derivatives. Do you understand so whatever happens to the derivatives doesn’t concern you. You know when you talk about derivatives, it means that they are refining your crude oil for you. That is not what is going on. What is going on is trade by barter – I take your crude I give you refined oil. Which refinery are they taking it to for refining? The refineries cannot depend on your crude oil. Refineries feedstock are planned throughout the year. The owners of refinery can never depend on sporadic availability of crude oil. They plan ahead. They sign long term contract for the supply of crude oil. So, when you take this oil and you say refine for you for what? They take it and sell it in the market and then you buy PMS and the quantity you agreed is returned to the nation. There is no refinery anywhere they are taking it to.
Realnews: That means there is a lot of ignorance on the part of people making that argument, especially during the 2012 crisis, union officials talked so much about the derivatives and what the country is losing. From your explanation, it is like members of the labour who are making the allegation don’t understand what is happening? When they make this argument they make government look fraudulent.
Esimone: It is not. There is a lot of ignorance. It is a highly technical negotiation. Products trade is a sophisticated trade. That is the problem.  Product trading is a sophisticated trade. It is a features trade. A trade that you make a gamble into the future just like stock exchange. Not exactly like that but close to that. Stock might go up tomorrow you want to buy today. It’s futures, it’s sophisticated, it’s a specialty. That’s what this brokers know how to play very well. It’s a specialisation. Product trading is a specialisation done internationally. Our people were allowed to come in to contribute to what they don’t know how it operates because government failed in giving them what they required. What they required is for them to go to the filling station and buy fuel and go. And so, they won’t be involved in the technicalities of the swap programme and other technicalities. They began to be involved because they were asked to pay more and there is no fuel and they begin to ask questions from point of ignorance. We need to separate those things, the facts from the ignorance.
Realnews: What is the way forward for the downstream sector right now?
Esimone: The way forward is this. Pay your debt to the traders. Remove subsidy and everything will flow. In the short run, it is an immediate measure. On the long term measure, they must plan to refine all our needs in this country, no matter how they do it, because one of the reasons this subsidy bill keep rising is because of the devaluation of the Naira. During that subsidy investigation of 2012, I kept seeking audience to explain to the public. They don’t understand what they are saying. They will brandish numbers. For the uninitiated, it will make sense that last year you spend N200 billion for subsidy and this year they are spending N1 trillion. It is possible and it can be legitimate.
Realnews: So, explain it now so people can understand
Esimone: The reason is this. Two factors determine the amount of subsidy. One is the international price of crude oil and international price of products because they go together. Two, exchange rate because it is an import based business.  That year they referenced when in 2010, I imported cargoes the average price of per metric tonne of cargo was about $600. By that year, it jumped already the price per metric tonne which nobody has control over here was about a $1000 plus. So, only on international market price change, the subsidy automatically had already doubled in dollar terms. So, you will expect to pay double. Because they used buy it $600 now they are buying at $1200. So, automatically your subsidy payment will double. Number Two, at that time it was $600, exchange rate was $1 to N150 because it is a dollar based business. On the dollar component, the dollar need has doubled and the exchange rate had moved from $150 to about $168 as at the time I can remember. Just say $170 easy of analysis. That is N20 per dollar increase of which no trader has control over. It’s the CBN, government policy and lack of economic activity in the nation that dropped the value of your currency. So, if you take that extra N20 per dollar put it in a double dollar value. The dollar value at which you are used to import has doubled and you multiply it by this extra you see the subsidy you need to pay will jump high. So, that is why the number jumped not because of fraud. Yes, that can be part of the system. But the key issue why the subsidy figure moved is because of these two major reasons. The only component of fraud that will effect this change will be as a result of claiming for un-imported quantity, that is the third component. So, the country has no control over it but international market price. The exchange rate traders have no control over it except Central Bank of Nigeria. It has nothing to do with traders. The third component is where the public can participate in increasing the value. Now who could check that, those police men I mentioned to you, if they did their function nothing would have happen. Is that clear to you?
Realnews: There is allegation that the Lebanese, Chinese and Asians are involved in these fraudulent activities, especially in this paying for un-imported quantity. So many of them are involved in it and ripping the country off….
Esimone: No! On a serious note I can’t say that. I am not standing in for them, if you look deeply into their operations you might find one or two acts untoward. Ordinarily, if you recall the process I have gone through with you will realise that it’s all Nigerian activities. Where they come in is that they are the traders who sell to you. The Lebanese they bring their cargoes they keep it they know you will come. And they sell it at the proper price because the price is according to plat which they have no control over. What you can blame them for is that because of their nature, they don’t have strict integrity in doing business like I have mentioned about Mobil and so on who have integrity. They can decide to collaborate with people who have decided to circumvent the check points. They can co-operate with them and give them papers. That is what they can do for them. But they themselves can’t initiate it.
Realnews: So, who initiates it?
Esimone: I say the locals who discuss with the policemen. They can pass by and do this thing but you will need certain papers they will file. So, they can’t initiate it. It is internally initiated. So, how can you start chasing the man and holding him responsible when it is your policemen that failed.
Realnews: It is a very serious problem. Is it not?
Esimone: It is. I think we have done just to this.
Realnews: Let’s talk about the offshore business. Investment in the offshore oil and gas business is dwindling.
Esimone: Unfortunate. It’s very unfortunate but that’s what is going on. I think that politics and politicians took a stranglehold on the goose that lay the golden egg by policy summersault, unnecessary bureaucracy, making things difficult unnecessarily had made decisions for further investments on oil exploration difficult. That’s exactly what it is. So, if you don’t explore you don’t find. You know, that your OPEC quota is a function of your reserve and the population of your nation. And without exploration you can’t add to stock of your nation. And mind you, crude oil is an exhaustible resource, so, if you don’t replace it can finish. Some countries have used up the crude oil. They have used to have crude oil but don’t have anymore. The reality is takes billions of years to cook another crude oil. Yes, the one you are taking here takes billions of years to cook.
Realnews: Cooked?
