By Chido Onumah
For those who know the level of graft
not only in our oil industry, but the gamut of the Jonathan administration, there
is nothing surprising about the report of the Nuhu Ribadu-led Petroleum Revenues
Special Task Force. What is surprising is that it took so long for the
committee’s report to be made “public”. If anything, the report confirms what
we already know: that our brand of democracy is nothing but plain-faced piracy.
Considering the contradictory views
from the government, chances are that if the report did not come to us through
Reuters, it may not have seen the light of day. Now the government, through its
handlers, has gone into overdrive in its effort at damage control and convince
us that there was no attempt at cover up.
The government headlined its response
through its spokesperson, Reuben Abati, an attempt to embarrass the Presidency,
as if anything can indeed embarrass the Jonathan administration. Except, of
course, the government is complicit in the damning indictment as contained in
the committee’s report, I do not know how the report of a committee set up by
the government to review the activities of a particular sector, should
constitute an embarrassment.
It appears the government is more concerned
about managing the so-called leakage than the findings of the committee’s
report. Abati, said the excerpts from the report could not be taken as an
official document because the committee had not formally submitted its report
to the appropriate authority. I agree with him. But he went ahead to expose
himself by saying “as far as the Federal Government was concerned, the report
in the public domain was suspicious”. What makes it suspicious? Is it because
it was revealed by the media?
According to Abati, “It is strange that
government will set up a committee, that report has not been submitted to the
authorities that set up the committee and the report will be found on the pages
of newspapers”. There is nothing strange about this. Abati is a newspaper man
and he ought to know better.
When the President’s Senior Special
Assistant on Public Affairs, Doyin “the-attack-lion” Okupe, weighed in (no pun
intended) he offered this explanation: “what appears to have been irregularly
released prematurely to the media is a draft copy which still requires full
assent of all members of the committee and clarifications and due process from
the originating ministry before the official handing over to the Presidency".
And to clear any doubts, he reminded us that "President Jonathan's resolve
to fight corruption and dig out all the rots in the system should not be
misconstrued or politicized by the opposition as if it is his administration
that is guilty of corruption, rather, he should be commended for taken the bold
step that will ultimately sanitize the polity and the system”.
Much earlier, the country’s controversial
Minister of Petroleum Resources and de facto vice president, Diezani Alison-Madueke,
while reacting to the publication by Reuters had described the report as
a draft and that a committee had been set up by the Ministry of Petroleum
Resources to look into the “differences in perspective on the Ribadu committee
report” and make an “input”. Alison-Madueke
who acknowledged receiving the same report last month and failed to act on it, said
the new committee “will complete its work and submit a
comprehensive report in the next 10 days.”
Interestingly, Alison-Madueke’s
“next ten days” coincides with Friday, November 2, 2012, the day the President directed
that the Ribadu committee report be submitted to him. We eagerly await the
version of the report that will be submitted to the President: the real report
or the one with “input” from the Minister of Petroleum Resources.
The Ribadu committee report, amongst
other things, revealed that $183m signature bonuses from seven discretionary
oil licences awarded by petroleum ministers between 2008 and 2011 were missing.
Three of these “sweetheart deals” occurred from 2010 when Alison-Madueke was
appointed Minister of Petroleum Resources. The report also noted that multi-national oil companies, Shell,
Total and Eni, made “bumper profits from cut-price gas”, at the expense of
Nigerians “while
Nigerian oil ministers handed out licences at their own discretion”.
Writing on this issue, under the title:
“Looting Nigeria to Death: Piracy as Democracy”, from which I extracted the title
of this piece, social activist, Jaye Gaskia, noted, “it is important to
emphasise that there is no way this scale and scope of corruption could have
been perpetrated and perpetuated without the connivance and collaboration of
officials of state institutions, including ministries, departments and
parastatals”!
“It is inconceivable that the current Minister of Petroleum Resources and
chairperson of the board of NNPC is still in office, not sacked and facing
prosecution along with the NNPC board after all these revelations! It is
unthinkable that all the previous petroleum ministers over the last 10 years
have not yet been arrested and are not facing prosecution along with all previous
Group Managing Directors and boards of the NNPC! How can any government and any
political elite be comfortable with the loss of over $100bn in 10 years to
corrupt practices, if such a regime and political elite is not complicit in the
fraud in the first place?”
Gaskia’s intervention, in a sense,
explains why nothing will come out of the Ribadu committee report. This regime and
our political elite are complicit in the unmitigated piracy that has left Nigeria
comatose. Asking
the Jonathan administration to act on the Ribadu committee report is simply
asking it to indict itself. It will not happen!
To hazard a guess, the President
will receive a version of the committee’s report today and, in his usual
belaboured response to such revealing probes, thank the committee for doing a
great job. He will promise vainly, in line with his fuzzy transformation
agenda, that the committee’s recommendations will be addressed. And then
pretending commitment to due process, he will set up a committee to produce a
White Paper on the report. A committee will then be set up to review the
findings of the White Paper.
The report will then be submitted to the
Senate
Committees on Petroleum (Upstream) and Gas for further investigations. The
Chairman, Senate Committee on Gas, Nkechi Nwogu, has already expressed her
committee’s interest in looking at the report “to find out the true position of
things as contained in it”. Her committee’s report will then be submitted to
the Senate
Committee on Anti-corruption, a committee whose members parade a rap sheet that
will put the legendary Lawrence Anini and his sidekick,
Monday Osunbor, to shame. Depending on their inclination, the
report will then go back to the Presidency or any of our anti-corruption
agencies for safekeeping.
Damn
the opposition for playing politics with a serious national issue. Now, we’ll
never know those responsible for this mess much less get them to account for
their misdeed!
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