Nigeria is going through yet another crisis of governance. Obasanjo is seeking a third term and has taken his plans to the U.S. and Malta to try and convince the U.S. and the Commonwealth that his ‘fight against corruption’ must not be interrupted by anything so trivial as a Constitution. His well-publicised fights with the governors and with his Vice-President are depicted in terms of his anti-corruption efforts and he has announced that his heroic efforts has succeeded in reducing the level of corruption in Nigeria so that it isn’t at the bottom of the Transparency International table, but a few countries up from the end.
Obasanjo’s plan for a third term, and the reaction of many of the erstwhile leaders of Nigeria, is not founded on some great notion of anti-corruption. The answer is more simple. These leaders have to stay in power or run the risk that their successors will prosecute them for their crimes when their immunity runs out. Whom do they think they are fooling? Do they think that the rest of the world doesn’t know exactly what is going on in the country? Do they think that the average Nigerian has any illusions about the probity of his leaders or institutions? Is there anyone over the age of seven in Nigeria who has not been hassled by a policeman, an okada driver, a teacher or another authority figure engaged in some form of petty corruption? What kind of self-delusional arrogance assumes that the Nigerian people and the international community will put all this aside and call it ‘democracy’?
In recent months there has been a constitutional forum meeting to evaluate the way forward in pursuing Nigerian democracy (which has had its agenda hijacked). The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu, has pronounced (in South Africa) that the former President Ibrahim B. Babangida (‘IBB’) cannot run for the Presidency in the next election in 2007 (without saying why). The head of the ruling party (‘PDP’) has been dismissed and has writen a letter attacking the President; the PDP has purged itself by denying registration to Obasanjo’s political opponents. Several governors are under pressure; some are barred from the U.S.; others from Britain; Orji Kalu has written an eight-page denunciation of the President which has had wide international circulation; and the battle between the President, Obasanjo, and his partner in crime, Atiku Abubakar (the Vice-President), is still the core issue at the centre of Nigerian national politics.
This is nothing new for Nigeria; it is all routine business. However, for some reason, the Nigerians think that the rest of the world doesn’t know exactly what is going on in the country; how much is being stolen; and where the money is going. This is a foolish conceit. Every day the Nigerian economy loses between 150,000 and 320,000 barrels of oil. These are stolen by ‘bunkerers’, who have small tanker vessels which load the oil in the Delta and tranship this stolen oil to offshore tankers which deliver this stolen oil to other West African states. Further inland illegal tanker trucks load their stolen oil and refined products and drive these into neighbouring countries for black market sale. At the current price of around $50 per barrel this amounts to a ‘leakage’ of around US$7.5 to US$16 million a day. On a monthly basis this amounts to around US$365 million or US$4.4 billion a year. This illegal trade was pioneered under President Abacha when Akhigbe, Victor Ombu and Ibrahim Ogohi perpetrated the smuggling of petroleum products from Port Harcourt and Warri to neighboring West African countries. Between the month of June and December 1996, Nigeria lost a total of 202,130 Metric Tonnes of petroleum products to smuggling with the connivance of Rear Admiral Mike Akhigbe, Victor Ombu and Ibrahim Ogohi. It hasn’t stopped since then.
Who are these bunkerers? Recently, an aerial surveillance of Lagos coastal waters revealed no fewer than 50 vessels and boats being used for oil theft. Minister of State for Transport, Alhaji Musa Mohammed said the survey extended up to 10 miles into Lagos waters. The minister, who expressed shock at the findings, said that operators had no license for the vessels and boats and that they were not manifested. There are even more vessels in the Delta. Earlier this year three prominent naval officers were reprimanded and one dismissed for their part in this illegal bunkering. Several vessels had been captured. There are fifteen such vessels arrested in the Delta. There is no mystery in Nigeria to whom these vessels belong and into whose pockets the revenues stream.