Esimone: (laughs). You don’t know how crude oil is formed. It is from the decay of vegetable and animals that’s it. So, the theory of crude oil is that the dinosaur era due to major event called the big bang not really the big bang there was a collision of an asteroid onto the earth that raised the dust cover and blocked the sun rays coming into the earth and all the animals died. These animals were dinosaurs, huge animals that covered the face of the earth. It is when they died that the decayed formed this oil. Oil is a hydrocarbon – hydrogen and carbon. They are the things that formed oil; they are only found in living things, in your body and in plant. It is carbon and hydrogen that formed you, formed plants so when the decay, they only come to the elements and they can exist in three states: solid state, liquid state or gaseous state. The solid state of the hydrocarbon is called coal. The coal is hydrocarbon, the liquid state is the crude oil and the gaseous state is the gas. It is in these three stares of matter they exist. That’s why you can cook with coal without smoke. Coal is the same thing as petroleum just on a solid form. That’s why some countries crack coal to get petroleum. South Africa cracks coal to get petroleum. It is just that it is more expensive to crack. They don’t have crude oil so what they have they extract fuel from it. They are converting gas to petroleum because they are the same material but in different state. It’s just like water – your ice cubes, if you like you chew it, or if it melts you drink it like water, and gas, the steam. If you are boiling water, the steam will be going off your kettle. So, those are same. If you remove the cover of your kettle you will see water droplets. You have converted steam into liquid. If you keep the ice cubes in the sun it will melt so you have converted it into water and vice versa.
Realnews; Thanks for the explanation. I am sure a lot of people don’t know this too. But we were talking about the future of the upstream where no investment is shrinking now…
Esimone: Yes, it is shrinking. It has an immediate effect in local content development. Some of the chaps who developed capacity in rig and ownership had their rigs laid off and they are owing debt. And once they are not drilling all their service support will lay off service. A serious country that is into oil production will have a plan of additional oil exploration they will do in a year in search of additional reserve to replace the depletion to constantly keep you in a position where you can get increase quota from the OPEC. Because if we drop our reserve value they will drop your quota value. If we can double our reserve value our quota can go from 2-5 to 3.3million barrels per day.
Realnews: The Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, is not likely to be passed by June 5, when the tenure of the seventh National Assembly expires. How is this affecting the oil and gas sector?
Esimone: I don’t think that the seventh Assembly will pass the bill. From now to Friday, all attention will be focused on the handover ceremony. They won’t have time to pass what has not already been passed. The required legislative process is not a presidential fiat. The legislators are business doing courses, preparing, so this will not come up. We hope the new government regime will take it serious and expunge things that are contentious and pass the bill.
Realnews: What is really the problem?
Barry EsimoneEsimone: I have always recommended that if there are grey areas of the bill you can expunge that for further consideration and pass the ones that you accepted. You know, there are two key elements involved in the PIB. One is the fiscal structure in the oil and gas. The second is the unbundling of the NNPC group. Those are they too major elements.  On the fiscal structure, the problem there is that the fiscal structure strives to increase the tax on profit apart from the royalties, etc. The target is to increase the tax on the profit for the nation. You should know that the international oil companies are here to do business and what drive the business globally is the tax regimes. If the tax regimes become very punitive, they will leave you. They are not father Christmas. They will also lobby to ensure that you don’t do that because they are having already in-country massive investments.  So, it will be cheaper to take a bit of the pain here than to go to a new place where their tax is better to start another new investment. But there is a limit to what they can take.
Realnews: But in other countries’ such as Angola where the IOCs are the tax regimes there are higher than in Nigeria and they have not left those countries…
Esimone: They are higher. No. I say this, people have erroneous assumption that labour in the country is cheap. There is no cheap labour in Nigeria. You know why. The labour efficiency factor in Nigeria is very low. In some of these places, the labour efficiency factor is high. So, if you pay them high you get high output. So, if you pay low here you get very low output. So, labour efficiency factor is part of it. So, labour cost in Nigeria, therefore, is high. What that means is that the operating cost of bringing the product is high. And this profit you are taxing is sales minus expenses. So, if your expenses are so high that your margin here is so narrow, and you come to take higher tax from it you are leaving your partners with little or nothing.
Realnews: The impression is that the IOCs make a lot of money.
Esimone: I say that it is just an impression. It is something you can check. Perception is not necessarily a reality. They are all quoted companies in their homes. If you dig deeper, you will find out how they are performing. So, that is the point. So, why they are struggling is that government should, therefore, not focus on tax regime. In that chain, what they have to do is see if they can increase the size of the cake. So, that even if you increase the tax you take, what is left for them will be worth their time. And where can you touch and since it is sales minus expenses you can’t affect sales so much because they can’t determine the price. It is in your cost that you will touch. So, government should focus on how to reduce the cost of operation in Nigeria so that there will be more in that cake after you apply the percentage tax the left over is enough for them to make enough return on their investment. This is the fact.
Realnews: Interesting. So, what is your last word on how to improve the oil and gas sector and for the management of the economy which is what we have been talking about?
Esimone: You know why we dwell so much on oil and gas because that is the mainstay of our economy. It contributes about 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and about 80 percent of our budgetary need comes from oil and gas. So, discussing it is discussing the economy literally.  (laughter) So, the challenge with the new regime is that they have to have an integrated approach to oil and gas development. Number one, they should ensure that all we can get from the oil and gas for our local needs is gotten from there without importing it. In other words, there must be sufficient refining capacity in-country no matter how they do it. I don’t want to go into the details suggestion of how they do it but you must have that done. When you do that you will save the pressure on the dollar that you used to import and the exchange rate will naturally come down. And that will be the first step out. But like I said, when you asked me about the fuel subsidy I said pay the debt. Even if it is N1trillion, pay it. And remove your hand. If you want you can actually pay it and tax the society gradually to recover it. But by paying it, by any instrument within the system, borrowing or creating a bond to pay it. Then remove your hand so the people can have the capacity for credit rating to import so they can start importing and you can now plan the long term of internal capacity development. Good news, Dangote is building refinery with about 500,000 barrels per day refining capacity and that is marvelous. Many more should be encouraged. I will expect government to target 1.5 million barrels per day refining capacity so that our export will only be 1 million barrels per day. Set it as a target that we would want to refine in-country 1.5 million barrels per day. Dangote has taken 500,000 barrels. There are 1 million to go. The four refineries all together are already taking 445,000 barrels per day. So, we have about 500,000 barrels balance of that to go. So, you can allow independents to build. Encourage them with incentives. So, that is my suggestion on way forward.

