Reflections: Troubling Symptoms of Nigerian Democracy
|
|
Franklin Otorofani, Esq.
04:21:08
|
|
The Aftermath
of 2008 Budget Impasse
My previous article on the budget impasse titled: “Yar’Adua, National Assembly
and Arrested Budget” has turned out uncannily prescient given the dramatic turn
of events in the last few days. In that article, I argued rather forcefully, for
Mr. President to append his signature to the budget as presented to him by the
National Assembly without further delay, failing which the National Assembly
should quickly move to override his veto and move the nation forward.
Within days after that piece, Mr. President buckled and finally agreed to sign
the budget as is, having dropped his stubborn insistence on further amendments
to address the objectionable areas he had identified. However, contrary to the
high profile ceremonies usually associated with presidential budget signing
exercises, the 2008 budget was signed by the President like an ordinary contract
paper in his private residence at the Villa, with just a handful of presidential
aides. There were no ceremonies and the press wasn’t even invited. It was an
anti-climax. The signing was shrouded in secrecy as if it was an ‘execution
warrant’ against a highly popular political personage such as was the case, for
instance, with Abacha’s signing of the Ogoni’s Ken Saro Wiwa’s death warrant,
which was similarly shrouded in secrecy.
Why would the signing of a long awaited Yar’Adua administration’s first national
budget be reduced to that level and hidden from the nation for which it is
meant? That was the question on the minds of curious Nigerians. Thank goodness,
the nation did not wait long for the answer. No sooner was the budget signed in
law than Mr. President headed for the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport on
his way to Germany to attend to what his spokesman, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi,
casually described as “allergic reactions.” This description has since been
contradicted by later reports which seem to indicate that the President’s
illness is more than just “allergic reactions.” Thus, while a relieved nation
was waiting for Mr. President to sign the budget with an elaborate ceremony as
befits such an occasion, Yar’Adua suddenly took ill and was hurriedly flown to
Germany for medical attention. The manner of the President’s departure indicated
that Yar’Adua required urgent and emergent medical attention despite the obvious
but understandable attempt by his spokesman to down play the seriousness of his
condition. Therefore, the national relief that attended the end of the budget
impasse was tempered by the news of the President’s sudden illness. Although Mr.
Adeniyi did not ask Nigerians to pray for the President’s quick recovery,
promising instead that the President will be back on his duty post by this
weekend, Nigerians should nevertheless offer their prayers, not only for the
President’s recovery from this episode, but for his health in general. This is
because he needs to implement this belated budget and subsequent budgets as
well, with utmost vigor and robust execution if the nation is to make 20/20 in
her developmental aspirations.
However, as if jinxed, the fate of the 2008 budget now hangs in the balance in
the absence of Mr. President. I say this without prejudice to the fact that
Yar’Adua is in no way incapacitated by his ailment and could well issue
directives from his sick bed in Germany. But even so, the fact remains that he
cannot effectively run the country from his sick bed in Germany while being
attended to by his doctors at the same time.
What about his deputy, some might ask. Fair enough, but unfortunately his deputy
cannot fill his shoes. The presence of the Vice-President provides cold comfort
in this situation, because, at best he would only be seeking and getting
clearance from Mr. President in crucial decisions. Besides, the mere fact the
head of the government is indisposed casts a pall in the halls of governance and
inevitably slows down the business of governance and therefore the execution of
an already belated budget for that matter. That a budget that suffered untold
delay in its passage is again set to suffer another delay in its implementation
hardly bodes well for the nation. The fact of the matter, is that the 2008
budget remains “arrested” as indicated in the previous article alluded to at the
beginning of this piece, and that is why it was described as “uncannily
prescient.” Thus, for all practical purposes the budget is still under a house
arrest of sorts, at least, until Mr. President shows up for duty.
The Iyabo/EFCC Tango
While this scenario plays out, an altogether different troubling scenario has
reared its ugly head some place else. The Economic and Financial Crime
Commission (EFCC)—an agency established by Nigeria’s immediate past President,
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has been turned against his daughter, Senator Iyabo
Obasanjo-Bello, who is currently the Chairperson of the Senate Committee on
Health. The former President’s daughter is being accused of receiving N10
million out of unspent N300 million allegedly stolen from the coffers of the
Federal Ministry of Health by the former Health Minister, Professor Grange and
her subordinates currently being prosecuted by the agency.
