Trillion Naira Bizarre

By Olusegun Adeniyi
“This is a clever attempt to distance Delloitte from the
certification of oil imports to the country by referring to
the firm as Akintola Williams and Co, when in actual fact,
the job was given to Delloitte. Who are they trying to fool?
Now that there is trouble, they are trying to distance
Delloitte from the mess so they can continue to work in
our oil industry. There is no such accounting firm known
as Akintola Williams and Company, on account of a
takeover by Delloitte several years ago.”
—Mr. Robert Ade-Odiachi, Fellow of the Institute of
Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN)
“P. P. P…”, the person holding the bottle of champagne
would shout and as he pops the cork and spills the chilled
wine, his fellow thieves in the room would complete the
rest: “R. A!”. This was 2011 Nigeria and what those people
were celebrating was a multibillion Naira “profit” made
from paper allocations for petroleum products they did
not supply but for which they were paid after greasing
some official palms. The person telling the story of the
monumental debauchery that went on in the name of fuel
subsidy payments in 2010/2011 is himself a marketer. As
he reeled out the names of some colleagues (and people
not into oil business) who allegedly benefited from the
scam and the official collaborators on the take, he claimed
he did not participate because he knew the bubble would
burst somehow. I didn’t argue with him.
The report of the House of Representatives committee on
fuel subsidy payments has indeed revealed how
corruption has graduated in our country from inflation of
contracts to a situation in which some fat cats just sit
down to share public money. Such is the level of decay
that I have in recent weeks heard the names of some
hitherto unknown Nigerians, young men with no visible
means of livelihood, who are now billionaires and own
private jets. With our country now breeding a generation
that believes in wealth without work, it is no surprise that
there are leakages almost everywhere, including at the
Police Pension office where some unconscionable people
feed fat on the misery of retired workers. But before we
examine the high-level corruption that now pervades
every sector of our national life, let’s deal with the
immediate issue of the fuel subsidy scam.
It is rather unfortunate that the federal government does
not seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation we are
dealing with. Sacking the auditors is not only cynical and
diversionary, it presupposes that the government was not
aware of what has been going on in the sector until now.
That is not true. Aside the fact that the CBN has for two
years been warning about the controversial payments,
there are now more revelations. In a public statement on
Monday, one of the sacked auditors, Otunba Olusola
Adekanola, wrote: “We reported several cases of excess
claims which could result in overpayment to some
identified marketers; consistently reported the exclusion of
NNPC PMS laden vessels from inspection by independent
auditors and even subsidy claims from verification;
reported on non-compliance of some identified marketers
and their consignments with the prescribed pre-
importation requirements…” So, as Mr Robert Ade-Odiachi
(uncle Robbie), asks: who is fooling who here?
Because of my involvement in the Nigeria Extractive
Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) to which I was
appointed in February 2004 by President Olusegun
Obasanjo, I have for a long time been pointing out the
monumental graft that is associated with the whole fuel
subsidy regime and I have consistently advocated for its
removal. In fact, in a piece I did for all Sunday
newspapers in March 2009, then in my capacity as
Spokesman to the late president, I highlighted some of
the crooked deals which include the collusion by the
banks, the fraud at the port, the lightering scam in the
name of shipping and the lack of transparency at the
Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPPRA).
On February 3, I explained on this page the fraudulent
progression in fuel subsidy payments over the years. For
instance, in 2006 when we consumed a total of 9.3 billion
litres, N261.1 billion was paid as subsidy. That would give
us an average consumption of about 25.6 million litres
per day. The next year, the total annual consumption had
jumped to 10.2 billion litres at a cost of N278.9 billion in
subsidy payment. That also translated into about 28
million litres per day. By 2008, the national annual
‘consumption’ had become 12.2 billion thus giving us a
daily volume of about 33.4 million litres for which we
paid N633.2 billion as subsidy. Three years later in 2011,
according to figures supplied by the PPPRA, our national
consumption had reached 59 million litres per day with
scandalous fuel subsidy payments, going by figures from
the Farouk Lawan committee. Yet the only exceptional
thing about 2011 was that we held a presidential election!
We must commend Hon Lawan and the entire House
leadership for digging into the cesspool of corruption that
the downstream sector of our petroleum industry has
become and having the gut to make public their report. It
is now clear that except the president can deal with all the
people who colluded to gang-rape our country, it will be
difficult for him to take the necessary (but now heavily
compromised) decision to remove the remaining fuel
subsidy.
Still on China
I came back from Beijing at the weekend after attending
the seminar on “Media and Publications in Developing
countries” organized by the Chinese government. Two
weeks ago, I started a series on “The Forbidden City”
which is based on my experience and the lessons learnt.
Please watch out for the concluding part on this page.
Observations on the Yar’Adua Book
By Sam Oyovbaire
Greetings and compliments, Segun. I did not rush to
obtain a copy of your book, “Power, Politics and Death: A
front-row account of Nigeria under President Yar’Adua”.
But I bought a paper-back copy at N9,000 (even when
advertised for N5,000) some weeks ago at a small hotel
located at the Abuja Central District. I wish to commend
you for the flow of your thoughts as well as the quality of
the narrative. I wasn’t quite sure whether the
observations I am about to make should be done in the
mode of a book review or simply rendered as informal
comments only. The press celebration of the book almost
made me to want to do an intellectual review but on
second thought, I will like you to regard these comments
in the mode of informal conversation.