Bill Cosby Admitted To Giving Woman The Drug Quaaludes

What This Really Means

According to the Associated Press (AP) Bill Cosby admitted in 2005 that he got a sedative called quaaludes, with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with, and that he gave the sedative to at least one woman and “other people,” according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
Quaaludes are a central nervous system (CNS) depressant of the quinazolinone class that acts as a sedative and hypnotic. Also known as methaqualone, quaaludes peak in the bloodstream within several hours, with a half-life of 20–60 hours. Regular users build up a physical tolerance, requiring larger doses for the same effect. Overdose can lead to nervous system shutdown, coma and death.
YOU MAY LIKE: How Do We Process The Allegations Against Bill Cosby?
Methaqualone became increasingly popular as a recreational drug in the late 1960s and early 1970s, known variously as ‘ludes or sopers (also soapers) in the U.S. and mandrakes and mandies in the UK, Australia and South Africa.
The drug was often used by people who went dancing at glam rock clubs in the early 1970s and at discos in the late 1970s. (One slang term for Quaalude was disco biscuits.) In the mid-1970s there were bars in Manhattan called juice bars that only served non-alcoholic drinks that catered to people who liked to dance on methaqualone.
Cosby settled that lawsuit under confidential terms in 2006.
Cosby, 77, has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct, including allegations by many that he drugged and raped them in incidents dating back more than four decades. Cosby has never been criminally charged, and most of the accusations are barred by statutes of limitations.
Cosby, giving sworn testimony in the lawsuit accusing him of sexual assaulting the woman at his home in…

1 2Next page »

Jul 6, 2015

By Dr. P. Gould

Our military runs like a municipal govt — Enahoro, ex-Army chief

By Bashir Adefaka
Major-General David Olanrewaju Enahoro, a former Commandant, Command and Staff College, Jaji, retired in  2002 as Chief of Policy and Plans, Army Headquarters. Before then, he served as Director, Military Training, Nigerian Defence Academy; Directing Staff, Director and Acting Commandant, National War College. Born on May 2, 1947 in Uhonmora-Ora, in Owan West Local Government Area of Edo State, Enahoro, an alumnus of University of Benin and a holder of University of“Ibadan Master of Science Degree in Strategic Studies; has been guest lecturer and external examiner to the National War College and National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, and is a“recipient of Fellow (fwc) and Member (mni) of both institutions. In an one hour forty-five minutes interview  at his farm centre in Uhonmora-Ora, Edo State, he spoke  on issues bordering on security with particular emphasis  on restoring the integrity of the military and the police. Excerpts:“
Gen EnahoroLet me start by asking you about your military career?
I had a management career, post command….What I am trying to say is that I commanded from platoon to the infantry corps. I also served as staff officer from adjutant through brigade major in a brigade to Colonel HQ, Colonel GS in a division. I ended up as Chief of Policy and Plans at Army Headquarters. And I was a senior instructor in jungle warfare, combat survival at Jaji at the time we started a special warfare course.

You mean counter terrorism course? What year was that?
We started a course in counter terrorism as far back as 1982.

