|
Will Obasanjo Explode Yar’Adua’s Anti-Graft Balloon?
By
Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
If you were
carrying out an employment exercise in your company, and
one of the jobseekers showed up with a letter of
recommendation duly written and signed by Mr. Nuhu
Ribadu, the former Chair of the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission (EFCC), would that impress you?
 |
Well,
the strength and credibility of any
recommendation should flow from the
performance of the person earlier
recommended by the same person. For
instance, Mr. Ribadu had told the nation
that he had deployed the full force of his
prodigious intellect, experience and
thoroughness to carefully examine the
eight-year nightmare prosecuted by Gen
Olusegun Obasanjo but could not detect the
slightest hint of corruption in all that the
man did while in office!
But,
for the past few weeks now, Nigerians have
witnessed with utter disbelief and deep pain
horrifying details of the worst form of
heartless plunder this nation had ever
witnessed, perpetrated with utmost impunity
and even fanfare, under the direct
supervision of the same man Nuhu Ribadu had
told us was above board. |
About $16 billion was callously
squandered under the pretext of fixing the nation’s
problematic power sector, plunging the country and its
hapless citizens deeper into thicker and more
suffocating darkness.
As sordid revelations ooze from the
House of Representatives Probe into the management of
the power sector under the Obasanjo regime, where, for
instance, it was revealed that a contract worth about
N88 billion was verbally awarded, Nigerians are shocked
that human beings with hearts and blood running in their
veins are capable of such prehistoric greed and cruelty.
While Nigerians groaned under the punishing effect of
the protracted energy crises in the country, the very
resources meant for the alleviation of their harrowing
pain was being primitively plundered.
In a decent country, Mr. Liyel
Imoke would have since resigned as Governor of Cross
River State with shame and haste, while awaiting his
well-earned trail alongside his big uncle, Obasanjo.
But, this is Nigeria, where something called Immunity
Clause exists to provide very formidable protection for
unrepentant enemies of the people from the just
consequences of their hideous actions in office.
Only last week, former Finance
Minster, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told the House Committee
probing the mindless brigandage that flourished in the
power sector that it was Mr. Imoke and Obasanjo that
concocted the “Due Process Waiver” that enabled them
bypass all statutory roadblocks to prosecute their
unparalleled clean out of the public treasury to build
phantom power plants.
In 1999 when Obasanjo became
president, total power generation within the national
grid stood at 2,400 Mega Watts. But by the time he was
leaving office in 2007 (and till date), the whole thing
had come down to 2,100 MW, despite the billions of
dollars said to have been poured into the obviously
phantom efforts to give Nigerians stable power supply.
To sensible Nigerians, that is hardly surprising. Among
the companies awarded juicy contracts, and paid jumbo mobilisation fees, which in some cases were as high as
70 percent of the whole contract value, thirty-three
(which got N6.2 billion contracts) were not registered
at the Corporate Affairs Commission, which means that
they were non-existent companies! Even when identifiable
companies got contracts and were fully mobilized,
several of them vanished into thin air or managed to
show some form of presence at the project site.
|
The only believable
reason those in charge of the whole obscene
profligacy had refused to bother themselves
with whether those contracts were executed
or not may be that, perhaps, those
“companies” were either theirs or belonged
to their cronies and agents. According to
Daily Independent editorial of March 27,
2008, “Energo Limited, a company in which a
former military head of state is Chairman,
[was paid] over N13 billion … without any
job done to date . . . Obasanjo, according to
disclosures by the Revenue Mobilisation
Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC),
even commissioned an empty site in Odukpani,
Cross River State, as a power station last
year. |
 |
Top managers of PHCN [also awarded]
contracts worth US$142 million to non-existent firms.
PHCN was shown to have paid out various sums—N2.1
billion, 2.1million Euros and 1.1billion Yen—for
hydropower projects whose existence is unknown to chief
executives of the stations.” According to the Minster
for Energy (Power), Mrs. Fatimah Ibrahim, $13.3 billion
was squandered in the power sector, under very close,
direct supervision of Imoke and Obasanjo with nothing on
ground to show for the huge expenditure. Certainly, this
is enough to put these fellows behind bars for the rest
of their lives, if President Umar Musa Yar’Adua is
serious about all the noise he makes about rule of law
and due process.
Well, how Yar’Adua responds to this
challenge will help define the image of his
administration in the days ahead. Last week, former
Health Minister, Prof Adenike Grange, was sacked or
forced to resign, or both, for refusing to heed the
Presidential directive to return to the treasury the
unspent fund from the allocation to her ministry. The
amount involved is N300 million, which the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accused her, her
deputy, Gabriel Aduku, and 14 senior civil servants of
the ministry of attempting to embezzle.