The most shocking bombshell was dropped by a ship owner and active stakeholder in the industry, Isaac Jolapamo, to the effect that 15 more vessels are currently roaming the Nigerian waters doing illegal bunkering. Testifying before the House of Representatives panel probing the missing vessel, Jolapamo alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), major and independent oil marketers patronise these vessels which he said are "owned and managed by known international crooks." According to Jolapamo, these vessels and their customers engage in round-tripping with refined oil and stolen crude oil which they sell at rock bottom prices at the international market. He also revealed that the bunkering vessels change names at random in a bid to beat coastal surveillance by security agents. In this way, they are able to clandestinely carry out their illicit trade which oil companies in Nigeria claim has been costing the nation $ 100 million weekly. Equally disturbing is the allegation that three Nigerian banks are being investigated for allegedly funding this bunkering. They funded the recently exposed MT African Pride bunkering activities to the tune of $ 15 million. In August last year, the Navy impounded a tanker reportedly laden with 15,000 barrels of crude oil. Also impounded within the same period for similar offence were five other vessels namely MT Jimoh, MT Efunyo, MT Cape Breton I, MT Destiny and MT Betty Nello. These are expensive vessels to charter and operate so bank assistance is welcome. This backing for this bunkering goes to the top.
It is widely believed that both the President and the Vice-President, as well as key members of the PDP, condone or participate in the illegal oil bunkering (stealing of crude and refined products) which represented almost 300,00 bbl/day in 2003. When a real effort at anti-corruption was undertaken by the journalists of the “Insider”, retribution was swift and severe. The editor-in-chief, Chucks Onwudinjo, and Janet Mba-Afolabi, both executive editors of Insider, a weekly magazine, were picked up by men of the State Security Services. Their arrest and detention were on the orders of Atiku Abubakar, the vice-president. They were arrested on Monday, November 24, 2004
While the nation enjoyed Ed-el-fitri public holiday, the trio cooled their heels at the Panti Police Station in Yaba, Lagos where they were detained for a story the Insider ran in its November 24, 2004 edition. The story, which made the magazine's cover alleged that Abubakar and a close colleague were behind a bunkering ring recently smashed at the Forcados and Escravos Creeks.
Specifically, Atiku was accused of being behind three of the vessels, MT Gloria. MT Tina and MT Sara, which had about 4,000 metric tonnes of crude oil aboard, while his colleague was allegedly linked to two vessels, MT Berinelo and MT Breton 1 with 17,800 metric tonnes aboard. The eight ships captured in the bunkering deal collectively had about 124 million barrels on board valued at N35 billion.
On August 30, security officials attached to the Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, attacked and beat into coma, Akintunde Akinleye, a photojournalist with the Daily Independent newspaper. He was eventually compensated in a face-saving mission by the Vice President. He received $1,900 and N56,287.00 cash. There is a widespread belief that Atiku and his front men are major figures in oil thievery in Nigeria and Sao Tome. This is the type of corruption which is very hard to confront.
It should also be noted that there are no provisions in the Nigerian constitution or laws which empowers the Vice-President to order the arrest and detention of journalists because he felt they had defamed him. There is due process in Nigerian law and this isn’t it. However, it serves as a warning to all who want to fight corruption that if they mention the names of the members of the inner circle of corruption, e.g. Atiku, they will likely face extrajudicial attack and arrest.
Recently Atiku’s name came up with the arrest of several more vessels engaged in the bunkering trade. His partner, this time, was Audu Ogbeh, the erstwhile head of the PDP national party. Ogbeh wrote a public letter to Obasanjo complaining about the catastrophe in the state of Ananmbra, where the Governor (‘Ngige’) had a falling out with his ‘godfather’ (Chief Chris Ubah) and the police and the godfather kidnapped the governor and forced him to resign. Of course, when he was freed, he renounced the resignation. This became an important case because each side agreed that the last election was won by fraud and bribery; only not everyone paid the full value of the bribes. The last election in Anambra was the deteriorating relationship between a different Governor (Mbadinuju) and his ‘godfather’ (Emeka Offor). The end was the same, an imbroglio over who was entitled to which corrupt payment and which government contract.