 You mean you had started preparing for counter terrorism even at a time it wasn’t so much an issue in Nigeria?
Then why does it look like we have problems in Nigeria because we don’t plan ahead?“From 1982, we started special warfare course, combat survival course, desert warfare course, jumbo warfare course, mountain warfare course and amphibious course, which we now transferred to Calabar. If you put all these together, you see the need for counter terrorism because we were preparing for force people scenario. We had learned from the crisis in Kano caused by Maitasine in 1980 which spread to Bulunkutu in the North East where General Muhammadu Buhari as General Officer Commanding (GOC), Third Armoured Division, Jos, at that time flushed them out. We started a counter terrorism stream and we were running about three courses every year.“I went back to that same Jaji as Deputy Commandant and later I became the Commandant. And by the time I was leaving Jaji  in 2000, the counter terrorism course was still running!
At that time, what rank?
I was a major general.
And the same Staff College Jaji that this counter terrorism course was offered was where Boko Haram fighters chose to attack in recent years. How do you feel about that?
Very sad! But one thing I know about terrorists is that they strike hard to frighten. So, I was not surprised that they decided to go into the heart of counter terrorism training, but if they did that too, we have ourselves to blame for some reasons. At a stage, I saw everybody wanting to go for counter terrorism training. The police, the SSS, the Navy;  even cadets were being given counter terrorism training and I was wondering what was happening to the nation.
Is there anything wrong with that?
No, if you give out  counter terrorism training then, of course, terrorists will attempt to hit, particularly if they are trained terrorists because they want to say, `Oh, you are just“wasting your time.’ And that is exactly what I thought happened.
So, are you trying to say some of these terrorists were home grown people who received training from Jaji and who, therefore, had known the art of counter terrorism and were trying to black the efforts of the military at curtailing terror.
It is possible because I am not aware that there was any attempt to streamline the selection process. I am not too sure because everybody went there….
(Cut in) …to receive a training that should have been restricted to the Army?
There is no basis, no need for it because we have enough trained counter terrorism soldiers to handle the situation and, up till now, I still think we can deal with the situation.
Where do you do you want President Buhari to start  the war against terror from? Is the war winnable?
We can win the war. We can make the nation a safe place. I am not saying we can eradicate terrorism all together but we can put  it in check. As a matter of fact, the way the Boko Haram situation came in, the terrorists went into what we call ‘open offensive’ too early, and that would have been the time for the military to hit at this tide because, at that time, nobody was against the involvement of the military. The people prematurely went into open offensive.
Why we did not take it as a civil war at that stage and handle it like any other war, I do not know, I cannot tell because I am no longer in service and so I do not know what informed or what influenced the so-called lackadaisical approach in the Army. But if you ask me, I will say that I saw some rivalry, I saw a design by some people to make a name. Of course the police would say, `We are on top of the situation.’
The Army would tell you,  We are on top of the situation. The DSS would tell you, `We are on top of the situation. Anybody you discussed with would say, `We are on top of the situation.’ And a few I met from time to time I asked, `Which situation are you on top of? So, it is winnable and I am sure President Buhari has not taken a strong step at winning the war.“When Buhari said in his inauguration speech that he was relocating the military high command to Maiduguri, I was shocked.
Why the shock? You mean he shouldn’t have relocated the military high command to the centre of the storm?
Let me land. I now asked myself, `Does it mean there was no high command to coordinate the operations there and there are people saying we are fighting terrorism? You have a situation where you read from papers that at least there is a Division, 7 Division, operating from Maiduguri. There is a Division, Three Mechanised Division, supporting it and operating from Jos. We know that there is a Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) comprising forces from Niger, Cameroon, Chad,“Nigeria operating there. We know that the Army was operating, the Navy operating, the Air Force operating. You mean there was no coordinating centre?
That is what Buhari’s statement means. And it means that we had been fighting Boko Haram without direction! Buhari confirmed that we really didn’t know what fighting in a theatre entails. You can be a fantastic soldier at a platoon level, at a company level, at a battalion level without knowing a thing about theatre operation because it has to do with what we call the ‘operational order’. But that order ought to flow from a concept of operation that should come from that high command, which will get field intelligence and access to the policy of the political class that“could relate with the headship of all the elements right there. Only in that way can you fight a coordinate battle.
I thought somebody would come out, after President Buhari such thing in his speech, to say, `Your Excellency, we have such command'; only for me to now hear the Chief of the Naval Staff speak on the television saying, `We will now give a thought.’ You will give a presidential order a thought?
Should the response of the military have been that they would give a presidential order a thought or that they swing into action without querying the order?
That `we will give a presidential order a thought,’ if that was what the Chief of the Naval Staff meant, it means admitting that they didn’t have one such command already on the ground. Are you excited? So, now we know that they are trying to put up one but I am worried.
Why worry?
I hope nobody will bastardise the concept of military high command. I hope nobody will turn the military high command to another budgetary outfit. I hope so because this is a place where they should do intelligence analysis, analysis of area of operation, come up with concept of operation and give operational directives.
That is the only way these Boko Haram people would hit, stay there for hours and nobody could respond because we do not have a coordinated centre. So, Buhari has started well. As for whether he will recall people like me, it is not so essential because there are people he can call upon. But he should be able to identify the pseudo-professionals and separate them from the  professionals.  So, I know that President Buhari, being a man that I know his principles, knows who to call and when to call the people but he should be keen in those who know. War against terror is fought principally at three levels: locating, responding and  follow-up. To simplify that, counter terrorists are those we call trackers.
They are called trackers because the moment you see a terrorist, till you capture or destroy him, you give him no respite. And until you do that, you will be doing nothing because they hit and run. When they run, you pursue them. I heard the Chief of  the Army Staff saying they had tracking dogs at a time. It means that these dogs could follow in an operation. If there is a terrorist running, you use the dogs to  pursue.“In 1970, when I was in School of Infantry in Britain, we went on an operational exercise and we had to go with helicopter tracking insurgents for three days. That was a School of Infantry. That gives us an idea of what it entails. But here I don’t know whether they are even using the helicopters that we claim we have for tracking. I think we are using our helicopters as bombers.

Admiral Murtala Nyako, a former governor of Adamawa, said he saw a military helicopter supplying items to people inside a bush he believed to be terrorists and that he advanced towards the place and that the military people warned him against that, which was how his problem started. Do you think it is possible there is a collaboration between unscrupulous elements within the military and the terrorists which has frustrated the effort of the government towards winning the war?
Terrorism or insurgency is one operation from which you cannot rule out anything. But I don’t want to believe that a Nigerian military helicopter could be used to drop arms and ammunition for terrorists. But I am worried that we still have not been able, up till now, to know the source of their armaments. I am worried!