While I do not wish to hold brief for the former President’s daughter over the
charges, the way and manner the EFCC has handled this matter leaves much to be
desired. To put it mildly, it looks more of political persecution than a genuine
anti-graft fight—incidentally the same charge leveled against the agency by the
opposition during her father’s reign. It seems that the EFCC has not learnt its
lesson even in this day of the much touted rule of law.
Two issues illustrate this: (1) The Senator has shown without contradiction that
the funds received from the Ministry of Health were sourced for a retreat in
Ghana for the National Health Policy which was an unfinished business and a
carryover from the previous Senate. And to buttress this, the Senate itself has
expressed satisfaction with the account of the expenditures rendered to it by
the senator on how the funds were utilized for the purpose intended. The EFCC
itself has not contradicted this account nor has it accused the senator or any
member of the committee for that matter, of misapplication or misappropriation
of the funds. Under such circumstances, a charge of receiving stolen property is
at best, absurd and at worst, insane. (2) It was not only Iyabo’s committee that
received funds from the Ministry of Health for the retreat. The House of
Representatives Committee on Health, the Senate committee’s counterpart, chaired
by Dr. Alaba Ojomo, also received N10 million for the retreat just like Iyabo’s
committee.
If then the funds received by these two committees were indeed “stolen
properties” as being alleged by the EFCC, the chairpersons of both committees
and their members who received parts of the funds would equally be “suspects”
and should be prosecuted. Yet, for some inexplicable reasons and to our utter
dismay, only the Senate committee chairperson, who happens to be Obasanjo’s
daughter, is being hounded for prosecution by EFCC—leaving out completely Dr.
Ojomo, her counterpart in the House of Reps who equally received the same amount
for the retreat from the same Ministry! The fact that her House counterpart
didn’t attend the retreat after all, but nevertheless kept the funds all the
same only to return same when the lid was blown off the scam at the Ministry, is
no excuse not to prosecute him. If anything, his belated return of the
un-utilized funds provides evidence for such prosecution, but only if the
receipt of the funds was truly to be legally and criminally regarded as “stolen
property!” Anything short of that is sheer bunkum.
Under Nigerian criminal and penal code, the return of a stolen property by an
accused is not exculpatory evidence. I have no idea if it is under the EFCC Act.
The Acting EFCC Chairman, Mr. Lamorde, should please enlighten us on that. In
any case, I don’t see how anyone in his right senses could have expected Iyabo
to return funds already expended for the purpose intended. The fact that Iyabo’s
counterpart has not even been indicted by the EFCC for his conduct in holding
onto the funds let alone prosecuted while directing all of its prosecutorial
arsenal at Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello betrays an inelegant and untidy execution of a
sinister agenda of a budding persecutory regime. What is more: EFCC’s deliberate
misleading statements about Iyabo’s whereabouts bordering on sheer propaganda
could not but help to validate the accusation that it has embarked on a voyage
of persecution at the behest of detractors of the former President.
While it runs around thumbing its chest like an over excited chimpanzee, the
EFCC has not told the world how and when the funding of National Assembly
committees by their associated ministries suddenly became a criminal offense
under our criminal or penal code or any other law for that matter. Or for that
matter, when did receipt of such funds for official assignments, as was clearly
the case here, amount to or approximate the receipt of “stolen properties.”
These are questions that will continue to dog the steps of the EFCC in this
case. The cavalier manner with which EFCC now routinely and gleefully declares
Iyabo “at large” without actually bothering to tell us how much efforts it has
actually exerted in tracing her, strikes one as suspicious. And what is more:
the fact that the Senate has fully investigated and cleared Iyabo does not seem
to make any difference to the EFCC even as it has failed to challenge or
contradict the Senate’s findings.
All I can permit myself to state here is that the senator should seek court
protection and cause herself to appear in court just to clear her name, if only
to expose the evil machinations of the present EFCC toward her on account of her
father’s perceived wrongdoings in the eyes of his enemies. It is obvious that
EFCC is on a diabolical mission. But a word of caution for it: It should not
spoil the good works of its founding Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, who has just been
honored by the World Bank as an Outstanding Public Servant (OPS).