The head of Naval Staff reported daily to the President’s office of the bunkering activities of the Vice-president and the head of the PDP. Apparently, according to the Navy, this duo made off with over $400 million in the last two and one-half years. When things came to a head the pair were warned off and no public exposure or anti-corruption charges filed. No one expects any charges to emerge as this process is part of the battle for the 2007 election in which Atiku claims the right to stand. The head of the EFCC, Ribadu, has filed no suit. Perhaps he is too embarrassed by the news that his mistress in Accra is living in a mansion with chauffeurs and servants paid for by the anti crime commissioner. The Deputy head of the senate is not likely to bring charges as his multimillion dollar hotel holdings in the Gambia have become public knowledge. The Oil Minister is not likely to press charges since the Oil Minister is the President.
The Nigerian leadership struggle is characterised by the mutual blackmail of one corrupt politician threatening the exposure of the other. The next election is being fought over who can be elected who can be safely allowed to take the job without indicting the current leadership. None of this is a mystery to the Nigerian public. They suffer from no electricity, polluted water and air, ethnic and religious violence, failing public services, dangerous hospitals, closed universities and an income of less than $1 a day. Nigeria’s claim to a write-off of its debt is more than ludicrous – it is preposterous. Nigeria is producing (officially) 2.35 million barrels of oil a day at around $50 per barrel or around $115 million a day. Its budget was set at a price of oil at under $30 a day, so there is a windfall profit of at least $20 a barrel per day from high oil prices or $46 million a day or $16.8 billion a year. This ‘rainy day’ fund is kept in a special account in a number of private banks which helps fund their liquidity ratios.
The Nigerians say that this money, or at least some of it, should be returned to the Nigerian people in terms of improved services, better roads, better schools and a better life. Experience says that this in unlikely, with or without a coup. The gap between the agbadas (the powerful people in fancy dress) and the Nigerian people is too wide to even contemplate. Instead there will be more of the same; grinding poverty, destroyed opportunities and the destruction of hope. This doesn’t count the vast wealth accumulated by the politicians and generals from the granting of oil leases; in Nigeria and in the Joint Development Zone with Sao Tome. All the famous names are there, and their wives and children. There is no point listing them because the whole world knows who they are. When the Nigerian governors and officials show up in London or Potomac, Maryland to buy their multi-million pound houses, or their children buy expensive apartments for cash, no one is so naïve to think these vast millions come from their salaries or pension cheques or the sale of regular quantities of palm oil. This is oil and gas money and no one is fooled. How they got their private hands on this money is the shame and pity of Nigeria. So, when the Nigerians roll up asking for help from the West in reducing their burdens, the answer should be that these burdens will be eased when the burden on the Nigerian people is lifted. When Atiku complains that he is being unfairly treated perhaps he will answer the question asked of him in America by a congressman after the FBI raided his house,”How did you, as a customs officer, accumulate sufficient wealth to endow an American style university (about £350 million) in Nigeria?” When Obasanjo lobbies for a third term he should be asked if he wouldn’t just be satisfied with immunity from prosecution for what was done in his first two terms. Or, as they say “Bí a bá tọ̀ sílé, onípò a mọ ipò” (If someone wets the bed, each person should know where he or she slept.).