Nyako just said, upon his return from self-exile, that he would provide information to President Buhari government, which will help him to track the terrorists. Is it that we lack the political will to find out?
The political will will flow from professional advice. Whether we get the appropriate advice on which to base the will is a different thing. Because the way I see it, we see the equipment“displayed by the military on television and on the pages of newspapers. What I see them display are basically equipment used at one time or the other by Nigerian Army. I have not seen anything that“they are displaying that seems to me to be new invention they are bringing from anywhere.“But again I am not surprised that that has happened because in this country; we have seen three different types of war. Military barracks raided and equipment carted away.
We have read severally of police“stations raided and equipment carted away. So, they may indeed be using our equipment against us. Would we know how much of it was really carted away especially when they attacked a whole brigade“headquarters, when they took over a regiment of artillery. This is why sometimes when I heard they used anti-aircraft weapons, I just smiled.“Well, again, it is not surprising that it is possible. We ought by now to be able to identify the source of their weapons if neighbouring countries have stopped providing them hiding places. They too are suffering the same fate have stopped in Nigeria with the terrorists. It appears we have no control over our sky. If what Nyako said is true, it could have been any other helicopter or it could even be a helicopter making supplies to some of our troops somewhere because, we wouldn’t know where the troops are. But definitely, helicopters are critical means of fighting terrorism.
But do you see our military using the helicopter as critical means in the ongoing fight against Boko Haram?
As a matter of fact, I am surprised why the Nigerian military has not created helicopter-borne force. I know that before I left the service in 2002, the plan was on. We had identified places of purchase. I led the team on behalf of the Federal Government. So, we should by now have had helicopter-borne troops for helicopter-borne operations, which was why I was not surprised when they said they wanted helicopters and so on and so forth. By now, they should have had a helicopter-borne unit, which is not an Air Force unit. No. You don’t just take helicopter and give it to the Air Force. It is wrong.

May be because they are the ones in the air or which of the forces should really use helicopter?
Oh, then they should give all their cars and lorries to the Army. Look, helicopter is principally an Army weapon for special operations; the US would say marine. But in the Air Force, they“use it basically for search and rescue. The Navy uses helicopter for anti-submarine operations. The Army uses helicopter for special operations, counter insurgency. The police uses helicopter for patrol. So, all the services have their different ways of using helicopter. You should understand now why a high command is desirable; to pull for the purpose of a common goal and identified mission so that everybody can focus on the mission.
Here I don’t know what happened but, like I said, with time I am sure the appropriate information will get to the President.“Don’t forget that those who respect themselves stay away from pseudo-professionals if they had to remain sane. “The main ingredient for military strategy is information through professionals: correct information, adequate information, timely information. When information is“coloured, when information is delayed, the strategy will NOT work! If you cannot tell your Commander-in-Chief that these boys in the field are not being adequately catered for or when somebody says, `oh, the welfare situation is poor’, you go and say, `No, they are lying, they are playing politics,’ you will get to the situation we got to where you now had to start virtually court marshaling everybody. Because you allowed things to slip off your hands.
You didn’t tell the Commander-in-Chief the correct thing. It now started telling on the soldiers and they had no choice…. And once it’s telling on the soldiers, you have the results we are having. If it were in the United States of America that somebody like the governor of Borno State came up with what he said about the poor equipment of the Nigerian soldiers facing the highly sophisticated weapons bearing Boko Haram insurgents, the military high command would pick on it to tell the National Assembly,  Please, see“our predicament. We need this, we need that.

In spite of these anomalies, do you think there will still be solution?
There is always a solution. I am not too sure how many insurgents they have identified and how many camps they are in. The first thing was to identify or locate them. And the Americans, the British and French were here and they went back. Why? They went back because they didn’t have the high command to liaise with. They met staff officers. They were being told to work with staff officers. They are not used to working with staff officers. They wanted to know what the commanders were doing and they wanted to be sure that the message that they wanted to convey to you was safe. If they were not sure, they will not share the message. I am not even surprised too that they didn’t agree to sell to us the …..helicopters because they knew that they would not be used for the purpose they were meant for.