For me, the essence of the book is what the book is not
about. There is no way in which you would have devoted
the book to the story or analysis of your experience under
President Jonathan when he was Vice President. Your
large silence of GEJ’s side in Yar’Adua’s presidency is,
therefore, quite understandable. One good illustration of
what I have in mind appears at pages 283-284 where you
recorded the early frustration of GEJ as Vice President –
when he sought the permission of President Yar’Adua to
return the Vice President’s office to its original status of a
self-accounting institution but which Yar’Adua rejected.
This experience demonstrates the poverty of our country’s
leadership to build institutions rather than being glorified
by the glamour, pettiness and emptiness of personal traits
and behavior. Indeed, Dele Olojede indicated it in the
second paragraph of the Foreword to the book. The Vice
President’s office grew from the military presidency of
Murtala Mohammed/Obasanjo government between 1975
and 1979 during which the late Shehu Yar’Adua as the
Chief of General Staff built that office, and which,
subsequently, was inherited and instituted as office of the
Vice President in 1979 till date. As you yourself know, the
personal acrimony between OBJ as President and
Abubakar Atiku as Vice President became the undue
excuse for OBJ to import the way the VP’s office is run in
the US, and turned it into a one-accounting line
presidency, thus, denuding the Vice President’s office of
vitality and institutional value and credibility. Segun, the
Yar’Adua presidency cannot be evaluated in the context
only of “power, politics and death” of Yar’Adua without
the story of GEJ which, as I have already said, is not your
concern in doing an otherwise good book. To continue the
inquisition a little bit, do we know whether GEJ, since he
became president about two years ago has reconstituted
the presidency such as to restore the office of the Vice
President to a self-accounting operational status which he
requested Yar’Adua to do for him in 2007?
Let me mention a few issues of substance in the book by
way of critique. One, the view of the press generally, like
in the book by the former editor of PUNCH newspaper,
Azubuike Ishekwene about the crusading faultlessness of
Mr Nuhu Ribadu, the pioneer chairman of EFCC, bothers
me intellectually to no end. The tendency is to portray
Ribadu as a substance of virtue and institutional goodness
without also indicating the corruptive phenomenon which
Ribadu embodied. Chapter two of the book which is
largely on Ribadu contains nothing to show that, good as
Ribadu was, his underserved but favoured two-rung
elevation over and above his professional colleagues in the
Nigeria Police Force within two years as well as the
indication that he could be appointed IGP if OBJ
succeeded in his third term schema conveyed terrible
potentials of institutional corruption which Ribadu
embodied.
I find this relentless posture of the press to which you
also subscribe very annoying. By extension, the same
thing can be said about the loquacious Nasir el-Rufai in all
his self imposed holier-than-thou posture in the
institutional problematic of the underdevelopment of
governance and economy in the country. I do not mean
that these individuals have not demonstrated courage and
elements of virtue, but certainly governance and economy
cannot grow, consolidate and be deemed good with gross
absence of strong institutions. For me, the whole Ribadu
phenomenon was badly founded; more so that it became
highly demonstrated that he fought “his anti-corruption
war” for OBJ and not necessarily for the good of emergent
democracy. For example, where was Ribadu when OBJ
grew within eight years from material poverty to material
excesses including the construction and ownership of
personal educational institutions, a library, faith-oriented
institutions, and a Hilltop family residential mansion? The
press is yet to tell Nigerians the material worth of OBJ
Hilltop mansion compared with IBB Hilltop mansion in
Minna!
Two, on the Niger Delta Summit, you seem silent over the
action, or indeed, non action of Yar’Adua about the
recommendations of the Ledum Mitee Report. Did
Yar’Adua carry his disappointment for not conducting a
Niger Delta Summit in the manner of a national
conference to the receipt and implementation of the
recommendations of the Ledum Mitee Report? Although
not exactly within your purview, the role of GEJ in this
matter worries critical observers of developments in the
Niger Delta.
Three, I find it most inexplicable for you to canvass (p.
151) the view that OBJ should have been “commended for
unilaterally using the excess crude (oil) sales account
which belongs to the three tiers of (government) to pay
for the investment in the power sector” just because the
“situation was grim”. This was crude lawlessness which in
the functioning of a proper democracy should have
attracted impeachment of OBJ, and not commendation.
Four, I am not able to find, throughout the relevant
sections of the book, the persons who constituted
Yar’Adua’s “handlers” “kitchen cabinet” and indeed, “the
cabal” although you argued, with the evidence of el-Rufai,
that the phenomenon of cabal was “a myth created in the
media to neutralize Turai”, wife of Yar’Adua. Five, as an
intellectual observer of the Nigeria press, I consider it as
pleasant humour, your view that Nigerians could be led to
believe a lie repeatedly told by the media (p. 273). I found
out all of these myself years ago even when you were at
your desk in THISDAY that the media spin and twist of
truths or lies can be legitimized and made to become
historical truths. You may recall that some of us (myself,
Chidi Amuta, et al.), for example, contested some of such
matters with journalists as they related to IBB. It will be
an interesting exercise for you, (since you are still very
active with very many years ahead for you in the media)
to conceptualise the subject matter of the role the media
play in the development as well as underdevelopment of
governance in Nigeria within the context of truth or lie
peddling. Finally, I wish, again, to appreciate your book
which to me is an excellent slice of instant history.
-Prof. Oyovbaire is a former Information Minister
NOTE: New copies of the book are now available.
Interested persons should please contact Abideen on
08077364217 or orders@kachifo.com . For online
buyers, the links remain Amazon(Kindle) Smashwords
(Kindle, iPad, and online reading).

#CONSENSUS 2015