By Ikechukwu Amaechi
I was aghast last week when Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, announced that he and his colleagues at the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting chaired by Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, had approved the withdrawal of $1 billion from the $2.317 billion in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) as of December 13.
My gut reaction was to question whether anything has changed in Nigeria despite the loud noise being made.
The money, our collective patrimony, was handed over to the federal government by magnanimous governors to fight the ubiquitous Boko Haram terrorists in the North East.
It was a feeling of incredulity; of shock; of disbelief.
You know, the “oh no, not again,” shriek that jumps out of your mouth when you cannot wrap your head around something, simply because we have travelled this road before.
For some of us who voted for change in 2015 believing that the man hiding behind the folkloric General Muhammadu Buhari austere mask was actually someone we knew, what is happening in the country is a nightmare.
The president is not a saint. He is human, he is a Nigerian, he is a politician, after all.
What has happened in the past 31 months of the Buhari presidency is the classic case of the more things seem to change in Nigeria, the more they remain the same. Or even worse. He is an archetypal Nigerian political elite.
Why would governors approve $1 billion (N363 billion) for the Buhari government to fight an insurgent group it loudly claims it has degraded and technically defeated?
When did Nigeria become such a banana republic that a $1 billion largesse can be whimsically taken from our common till by a benevolent ruling cabal without National Assembly (NASS) appropriation and dropped on Buhari’s laps to spend as he wishes?
Is it even true that the 36 governors agreed to fritter away our treasury? The enfant terrible of Ekiti politics, Governor Ayodele Fayose, has said there was no such agreement.
On Tuesday, at an emergency meeting of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) at the Villa, Fayose openly disagreed with Zamfara State Governor, Abdulaziz Yari, who doubles as NGF chairman, insisting that governors never discussed the issue.
Fayose said he had already “approached a court to challenge” the anomaly.
This is a federal government that told the whole world that Boko Haram had not only been degraded, but in fact, technically defeated so much so that it can only attack soft targets, which it likened to the last spasm of a dying monster.
If that is true – a claim the government has poignantly hoisted on the totem pole of its achievements – which weapons did the military use in degrading and technically defeating Boko Haram?
How come the same weapons used in achieving this incredible military feat at the height of Boko Haram’s power became so obsolete all of a sudden that $1 billion worth of weapons needs to be bought?
So vacuous and inane was the reason given for this apparent heist that Osinbajo, who chaired the meeting where the iniquitous decision was taken, on Tuesday made a dramatic retrace of the earlier announcement.
While Yari said despite Buhari’s proclaimed victory in the eight-year battle against insurgency, a substantial amount of budget was still required to tackle pockets of terrorists around the North East, Osinbajo “clarified” that the money was not meant for the war against Boko Haram alone.
“It was on account of the security summit that the governors at the Governors Forum subsequently decided that they would vote a certain sum of money, which has become somewhat controversial, the $1 billion, to assist the security architecture of the country.
“It was to assist all of the issues in the states, including policing in the states, community policing, all of the different security challenges that we have,” Osinbajo said.
That, of course, is an afterthought.
In any case, why would the government seek huge extra-budgetary funds through the back door when defence got one of the highest allocations (N465.87 billion – N325.87 billion recurrent vote and N140 billion capital expenditure) in the N7.29 trillion 2017 budget?
How much of that money was released and what for?
In the 2018 Appropriation Bill in the NASS, defence is allocated N567.43 billion (N145.00 billion capital; N422.43 billion recurrent).
So, why not wait for the budget to be passed? What is so urgent in the fight against a defeated terrorist group that $1 billion must be taken willy-nilly from money that was supposed to be saved for the axiomatic rainy day?
Even if there was need for such money to be deployed in fighting insurgency, does it behove the NEC to do so? When and where did the advisory body acquire the power to make financial approvals or appropriate even contingency funds?
The Buhari government is as opaque as it is impervious to reason, thriving on propaganda.
Many people have wondered, just as the world’s foremost financial magazine, The Economist, did last month, about the reason for the unprecedented level of patience Nigerians have for Buhari.
The magazine rightly observed that Nigerians seem to have resolved “to suffer patiently, drawing up excuses for him (Buhari) at will, blaming everyone including his hundreds of political appointees, anything and anybody but never the man himself.”
But it also made an interesting conclusion. “If the change narrative of the 2015 election and the songs of man of integrity are to account for this, then Nigerians may have just certified themselves on the world map as a nation easy to fool with propaganda. An adult should be judged on his track record not on his tongue.”
The truth is that only few people still believe in Buhari’s vaunted integrity.
While The Economist’s observation is spot-on, what happened in the country in 2015 is deeper, which explains what is happening today.
For the first time in Nigeria’s post-independence political history, governmental and media power, which used to reside in two opposition camps, coalesced. The consequence is the conspiracy of silence that has enveloped the country.
Before now, the Nigerian media, particularly its most powerful flank – the Lagos-Ibadan axis – had been in the firm grip of the vocal opposition, playing its role as the Fourth Estate of the realm, effectively acting as a check on the powers of the government.
By so doing, the media successfully held the feet of yesterday’s powerful men to the ever burning fire of scrutiny to ensure accountability.
That changed fundamentally in 2015 when Buhari emerged president propped by those who pull the levers of media power.
So, right now, Nigerians neither see nor hear any evil because the institution that ought to amplify such anomalies has been sucked into the debilitating maelstrom.
Newspapers no longer write scathing editorials. The same faces make the rounds on television and radio. They are carefully chosen.
But it is only a question of time. No matter how hard this government’s spin doctors try to explain this $1 billion saga away, the augury of malfeasance is just too stark for people not to notice.
Sooner than later, the government’s anti-corruption epaulet, which it has flaunted for 31 months to wheedle the unwary, will be exposed for what it is – scamming shrouds.