Now you heard President Buhari say five years of insurgency enough is enough. And you heard him ordering relocation of military high command to the centre of the storm in Maiduguri. All these point in one direction, that if you do not have military background as leader of a country, you are not likely going to have it well administered because a President with military background knows how many soldiers make a battalion and so there is no way a so-called professional will, for budget reason, come and misinform him and will get away with it. You earlier on said you hoped the high command would not be enmeshed in budget scandal. I mean, a minister of finance saying N500 billion was given to the military and there was no up-to-date weapon commensurate with the fund to prosecute the fight against Boko Haram, for which the new President is considering a probe. Amnesty International has asked President Buhari to probe alleged war crimes committed by the military under the guise of fighting Boko Haram. What is your opinion; should he go ahead and probe?
It is normal that Amnesty International will raise issues when there is war because they do not take sides they have no business with any side. And unfortunately because of their particular background, and I have that problem too; I really don’t talk on sentiments whenever I comment on something, I just say it the way I see it.“One mistake that came up was the Nigerian military attempting to raise issue with Amnesty International because the whole world will tell you, `Why would Amnesty International blackmail you? But I am glad that that statement did not come from the President of the country or members of government.
So, they will see it as (military) people attempting to defend themselves. It is normal to accuse. It is also normal to defend.  When President Olusegun Obasanjo authorized the operation in Zaki Biam, Amnesty International actually came up to accuse Nigerian military. You didn’t hear the military respond but it was actually probed. Open investigation was done to prove that, like the case of Zaki Biam, for example, it was known that riff-raffs, ex-soldiers were slaughtering people with photographs taken and were selling them in open market. Amnesty International or America did not go further. A clear conscience fears no accusation.
Then you talked about the background of the Commander-in-Chief. Let me be very frank here. I have looked through American history and I think only two of its Presidents so far didn’t have  military background. Even in other countries that you don’t think that they have military background they have the advantage of military training and national army. Most countries in the world run their national service within the ethos of military training. When the National Youth Service Corps was established in this country, we had thought that it was the beginning of something. That was an opportunity to infuse ethos of military training in graduates.
And if you read The Prince, you will find that those who aspire to rule need military training, military education, because of the completeness of military education.“I have always looked at this nation too and have said if General Gowon were to be civilian President at the age he was head of state, this nation would have gone far in development. All those military officers succeeded to the extent they did because of their military background. The first thing is for you to know and appreciate the situation, define your mission, identify weaknesses and strengths and it applies to other disciplines which is where strategy has suddenly become a common term.
It is a military term that has now spread into other disciplines. If you talk of history now, they even tell you ‘strategy for collecting data. So, there is something in military background for a Commander-in-Chief. Even if he has none, he must  have those advisers that see things dispassionately. You must let the Commander-in-Chief see things openly without hiding anything. Your loyalty will be judged from the day the Commander-in-Chief takes a decision. People say but the military is autocratic. I just laugh.
I served for 34 going to 35 years in the military and I have not seen any organization that gives everybody so much room to prove himself. A platoon commander sits down with his privates and others to discuss and they express their minds. When the company commander now comes to discuss with his company, he sends his platoon commanders away and speaks with everybody without their commanders so that they can even report their own commanders.
Up to the highest level like in the Army Headquarters when I was there, every week, the staff in the headquarters would meet with the commanders on the field. That is sufficiently consultative. The difference now is where you have to take a decision. Remember, the buck stops on your table and I am sure you are not going to ignore the facts that are laid bare. This is now where your level of loyalty comes. Whatever your view, once the commander has taken those decisions, you owe a duty to implement them. That is part of what would have come out from a basic military training for a Commander-in-Chief.

But many Nigerians don’t really see the military in the light you so project?
What is wrong with Nigeria is that the military thoroughly messed up itself because of its involvement with politicians. If the military did not take over, may be the respect for the military would still have been a lot higher. You see the military that now has decided, since our time, just turn your back at politicians and let them do what they want to do the way they want to do it because, in the final analysis, the military will never get praise for anything.
“In this country, nobody remembers that, but for military intervention in 1966, there would have been no Nigeria again. I was not in the military then. But it got to a stage you could no longer move from Lagos“to Ibadan through Ikorodu Road. How would you do it when the whole of Western Religion was on fire, when the whole place was no longer safe, when the politicians themselves were boasting and bringing in the boys, when local police were recruited? When the military came in, normalcy returned but they should have been able to know when to go.
And in any case, even in their entrance, they were perceived to be partisan and then it was obvious that some people would react. So, that they reacted was not unexpected. But I was already in the military  when they started the baton exchange from one military regime to another, when all we could have done was to go away at that time, we ran down the essence of the military. Now let me go to the question of equipping the military. When I look at this country I smile. We have an Army that manufactures, a Navy that manufactures, an Air Force that manufactures.
I don’t know whether the police have started manufacturing; of course, I won’t be surprised. These are not primary military functions. You don’t manufacture what you want to use. It is not possible. Even the ordinary pistol, you will be surprised the number of parts and the diverse ways those parts come about. Even when we said we set up DICON (Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria) in Kaduna, we didn’t seem to see it as a military company heading a very wrong concept. In developed countries now, nations collaborate to produce even the most basic military ware but here we think that we can do it within the military.
I read in the papers that the Air Force had manufactured unmanned vessels and I have been asking myself, where are the unmanned vessels? The money being allocated to the military may not actually be going for what it is meant to achieve. We have a military that is like a municipal government: you run schools, you run markets, you run everything. That is what we have. What bothers me most is that we run so many services that very little is left for the actual materials required. I am not criticizing the current, but the truth is that the Nigerian military was never planned, is not planned and must be planned. And it does not necessarily mean that you are going to throw away the present military. No. You will also consider the present military from what we call the forces in being  a factor in arriving at your new plan.

Security, as you can see, is mostly considered in the focus of the new President. What is your advice towards effective security re-positioning?
In considering security, adequate attention must be paid to the police. Our policing is at zero level. If the police is effective, most of what is happening now would not happen because it is the police that is closest to the populace. In every Local Government, the police is there or should be there. As a matter of fact, as a junior officer, when we had a joint operation, we had to do it from police operations centre because they used to have communication covering the whole country. If that were still there, what happened that Boko Haram spread out of control? That should not have been so.