Dr. Gary K. Busch is the publisher of Ocnus.net. He was a board member of Transparency International. This article is published with the permission of Ocnus.net. (Visit the Website of elendureports.com for this article)
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Why we proposed third term - Hambagda Public hearing holds Jan By Habeeb I. Pindiga
For the first time since the most recent third term controversy broke, chairman of the subcommittee on the executive of the National Assembly Joint Committee for the Review of the 1999 Constitution, Senator Omar Hambagda yesterday spoke on why his panel proposed a fresh term for the president and governors. He said the idea was brought in by some of the subcommittee members who claimed that these were the views of their constituencies. Shortly before Hambagda spoke, details emerged that the Ibrahim Mantu-led constitution review panel would hold its zonal public hearings between January 8 and 20, 2006, where the third term controversy among other constitutional amendments would be subjected to public debate. The public hearing, according to a time-table for the exercise obtained exclusively by Daily Trust yesterday, would last for two days in each of the six zones as follows: Bauchi (Northeast) from January 8 to 9, Kaduna (Northwest) from January 11 to 12, Ibadan (Southwest) from January 13 to 14, Lafia, (North central) from January 15 to 16, Enugu (Southeast) from January 17 to 18 and Port Harcourt (South-south) from January 19 to 20. Hambagda, whose subcommittee proposed three options on tenure of the president and governors, including a three term of four years, told a group of select journalists in Abuja yesterday that some unnamed members of the subcommittee introduced the idea of third term during its meetings and though the proposal did not get consensus approval from the panellists, it was reflected in the report because it got adequate backing. He, however, refused to name the third term proponents as, according to him, this would be “going too far”. According to Hambagda the rules of the committee mandate each member to consult his constituency and bring forward their views to the panel, and that since the third term proponents in the subcommittee claimed to be submitting the opinion of their people, there was no way the proposal would be jettisoned. The subcommittee in its report to the main panel proposed three options on tenure, namely the present four-year single term, five year renewable term and three terms of four years. “Each position has its own support and had its own argument and we decided that we could not take a decision at the subcommittee level on this issue, that all the suggestions of members should be pushed to the main committee who would either take a decision before going to public hearing or they should take everything to the public hearing. We were ill-equipped to take a firm a decision on an issue as weighty as this. So we pushed the issue to the main committee. So technically there was no recommendation from the executive subcommittee on tenure.” He said. Asked where the third term idea emanated from, Hambagda said “If a member says that he is coming from his constituency and this is the opinion of his constituency and he is making a recommendation, and you already gave people green light that they should source opinions and not come on their own, and somebody brings such an opinion, what do you tell him? To shut up? You don’t do that. Every member came here representing a constituency and if somebody has an opinion he believes is informed by the need of his constituency you cannot say cut it off. And therefore if you ask a committee to make recommendation, the purpose of representativeness in the committee is to make sure that the members represent various parts of Nigeria…. People can come with any form of opinion at any stage.” Though he admitted that the question of tenure was among the contentious issues before the subcommittee, the lawmaker denied ever being pressurised or bribed to support third term but did not say whether same applied to his colleagues. He said the only money known to have exchanged hands was N2.5 million being vote for the logistics and other subcommittee expenses. Besides Hambagda, other members of the executive subcommittee are Senator Patrick Osakwe (Delta), Senator Usman Umar (Kano), Senator David Mark (Benue), Senator Ifeanyi Araraume (Imo), Senator Hosea Ehinlawo (Ondo), Hon Akinlade Abiodun (Ekiti), Hon Mao Ohuabunwa (Abia), Hon Iquo Minimah (Cross River), Hon Ado Sidi Ali (FCT), Hon Abdurrauf Tukur (Kaduna), Hon. Bala Ngilari (Adamawa), Hon Nsini Umossoh (Akwa Ibom) and the speaker of the Niger state House of Assembly. The 80-member Mantu-committee is expected to kick off series of public hearings to lay before the public the report of its subcommittees. name the third term proponents as, according to him, this would be “going too far”. According to Hambagda the rules of the committee mandate each member to consult his