July
9th, 2012
Dr.
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR
President,
Federal Republic of Nigeria
State
House
Aso
Drive
Abuja
Mr.
President,
ON THE STATE OF THE NATION
We
write respectfully to demand your constitutional authority and moral
responsibility in respect of alarming portends for our great and beloved
Nigeria.
We
are a cross section of Nigerians, privileged to be in various sectors of our
economy, professions and society, who are deeply concerned about signs that our
beloved nation is descending into anarchy and hopelessness, compounded by a
palpable threat that the nation itself will become insolvent. We make an
earnest call on you Mr. President to swiftly and effectively deploy the
enormous power of your office as well as the immense national resources
available to you to arrest the national drift and despondency before it becomes
irreversible.
In
this past year of your presidency, Nigeria has witnessed an unending spate of
bombings and killings of innocent citizens; reckless and unchecked wholesale
looting of our national treasury and natural resources on a scale largely
unknown before; a growing national debt without commensurate development and
progress and above all a signal failure from the national government to outline
a vision for rebirth and progress, and a floundering without direction in
critical government functions and agencies. The ship of state under your
esteemed captainship seems to be dangerously adrift.
Bombing
and Killing of the Innocent
Boko
Haram began its campaign in 2009 of ‘Bombings and Killing of the Innocent’ and
defenseless citizens in places such as Borno, Bauchi, Kano, Yobe, Kaduna,
Adamawa and Abuja. The accurate number and identities of those maimed and
killed in these attacks have remained unknown. Estimates by civil society
groups rendering support services to the victims suggest that the number of
those that died may be much more than official figures suggest, including
thousands who may have been maimed, displaced or hiding from attacks in
make-shift camps without adequate food and vital supplies.
While there has been no respite to this campaign, which
undermines the sovereign character and authority of the Nigerian state itself,
there is at the same time, no discernible coherence in the response of our
government to these atrocities and the collapse of public safety within our
territory.
Mr.
President, the urgent question to which your citizens demand your answer is:
When is our national government going to formulate and articulate a rational,
effective and progressive approach to a national crisis and when will we see
decisive action within the law to tackle this growing menace and halt the slide
into anarchy?
National
Debt and Sovereign Solvency
Since
paying off the country’s debt to the Paris debt club in 2006, Nigeria began to
borrow massively and there is little development in any sector to show for the
scale of borrowing. So far, Nigeria’s debt profile has risen to US$39.72
billion (about N6.02 trillion) with external debt put at US$5.398 billion while
domestic debt is N5.21 trillion. This debt profile is more than the Federal
Government’s yearly budget as its external component translates to 2.76 percent
of Gross Domestic Product, GDP, and its domestic component translates to 17.53
percent of the GDP. This debt profile is unsustainable and deeply troubling. It
is doubtful that we have the capacity to repay the money, considering our
annual revenue profile and the profligate corruption and leakages in all
sectors of government.
Between
2010 and 2011, N2.8 trillion were scammed from Nigeria’s treasury and allegedly
spent on fuel subsidies, from an annual budget of N240B. The response of our
national government was to attempt to remove the subsidy without any
satisfactory explanation to the people of the reason for the over 100% increase
resulting to a complete shutdown of the country for 2 weeks in January 2012.
This led to the “fuel subsidy scam probe” by an Adhoc committee of the House of
Representatives. The probe revealed mindboggling corruption in the oil industry
involving persons and groups with connection to your government.
Mr.
President, it is now several months since the report was adopted and sent to
you for implementation. There has been no acknowledgment of this report from
our national government and the perpetrators still walk the streets with
blatant impunity. As if that was not enough, media reports indicate that the
N888B budgeted for 2012 subsidy (despite the increase of the pump price of fuel
from N65 to N97) is almost exhausted and a further N624B is being sought and
will likely be successfully appropriated by supplementary budget. When you add
to this national bleeding, the N155B scandal of Malabo oil and the N273B stolen
from the Pension Fund, you begin to appreciate the very alarming threat of an
imminent sovereign insolvency, which is frightening to any well meaning
Nigerian.
Finally
as we write Mr. President, Nigeria is losing about
20 percent of its oil production to theft involving high profile people in and
out of government, which has led to a significant shortfall in production
target. The unit cost of production per barrel, which gets to the terminal, is
also going up and projected to rise by about 500% to about $10 from about a
2006 baseline of $2. Presently, it's reported to be costing about $7-$8 per
barrel. It is therefore a multi-pronged challenge: prices are off the cliff,
production costs are up a steep gradient; production itself is shut-in and
unable to get to terminal and new investments can't be made. The price of oil
is now about $80, which is about the budgeting benchmark. This effectively
means that the slush fund called Excess Crude Account has been wiped out. As it
is, Nigeria needs to borrow to cover all capital expenditure (CAPEX) and part
of the recurrent for this year. So, this is the context in which your
government is seeking the syndicated facility of $7.9 billion which will take
our dollar denominated debt to possibly over $13B without the earnings to
support it?
Mr. President, this scenario threatens seriously our credit
rating and if, as expected, yields begin to go up on our sovereign paper, our
nation will be looking not at a liquidity problem (which is regular) but at a
solvency issue, which is of a different and potentially cataclysmic order. It
should be underlined that we are going down this thorny and uncharted path
apparently because of incapacity, grand corruption and misplaced priorities at
various levels of government. If the citizens of this country are going to be
committed to this level of debt, the least we expect is that your government
takes the fight against corruption more seriously than just rhetoric.
Our
Demand
Mr.
President, we demand firmly but respectfully, that you personally exercise the
authority and responsibility of our presidency to arrest this drift in the
country and lift the pall of gloom that now hangs over our future.
We
require you Sir, to act immediately to address the security situation in the
country, implement the report of the Oil Subsidy Scam; halt the large-scale
theft of crude oil in the Niger Delta and bring swiftly
and publicly to justice those involved in the pension scam and Malabo oil
scandal.
Respectfully
Sir, at a time of palpable national crisis, a president cannot be silent. It is
exactly at such a time that the nation is entitled to moral and legal
leadership and above all accountability. It is at such a historic moment that
the highest test of national and personal character falls like a mantle before
you. If you will not or cannot pick up this mantle, then your presidency is
entirely void of its substance and legitimacy.
Your
citizens demand that you be president that they elected or you be nothing to
us.
Respectfully
yours,
For
N-Katalyst:
Dr
Jibrin
Ibrahim
Prof. Mohammed
Tabiu
Saudatu
Mahdi
Bilkisu
Yusuf
Ayisha
Osori
Nasir
El-rufaii
Yemi
Candide-Johnson
(SAN)
Ayo Obe
Saka
Azimazi
Maryam Uwais
Bashir
Yusuf Ibrahim
Innocent
Chukwuma
Chris
Kwaja
Hassan
Hussaini
Dr
A. S.
Mohammed
Nsongurua
Udombana
Asma’u
Joda
Nsirimovu
Anyakwee
Dr
Kabir az
Zubair
Mbasekei
Martins Obono
Dr
Hussaini
Abdu
Dr
Arabo Ibrahim Bayo
Fatima
Balla
Yakusu
Aliyu
Yusufu
Pam
Dr Hakeem
Baba Ahmed
Bibi
Y
Bakare
Ayesha Imam
Usman
Bugaje
Yunusa Yau
Maikatifa
Abubakar
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