What would you say is problem of the police therefore and what is the solution?
I am aware that the problem of the police started when they removed what they call e-branch, the intelligence wing and merged it to form the National Security Organisation (NSO) at that time, which is precursor for SSS. That was the beginning of the collapse of police effectiveness.
The police e-branch was a critical aspect; they focused on the locality.“The second thing that went wrong was that they decided to behook the police. Police suddenly became interested in living in barracks and so they were distancing themselves from the people they were meant to be close to. Behooking, that is, you are putting them in barracks when you don’t even have the  means to maintain them there and that affected their morale and that also affected their equipment. If there was anything the police was proud of, it was his baton and torchlight.“Nigeria Police is perhaps the only police in the world that is too sophisticated to do foot patrol. If you go to Britain from the airport and I have been to 97 countries in the world, you see police men on foot patrol, their hands at their back. So, if you have that, there could still be this suicide bombing once in a while but not daily occurrence like we have in Nigeria now.
The security challenges we have are so because, like some say, the level of policing is too distant from the people. I hear some people say state police will make things worse now as politicians will be using them. And the question I ask is, the federal police, is it not being used by politicians; not necessarily the politicians in the Federal Government, even politicians outside government?“Every level of law making must have a law enforcement agency. Until we recognize that, we are just not ready for a good police. Even the palace should have police. Local government should have its police.“Universities should have their police. In Nigeria here, go to Shell, they have their police. They just train them with the Nigeria Police because they are serving them. So, the earlier we tell ourselves the truth, we need the police to be closer to the people.“There are areas of policing that must be centralized: investigation, intelligence.
That is why when we think that the EFCC is the solution, we are joking. The police is the solution. Even“the functions of EFCC, ICPC, NDLEA are all police functions. So, it is just a matter of looking at those functions and see those that must be centralized and then you think of the funding and making a common standard for all levels of the police. The central government will now use funding to effect compliance.“Again, there is no uniform for the police and it is bad. I don’t know whether you observe that the police wear camouflage. They wear T-shirts. Does it mean that they are ashamed of their uniform or that“only when by wearing camouflage looking combative will drive away the criminals? Even in the military, combat uniform is meant for combat.
Now, as a police man,  you want to look combative and it comes to a time that nobody is even frightened and too many people are just willing to die.“I hope the present administration will tell them to wear their uniform, to have working dress for the Army, for the Navy and  the Air Force. You even have working dress for them, they are different because they work in a different environment. The camouflage is for forest environment. Even the police ADC behind a governor wears camouflage because he has to look combative. No, no, no.
And you think it is simple? It is not. There is the case of a man in Benin, each time he goes home he sees the police on the road wearing just any type of dress. So, one day he took for granted that they were the police and they told him, “Mo boy, shut up your mouth. We are armed robbers.” Many times that armed robbery happened on the road, people thought that they were police because the police on the road no longer want to wear uniform. Who knows whether they are policemen or not? If policemen wear their uniform and the uniform is provided by the authority with a standard, when we see a policeman we will know he is a policeman, not a soldier-police.

APC Group Defends Akande, Says He Spoke Like a Sincere Leader

The Action Group of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has risen in stout defence of the former Interim Chairman of the ruling party, Chief Bisi Akande, saying his recent utterances on the crisis bedeviling the party at the National Assembly were those of a sincere leader.
The group, through a statement by its spokesperson, Segun Dipe, said the ramrod qualities of Akande qualify him to see when things are skewed towards failure and was right to have called the people involved to order.
“Here is the man who steered the ship of our party through the turbulent waters from conception to birth. He did so with sincerity of purpose and great sacrifice that even President Muhammadu Buhari, a man of few words, not given to praise-singing, confessed that he respected Akande’s patriotism while acknowledging how he led the interim party ‘with dexterity and integrity.”
The party Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, also admitted that he saw in Akande trustworthiness and sincerity. Is it such a person that would now wish the smooth-sailing ship of the party should capsize?”
APC-AG recalled how Akande had journeyed with former governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, through thick and thin from the dark and lonely days of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) to the Action Congress (AC) and then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) before arriving at the APC, saying such a person knows what true loyalty and discipline are and should be taken serious when preaching them.
Akande had been criticised for his recent utterances with which he cautioned some party members, whom he accused of trading the party’s birthright and dining with the enemy with a bid to get choice positions.
Specifically, he mentioned some northern elites and the PDP members within the APC as those rocking the party boat with indiscipline and disloyalty.
But the APC Action Group said the former interim chairman was on point and had only reiterated what was already in the public domain. Perhaps it is making more meaning to them now that it is coming from a person of Akande’s flawless character.

Women Groups Defend Appointment of Zakari As INEC Boss

Women Groups Defend Appointment

 Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
About ten different women non-governmental organizations have expressed support for the appointment of a woman, Mrs. Amina Bala Zakari, as the acting Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

 A statement jointly signed by Women in Politics Forum (WIPF), Proactive Gender Initiative (PGI), Women Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA), Federation of International Women Lawyers (FIDA), 100 Women Lobby Group, Equity Advocates, National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ),  Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), Women Foundation of Nigeria (WFN)and Nigerian Women Trust Fund (NWTF).
The groups said the appointment was in line with the national gender policy.

 "Women in Politics Forum (WIPF) and other  appreciate President Muhammadu Buhari for appointing Mrs. Amina Bala Zakari as the acting INEC Chairperson. This has shown that our President is a gender sensitive leader,” they said.