constituency and bring forward their views to the panel, and that since the third term proponents in the subcommittee claimed to be submitting the opinion of their people, there was no way the proposal would be jettisoned. The subcommittee in its report to the main panel proposed three options on tenure, namely the present four-year single term, five year renewable term and three terms of four years. “Each position has its own support and had its own argument and we decided that we could not take a decision at the subcommittee level on this issue, that all the suggestions of members should be pushed to the main committee who would either take a decision before going to public hearing or they should take everything to the public hearing. We were ill-equipped to take a firm a decision on an issue as weighty as this. So we pushed the issue to the main committee. So technically there was no recommendation from the executive subcommittee on tenure.” He said. Asked where the third term idea emanated from, Hambagda said “If a member says that he is coming from his constituency and this is the opinion of his constituency and he is making a recommendation, and you already gave people green light that they should source opinions and not come on their own, and somebody brings such an opinion, what do you tell him? To shut up? You don’t do that. Every member came here representing a constituency and if somebody has an opinion he believes is informed by the need of his constituency you cannot say cut it off. And therefore if you ask a committee to make recommendation, the purpose of representativeness in the committee is to make sure that the members represent various parts of Nigeria…. People can come with any form of opinion at any stage.” Though he admitted that the question of tenure was among the contentious issues before the subcommittee, the lawmaker denied ever being pressurised or bribed to support third term but did not say whether same applied to his colleagues. He said the only money known to have exchanged hands was N2.5 million being vote for the logistics and other subcommittee expenses. Besides Hambagda, other members of the executive subcommittee are Senator Patrick Osakwe (Delta), Senator Usman Umar (Kano), Senator David Mark (Benue), Senator Ifeanyi Araraume (Imo), Senator Hosea Ehinlawo (Ondo), Hon Akinlade Abiodun (Ekiti), Hon Mao Ohuabunwa (Abia), Hon Iquo Minimah (Cross River), Hon Ado Sidi Ali (FCT), Hon Abdurrauf Tukur (Kaduna), Hon. Bala Ngilari (Adamawa), Hon Nsini Umossoh (Akwa Ibom) and the speaker of the Niger state House of Assembly. The 80-member Mantu-committee is expected to kick off series of public hearings to lay before the public the report of its subcommittees
___________________ Feel me? Ofu onye ana asi unu abia go. - Ednut Igbo-American . www.airamericaradio.com visit her. Posts: 2450 | From: Mother Earth | Registered: Mar 2001
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Watching the unfolding drama of the third term farce, Nigerians must feel trapped in a time warp. Nigerians are caught in a sense of déjà vu, assailed by an oppressive consciousness of having traveled down this path before. Once again, the vultures are out with their voluble verities and diseased proclamations. We are hearing that one man and one man alone has the requisite credentials to steer the Nigerian ship of state. It is claimed that, unless President Olusegun Obasanjo retains his address at Aso Rock after 2007, Nigeria is doomed. Cash-and-carry pundits are asserting that a nation’s dreams are dependent on one man’s alleged leadership acumen. Across the length of Nigeria, a band of hired troubadours of propaganda are trying to sell a dud: that Obasanjo is coterminous with Nigeria, that Nigeria’s aspirations are reducible to the president’s egotistic yearnings.
Nothing about the current bugaboo of third term is puzzling in the least. Any Nigerian who knew his right hand from his left during the Ibrahim Babangida regime would recognise familiar echoes. Babangida consecrated the ploy of interminable transitions. He established a notoriety for setting goals he had no intention of meeting. He elevated public deception to an art form. A believer in the idea that all Nigerians could be fooled all of the time, Babangida bobbed, weaved, feinted and dribbled his way from one false transition to another. Through it all, the dictator’s sly creation, the infamous Association for a Better Nigeria led by the ever politically promiscuous Arthur Nzeribe, claimed that nobody other than Babangida could rule Nigeria. At one point, the ABN even threatened to ask a court to order Babangida not to vacate office. A Nigeria without Babangida as its ruler, Nzeribe and other hired apologists insisted, was inconceivable. We all know how that particular scheme ended. Seized by a narcissistic fascination with his own “genius,” Babangida finally dribbled himself into a corner. Disgraced and disesteemed, he was compelled to retire to his opulent mansion in Minna.