However, this critique does not detract from the agency’s good work in the case
as a whole. EFCC sure has done a darn good job prosecuting Professor Grange and
her accomplices in the FMOH, who failed to return the unspent N300 million to
the government coffers as directed by the President, and instead allegedly
shared the sum among themselves as if it were some freebie. That’s stealing,
pure and simple, and they deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the
law. But the EFCC has no business harassing any National Assembly Committee
chairperson that received funding from the Ministry for an official retreat on
National Health Policy in Ghana. There is more to the harassment of Senator
Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello than meets the eye. To put in bluntly, this is witch hunt,
pure and simple, and politics is at the root of it.
Chief Vincent Ogbulafor’s Gaffe
 While
Iyabo and EFCC were busy playing their hide and seek game, the PDP Chairman,
Chief Ogbulafor dropped a political bombshell—PDP to rule Nigeria for 60
uninterrupted years! The PDP Chairman who was “selected” to lead the party at
its last convention two months ago gazed at his crystal ball and divined
prosperity for Nigeria under the blessed rule of the PDP for six odd decades!
Nigerians may have seen the former PDP National Secretary in public service but
one thing they didn’t know about him until now is that he is a great diviner who
can see 60 years from today and today from 60 years. No wonder the party has
been enjoying runaway victories at the polls! Isn’t the PDP lucky? Of the over
40 political parties in Nigeria, how many party chairmen have such rare gift?
Wait a minute! Could it be all previous PDP chairmen are endowed with such rare
gifts too, because OBJ had voiced such sentiments before? Maybe he learnt that
from Chief Ogbulafor when he was his boss. I just pity the other parties who
have no seers and diviners like the Abia High Chief. I hope though that these
revelations from the High Priest sorry, High Chief, did not come from the
dreaded Okija Shrine. I want to believe that the respected Chief is not a
devotee of the Okija Shrine like Governor Orji of Abia State as reported. No
wonder the Chief is bent on implementing the Dr. Alex Ekwueme’s Committee Report
to bring back to the fold all the lost sheep of the PDP who have mushroomed into
other social clubs euphemistically called political parties. Good luck to the
Chief in his divine assignment in his new capacity as the Oracle of Nigeria. He
has now succeeded late Professor Okunzua, Nigeria’s world renowned
meta-physicist and para-psychologist.
Yet I must caution him to go practice his art someplace else but Nigeria because
times have changed. My country is not going the way of a one-party state anytime
soon. And, with due respect to Dr. Ekwueme, his committee’s recommendation to
bring back so-called founding fathers of the PDP and all the others who left it
to form other parties will not work. In fact, that recommendation leaves much to
be desired on the part of the respected former Vice-President, because its sole
agenda appears to be the desire to deny the nation a robust and virile
opposition to the ruling party. Why it might be asked, is the PDP obsessed with
bringing back to its fold its members that left the party years ago? Is because
it’s afraid of a strong opposition posed by the members? This is looking to me
like a situation where a thief frantically searches for an accomplice to prevent
him from spilling the beans to the authorities. What does the PDP have to hide
that it wants its former members back so badly?
Chief Ogbulafor’s divination has gravely imperiled our democracy. And the fact
that only the AC has so far lampooned the Chief for the public disclosures of
his perilous divination is an indication of the prevailing state of apathy by
the opposition parties in Nigeria. It appears that the opposition does not
appreciate the implications of Chief Ogbulafor’s revelations for the sustenance
of multi-party democracy in Nigeria. I have no problem with the PDP as a party.
On the contrary I admire the sheer size and strength of the party, and equally
appreciate that it has the potential to lead Nigeria to the promised.
But I have a problem with its lack of internal democracy as witnessed in its
most recent national convention. If the party cannot practice internal
democracy, it cannot practice external democracy, either. Worse still, it
appears the party has no intentions whatsoever of putting internal democracy
into practice, which makes the one-party state kite floated by Chief Ogbulafor
an imminent and present danger to our democracy. That danger must be nipped in
the bud before it has any chance of blossoming into a national catastrophe. One
can only hope that the fractious opposition parties will forsake their
individual ambitions and come together through a democratic process to give the
PDP a run for its money. Note: The parties must not only come together to
challenge the behemoth PDP, they must come together democratically and not
through some selection process like they have been doing, just like the PDP.
That is the only way to convince the nation that they are better than the PDP.
Anything short of that will only lead to the catastrophic actualization of the
revelations of the Abia High Priest sorry, High Chief—Chief Vincent Ogbulafor,
the Oracle of Nigeria!
Long Live Nigeria’s Multi-Party Democracy!
Franklin Otorofani, Esquire (USA)
Contact: mudiagaone@yahoo.com
|
|