Also starring in the slimy scandal
is Obasanjo’s first daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello,
who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Health. It may
appear uncharitable to view Prof Grange’s sack or
resignation, given its timing, as aimed at diverting
significant attention from the earth-shaking revelations
rolling out from the Public Hearing on the Power Sector
which has provoked widespread demand for the immediate
arrest and trial of Obasanjo and all those who had
joined hands with him to enact the unprecedented
corruption. But then, the whole thing reeks of just
that!
On Monday, General Jeremiah Useni,
the unrepentant alter ego of the late ruthless dictator,
Gen Sani Abacha, was quoted as saying that the boundless
brigandage that flourished in the power sector has made
whatever Abacha was accused of looting to appear like “a
child’s play.” He even expressed doubt that the once
famous Abacha Loot recovered from several sources were
deployed to execute any venture that would benefit the
Nigerian people, because, according to him, there was
“no bill [that] went to the National Assembly to approve
its expenditure.” In other words, Abacha’s may have been
looted by those who recovered it!
Also, on Monday, the papers
reported that Prof Grange may be charged to court this
week. Now, if we consider that what Grange and Co were
accused of “attempting to embezzle” was mere “change”
when compared with the $16 or $13 billion that was
siphoned off thought phantom power projects, we will
then begin to ask ourselves whether, under Yar’Adua,
different rules apply to different people?
Now, some ex-Governors are,
justifiably, being dragged about by the EFCC for
allegedly stealing N1 billion or N2 billion or even
less. If these ex-Governors or Mrs. Grange and Co are
found guilty, they should be hastened off to jail, to
isolate them from the assembly of decent beings, because
they have proved themselves to be unrepentant enemies of
Nigeria. But should the alleged bigger thieves be
spared?
 |
Nigerians and the rest of world are watching
to see what President Yar’Adua would do with
the fellows who awarded N88 billion contract
by mere word of mouth. They would want to
know what would be done to the man who gave
out juicy contracts to 33 non-existent
companies, and commissioned empty lands as
power plants, to cover up the squandered
fund. Yes, they would want to know whether
the fellow who had bled his country pale to
become one of the richest billionaires in
Africa is, in the thinking of Yar’Adua,
above the laws of the land, and deserves to
be celebrated, while the poor clerk
somewhere who was driven by hunger to
mismanage N5, 000 is sent to jail.
It must
be clear to Yar’Adua that injustice and
double standards, especially of this
magnitude, can only create fertile grounds
for defiance, rebellion and anarchy. |
Already, a former Governor standing
trial for corrupt enrichment is threatening to make the
country ungovernable if big thieves are left to move
about undisturbed while mere pickpockets are haunted and
harassed with extreme zeal. Yar’Adua must be wary of
allowing seeds of destabilisation germinate in the
country just because of his determination not to
“embarrass” some fellows whose only contribution to
their fatherland is the ruin and stagnation they had
brought to it by their conscious unethical acts.
By the way, where was Saint Ribadu
when the nation was being gang-raped with such
unparalleled violence? To what extent did the National
Assembly under Ken Nnamani and his brother Aminu Bello
Masari exercise its oversight functions when this insane
plundering was flourishing? Well, former Vice-President,
Atiku Abubakar can gloat today, but would this brazen
prodigality have been exposed if Obasanjo had not parted
ways with, and handed over to him as he had expected?
Now, we have seen the stench in the
power sector, but when will the long-awaited probe of
the NNPC commence?
scruples2006@yahoo.com /
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com /
www.ugochukwu.blog.com
Photos in text appear in the following
order: Former EFCC Boss, Nuhu Ribadu,;
Former President Obasanjo; and
President Yar’Adua
posted 5 August 2008
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
 |
* *
* * *
 |
The Price of Civilization
Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity
By
Jeffrey D. Sachs
The Price of Civilization is a book
that is essential reading for every
American. In a forceful, impassioned, and
personal voice, he offers not only a searing
and incisive diagnosis of our country’s
economic ills but also an urgent call for
Americans to restore the virtues of
fairness, honesty, and foresight as the
foundations of national prosperity. Sachs
finds that both political parties—and many
leading economists—have missed the big
picture, offering shortsighted solutions
such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to
address complex economic problems that
require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that
we have profoundly underestimated
globalization’s long-term effects on our
country, which create deep and largely unmet
challenges with regard to jobs, incomes,
poverty, and the environment. America’s
single biggest economic failure, Sachs
argues, is its inability to come to grips
with the new global economic realities.
Sachs describes a political system that has
lost its ethical moorings, in which
ever-rising campaign contributions and
lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the
citizenry. . . . Sachs offers a plan to turn
the crisis around. He argues persuasively
that the problem is not America’s abiding
values, which remain generous and pragmatic,
but the ease with which political spin and
consumerism run circles around those values.
|
*
* * * *
|
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music)
update 7 April 2012
|