Nigeria, needless to say, outlasted him and his vultures. Sani Abacha soon usurped the throne, branding his era both with his intellectual puniness as well as moral and ethical aridity. In time, he too was infected with the virus of self-perpetuation. Determined to stay in power unto death, Abacha raised his choir of vultures. Shameless griots, they traversed the land preaching the creed of Abacha’s indispensability. Among his loudest champions were fart-prone men who grandly tagged themselves royal fathers. These royal liars and other amoral scavengers paraded the corridors of Aso Rock, serenading Abacha for a fee. Nigerians could not be deceived, for they knew Abacha much better than the men extolling him. They knew that the dictator who had hijacked power lacked the mental and moral credentials to preside even over the affairs of his village. Yet, here he was presuming to lead a nation. And here were his hirelings, in what amounted to an assault on language and a violation of logic, inflating the man. With neither shame nor irony, they accused Abacha of being dynamic and visionary. They alleged that he was God-sent. Some of them said he was the only person, man or woman, with the wisdom and political flair to hold Nigeria together. They alleged that Nigeria had witnessed unprecedented economic growth under Abacha’s watch. A few of them even said they would go on exile if Abacha ever left power. Abacha, as it turned out, would die ignobly in what Karl Meier, an insightful biographer of Nigeria, has described as a coup from heaven.
Nigeria, alas, did not perish with Abacha. Nor did the vultures who propped up the maximum dictator make good on their pledge to flee to exile. In what must rank as the ultimate crude irony, the Obasanjo administration rescued many of them from their deserved political hegira. Today, a good number of them are in the forefront of the chorus for a third term for Mr. Obasanjo. As in the past, the present plot began rather surreptitiously and is only now been tested publicly. As in the past, the rhetoric for Obasanjo’s third term agenda has contrived a tone of high-mindedness calculated to make a bitter pill seem palatable. One advocate of this political blight, a spokesman for the Nigerian private sector, recently argued that fidelity to the constitutional prescription of two terms should be subordinated to the goal of sustaining economic reforms instituted by the president. Other promoters of the toxic idea have contended that, unless Obasanjo stays on beyond 2007, the president’s war on corruption might be compromised.
Nigerians had better wake up and reject this game of befuddlement before the sowers of falsehood take the nation to the edge of disaster. That Obasanjo has instituted economic reforms is a fiction that has begotten its small band of believers in Aso Rock and in some isolated Western circles. True reform is systemic and institutional, not a private fancy. If Obasanjo’s reform requires Obasanjo’s physical presence to sustain it, then it is a dud. What would happen if, being mortal, Obasanjo were to be incapacitated today? Does it mean that Nigeria would then be condemned to utter failure? Why are the president’s handlers and their quarry carrying on with the signature moves patented by Babangida and Abacha?
Let us give the president his due: He has talked often, and at length, about ethical and economic reforms. If words could transform an economy, Obasanjo would have re-made Nigeria into an economic juggernaut. If language could eviscerate corruption, Obasanjo would have long given us a nation free of the vestiges and scars of graft. Alas, the president has been notoriously averse to translating his words into action. His budgetary process remains a huge mess, with expenditure bearing little relationship to budgetary allocation. Nobody who closely monitored the wastage of funds on the Abuja stadium or the squandering of resources in the hosting of the Commonwealth summit and the All-Africa Games would suggest that this government understands the principle of accountability and transparency. A president who would fire a fastidious auditor-general for uncovering huge overspending by government departments cannot pretend to be reform-minded. A president who presides over the oil sector without answering to Nigerians can only feign a concern with reform.
This presidency has been just as unimpressive in the ethical department. We have a president who fraternises with men who utilize abduction of a governor to advance their illegal goal of hijacking the resources of a state. Such a man is far from a reformer. A president who has deformed a war against corruption into a campaign to ambush his corrupt political foes while shielding his corrupt political friends does not possess the substance of a moral reformer. A man who has refashioned his political party into an undemocratic behemoth, a club whose membership is now exclusively for yes-men, cannot legitimately answer to a reformer. Obasanjo’s third term designs are at odds with Nigeria’s larger corporate interests. He and his supporters know that there is no soundness to any argument they may advance. One is not surprised, then, to hear of stupendous amounts being set aside for bribing legislators to back an untenable and ruinous idea. This is one fight Nigerians must not leave to God. Before the vultures finish their reconnaissance and then swoop to effectuate their scandalous scheme, Nigerians ought to stand up as one and say a loud no!
___________________ Feel me? Ofu onye ana asi unu abia go. - Ednut Igbo-American . www.airamericaradio.com visit her. Posts: 2450 | From: Mother Earth | Registered: Mar 2001
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