Sani Abacha Didn’t Die Of Apple-Al-Mustapha

By Toyin Akingbade
“When I got to the bedside of the Head of State, he was already gasping. Ordinarily, I could not just touch him. It was not allowed in our job. But under the situation on ground, I knelt close to him and shouted, “General Sani Abacha, Sir, please grant me permission to touch and carry you.” Contrary to insinuations, speculations and sad rumours initiated by some sections of the society, I maintain that the sudden collapse of the health system of the late Head of State started previous day (Sunday, 7th June, 1998) right from the Abuja International Airport immediately after one of the white security operatives or personnel who accompanied President Yasser Arafat of Palestine shook hands with him (General Abacha) I had noticed the change in the countenance of the late Commander-in-Chief and informed the Aide-de-Camp, Lt. Col. Abdallah, accordingly. He, however, advised that we keep a close watch on the Head of State.
Later in the evening of 8th June, 1998, around 6p.m; his doctor came around, administered an injection to stabilize him. He was advised to have a short rest. Happily, enough, by 9p.m; the Head of State was bouncing and receiving visitors until much later when General Jeremiah Timbut Useni, the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, came calling. He was fond of the Head of State. They were very good friends.
They stayed and chatted together till about 3.35a.m. A friend of the house was with me in my office and as he was bidding me farewell, he came back to inform me that the FCT Minister, General Useni was out of the Head of State’s Guest House within the Villa. I then decided to inform the ADC and other security boys that I would be on my way home to prepare for the early morning event at the International Conference Centre.
At about 5a.m; the security guards ran to my quarters to inform me that the Head of State was very unstable. At first, I thought it was a coup attempt. Immediately, I prepared myself fully for any eventuality.
As an intelligence officer and the Chief Security Officer to the Head of State for that matter, I devised a means of diverting the attention of the security boys from my escape route by asking my wife to continue chatting with them at the door – she was in the house while the boys were outside. From there, I got to the Guest House of the Head of State before them.
When I got to the bedside of the Head of State, he was already gasping. Ordinarily, I could not just touch him. It was not allowed in our job. But under the situation on ground, I knelt close to him and shouted, “General Sani Abacha, Sir, please grant me permission to touch and carry you.” I again knocked at the stool beside the bed and shouted in the same manner, yet he did not respond. I then realized there was a serious danger. I immediately called the Head of State’s personal physician, Dr. Wali, who arrived the place under eight minutes from his house.
He immediately gave Oga – General Abacha – two doses of injection, one at the heart and another close to his neck. This did not work apparently as the Head of State had turned very cold. He then told me that the Head of State was dead and nothing could be done after all.
I there and then asked the personal physician to remain with the dead body while I dashed home to be fully prepared for the problems that might arise from the incident. As soon as I informed my wife, she collapsed and burst into tears. I secured my house and then ran back.
At that point, the Aide-de-Camp had been contacted by me and we decided that great caution must be taken in handling the grave situation.
Again, I must reiterate that the issue of my Boss dying on top of women was a great lie just as the insinuation that General Sani Abacha ate and died of poisoned apples was equally a wicked lie. My question is: did Chief M.K.O Abiola die of poisoned apples or did he die on top of women? As I had stated at the Oputa Panel, their deaths were organized. Pure and simple!
It was at this point that I used our special communication gadgets to diplomatically invite the Service Chiefs, Military Governors and some few elements purportedly to a meeting with the Head of State by 9a.m. at the Council Chamber. That completed, I also decided to talk to some former leaders of the nation to inform them that General Sani Abacha would like to meet them by 9a.m.
Situation became charged however, when one of the Service Chiefs, Lieutenant General Ishaya Rizi Bamaiyi, who pretended to be with us, suggested he be made the new Head of State after we had quietly informed him of the death of General Sani Abacha. He even suggested we should allow him access to Chief Abiola. We smelt a rat and other heads of security agencies, on hearing this, advised I move Chief Abiola to a safer destination. I managed to do this in spite of the fact that I had been terribly overwhelmed with the crisis at hand.
But then, when some junior officers over-heard the suggestion of one of the Service Chiefs earlier mentioned, it was suggested to me that we should finish all the members of the Provisional Ruling Council and give the general public an excuse that there was a meeting of the PRC during which a shoot-out occurred between some members of the Provisional Ruling Council and the Body Guards to the Head of State When I sensed that we would be contending with far more delicate issues than the one on ground, I talked to Generals Buba Marwa and Ibrahim Sabo who both promptly advised us – the junior officers – against any bloodshed. They advised we contact General Ibrahim Babangida (former Military President) who equally advised against any bloodshed but that we should support the most senior officer in the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC) to be the new Head of State.
Since the words of our elders are words of wisdom, we agreed to support General Jeremiah Useni. Along the line, General Bamaiyi lampooned me saying, “Can’t you put two and two together to be four? Has it not occurred to you that General Useni who was the last man with the Head of State might have poisoned him, knowing full well that he was the most senior officer in the PRC?”
Naturally, I became furious with General Useni since General Abacha’s family had earlier on complained severally about the closeness of the two Generals; at that, a decision was taken to storm General Useni’s house with almost a battalion of soldiers to effect his arrest. Again, some heads of security units and agencies, including my wife, advised against the move.
The next most senior person and officer in government was General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who was then the Chief of Defence Staff. We rejected the other Service Chief, who, we believed, was too ambitious and destructive. We settled for General Abubakar and about six of us called him inside a room in the Head of State’s residence to break the news of the death of General Abacha to him.
As a General with vast experience, Abdulsalami Abubakar, humbly requested to see and pray for the soul of General Abacha which we allowed. Do we consider this a mistake? Because right there, he – Abubakar – went and sat on the seat of the late Head of State. Again, I was very furious. Like I said at the Oputa Panel, if caution was not applied, I would have gunned him down.
The revolution the boys were yearning for would have started right there. The assumption that we could not have succeeded in the revolution was a blatant lie. We were in full control of the State House and the Brigade of Guards. We had loyal troops in Keffi and in some other areas surrounding the seat of government – Abuja. But I allowed peace to reign because we believed it would create further crises in the country.
We followed the advice of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and the wise counsel of some loyal senior officers and jointly agreed that General Abdulsalami Abubakar be installed Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces immediately after the burial of General Sani Abacha in Kano. It is an irony of history that the same Service Chief who wanted to be Head of State through bloodshed, later instigated the new members of the Provisional Ruling Council against us and branded us killers, termites and all sorts of hopeless names. They planned, arranged our arrest, intimidation and subsequent jungle trial in 1998 and 1999. These, of course, led to our terrible condition in several prisons and places of confinement.
By Toyin Akingbade