The
inspiration
This is an unusual blog because what I have decided to
do is review excerpts from an original news story on recent events in Nigeria
that leaves one literally uninspired by anything the government is up to
today.
The Financial Times in an analysis published two
evenings ago titled Nigeria:
Power outage by Xan Rice
homed in on a number of issues we need to keep in focus to begin to turn our
country around.
What makes this analysis very interesting is the innocuous
use of nuance and language to convey very deep truths that could be missed if
the article were skimmed rather than thoroughly read through; Xan Rice is in
the thick of things, he is the West African correspondent for the Financial
Times and based in Nigeria.
An appalling
report card
“This is our chance to change Nigeria.” That was meant to be Mr
Jonathan’s job.
Goodluck Jonathan had promised an era of
transformation, a breath of fresh air which was supposed to presage radical
change, the change for the better that Nigerians have hoped for, for a long
time. The implication of this statement is that he is NOT doing his job or he
is doing his job so badly that people have had to come out on the streets to
protest.
Nine months on, merely maintaining the dysfunctional status quo appears
too much of a challenge.
Now, this is 9 months from getting elected with his
own mandate; it is however 21 months from when Goodluck Jonathan took full
control of the affairs of the country. The damning assessment here is that he has
failed to rise up to the challenge and there does not seem to be any indication
that he will be able to do the job. The more disconcerting part missing from
this statement is we might have another 39 months of this.
Meanwhile, the president’s bungled attempt to remove fuel subsidies …
has raised serious questions about his capacity to push through reform.
This is looking like a very bad report card already.
For instance, the meaning of bungled
speaks volumes, with the help of the Free Dictionary, I found the following
definitions.
- To work or act ineptly or inefficiently.
- To handle badly; botch.
- A clumsy or inept performance; a botch.
All of which point to a perception of inexperience, an
aura of cluelessness, a pall of rank incompetence and being oblivious of
consequence; the result of which will suggest this man will not be able to
bring change to Nigeria no matter how hard he tries.
Copyright
considerations
Ideally, I would have liked to excerpt more from the
FT article but for copyright restriction issues which I will not like to
infringe upon without appearing to reproduce the article here – others that I
have shared the article with I have asked to read with the mind of an Englishman
because it is loaded with meaning such that one should really read between the
lines.
Following
the money
However, I did post some tweets with regards to that
article and I will use them in completing this blog.
"That subsidy amounted to up to $10bn last year,
more than double the figure in 2010." is.gd/OOnFPu #OccupyNigeria
The question to ask here is whether the Nigerian consumption
of fuel doubled in 2011 or maybe the cost of fuel did – there is no indication
that any of those situations were the case, leading the House of
Representatives Ad-Hoc Committee chairman investigating the fuel subsidy issue
to suggest there were sharp practices at play.
In other blogs I had written about this fuel subsidy
issue, the matter of how a budget of NGN 250 billion got to a NGN 1.3 trillion
spend which then increased to NGN 1.7 trillion paid as fuel subsidy in 2011 is
still baffling. This is almost 6 times more than the budgeted sum and literally
all those responsible for this atrocious criminal enterprise are still sitting
pretty exculpating themselves in complete denial and buck-passing.
The cost of
patronage
The writer then goes to suggest where all that money
went.
"There are reasons to suspect some of this cash
may have been used for electioneering." Suspect? FT Are you kidding me?
This no doubt paints those whose electioneering quests
needed serious bankrolling like the President and his coterie of supporters as people
who dipped their hands in the Nigerian treasury with impunity.
As we all know, the do-or-die atmosphere that pervades
the quest of political office in Nigeria is predicated by the fact that the
spoils of office are amazingly great and better than any occupation anyone can
have in Nigeria. The recognition of this largesse means those who must ward off
viable opposition need to pay off their opponents handsomely such that their
thirst for having access to the national coffers is assuaged.
Patronage is a very expensive undertaking in Nigeria
with brown envelopes being so last century and favours doled out as cars and if
you are in deep, you might even get an oil block or have the opportunity to
setup a briefcase company to push around paper oil deliveries walking away with
unbelievable returns completely oblivious of whether oil comes from sunflowers
or peanuts, perish the thought of know what the colour of crude oil is.
Where did all
the money go?
"Foreign exchange reserves have
halved to $33bn since 2008." Where did the money go? Who has been spending
it? #OccupyNigeria
This is where we have no confidence in our government at
all, because this indicates $33bn has been spent of our reserves and this is
apart from other income that has come into the Nigerian treasury and there is
nothing to show for it – not in infrastructure or any social development scheme
– it is more than a leap of faith to now expect us to believe that the paltry
savings from the fuel subsidy removal will now be ploughed into any scheme for
the benefit of the people.
The government in its prodigal profligacy uses over
70% in recurrent expenditure and shows no signs of restructure, reform or
restraint. They are demanding sacrifices of Nigerians and living large in
wanton excess and ostentatiously unbelievable luxury on the literally broken
backs of the people completely unconcerned as long as their greed for more
money for patronage and control can be satisfied with burdening an already
desperately impoverished people.
These are the many things that gave rise to the
#OccupyNigeria movement globally and seeks to get to the bottom of the real
cost of the fuel subsidy before we can honestly look towards its removal. If
the, as it were floating cost of the fuel subsidy has a spectrum ranging from
NGN 250 billion to NGN 1.7 trillion, a span of NGN 1.45 trillion means we do
not know what is going on and you really cannot remove an indeterminate
especially when we cannot establish with all certainty whilst the cost of the
fuel subsidy doubled between 2010 and 2011.
Even those who have strongly advocated the removal of
fuel subsidy for any of their myriad reasons, some quite valid and
indisputable, have to see that with the revelations at the Ad-Hoc committee,
the government was not anywhere near ready to do this if all they did was pay
any bills that came in to the tune of NGN 1.45 trillion above the amount they budgeted
for 2011 – this just condones corruption to a such an unprecedented level and breath-taking
impunity.
Not with
these people
So, the writer concludes with an admonition.
“It is up to
the leadership to take advantage of this rather than be overwhelmed ...” http://is.gd/OOnFPu #OccupyNigeria
The elephant in the room is the leadership –
complicit, involved and exacerbated a corrupt enterprise aided by the agencies
they control with paybacks from those that have a hold on them by reason of the
hefty sums they have invested in this government.
This government does not have clean hands, they are in
spite of the technocrats that appear to give the government a veneer of
credibility the personification of the faceless cabal that have been offered as
the criminal element of the fuel subsidy scheme – the sooner we awake to the
fact that we are in the grip of an unconscionable kakistocracy pretending to
have Nigerian interests at heart, the better it will be for us to rise once
again and seize our country from this brigandage of bandits.
#OccupyNigeria – take your country back.
Acknowledgements
and attribution
This blog is originally inspired by the analysis in Nigeria:
Power outage by Xan Rice, the West African Correspondent for the Financial
Times, the excerpts are fully acknowledged and are used to further the
debate initiated from the article.
