FOR THE RECORDS : Sam Nda-Isaiah: Mr President, are you aware that $10 billion is still missing? .... Tony Anenih’s rejoinder to Sam Nda-Isaiah’s ‘Is the president aware that $10.8 billion is still missing?’ ... INTERESTING READ : YNaij

With all these happening, it is quite befuddling how anyone will want Jonathan to continue as president beyond 2015, as a few jesters are currently doing. Anyone, no matter who that person is, who wants President Jonathan to govern Nigeria beyond 2015 is an enemy of the Nigerian state.

It has been alleged that President Jonathan was so angry with the CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, about the leakage of his letter that he (the president) asked the governor to resign. The president apparently did not even crosscheck to see whether he had the powers to sack a CBN governor whimsically. In any case, the president would still have been able to sack the governor if he had the support of the majority of the senators or he is perceived by the senators to be working in the best interests of the nation. But this president is certainly not working in the best interests of the nation and has lost both the house of Senate and the House of Representatives.
And, by the way, the president has also lost the majority of his governors, and, here, I am not just talking about the G5 governors. There are several PDP governors today that are not with the president, and those are the governors that I think the president should be worried about. At the rate the president is going, he would become a lame-duck president by the middle of this year without even knowing it. Or, worse still, he could become a sitting-duck president, sitting at the mercy of the National Assembly.
But why was the president so livid with the CBN governor that he wanted him to resign? More decent people thought such anger should have been directed at people like Diezani Allison-Madueke, the petroleum minister, and Stella Oduah, the aviation minister. This president has not developed the capacity to ask Stella Oduah to resign in spite of her several scandals and he has not asked Diezani to resign for all the mess we all know the petroleum ministry under her has become. He is not even angry enough that his own finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that $10.8 billion is still unaccounted for by the NNPC. This amount is roughly N1.7 trillion. Does the president know what this amount could have done for Nigeria? And nobody should ever tell me that the whopping amount has been spent on fuel subsidy again, as some people are now trying to do, because, before Jonathan happened on us, the average annual amount that used to be expended on fuel subsidy was N250 billion.
So when Speaker Aminu Tambuwal said the president’s body language encourages corruption, he was only being polite. The situation is much worse. The president’s whole being and soul encourage corruption, and not just his body language. The president was only upset because the apparent theft of public funds that Sanusi’s letter to him suggested was leaked. President Jonathan actually gets angry when thieves are caught. I have never seen a thing like that. He was not angry that public funds could have been stolen. He was never at any time livid with his minister of petroleum who could have presided over such huge theft. This is precisely the same way that the president was upset with those who led the media to discover the corruption at the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos, that ensured that police cadets were living under conditions that would have been unfit for the president’s dogs.
The president was not angry enough to ask where the money voted for the police had gone or whether the appropriated police budgets got to them at all. He did not even have compassion for the suffering cadets and showed no empathy whatsoever towards them. He was only upset that some thieves had been exposed for stealing government money. And, since then, nothing has happened to those thieves. Nobody expects anything to happen to them as long as it is Jonathan that is president.
It still beats me that, in spite of all the allegations of theft and diversion of public funds being levelled against the NNPC daily, the person who should be doing all the talking and explanation, the petroleum minister, has not said anything. That is very annoying, to say the least. That is what should be annoying and ruffling the president. But why is Diezani not saying anything? Every Nigerian wants her to defend herself but she feels too big to do so; she has not been fired, as would have happened anywhere else in the world. A friend of mine recently reminded me that she would be committing perjury if she ever opened her mouth to say anything, so we should understand why she is not speaking. We are tired of listening to Okonjo-Iweala defending the petroleum ministry. She should be defending the finance ministry, not another ministry. Why does she want to take Panadol for another person’s headache? I am not even sure that the management of the NNPC are in a position to address the very weighty questions that have been coming up, because everyone knows that they only receive orders from the queen of the cabinet.
Another puzzle is Okonjo-Iweala herself who has cried out several times against the ongoing corruption in Jonathan’s government. And she once also added that “we are not helpless”, meaning that something can be done about it by their government presided over by Jonathan. My puzzle is that she remains tight-seated in such a government. Well, she can’t have her cake and eat it. She will need to know that whatever international credentials she thinks she has built for herself over the years are being eroded. And she should not hope to go unscathed when the shit finally hits the fan.
Well, maybe the president needs to be reminded that the CBN governor insists $12 billion (N1.9 trillion) is still missing and the finance minister in disagreeing said the figure is “only” $10.8 billion (N1.7 trillion). I am not in an argument mode at the moment, as I will prefer to wait for Sanusi’s memoirs; so I am going to stick with the finance minister’s figures for now. So, Mr President, where is the nation’s $10.8 billion (N1.7 trillion) that is still missing? Last week, someone in the NNPC who wanted to play on the nation’s intelligence said that was the money that was used for the fuel subsidy payments. The natural question to follow is this: when did the NNPC start using proceeds from the sale of crude oil directly to run the government? Do we now operate a jungle government that the NNPC would directly use the proceeds from the sale of crude oil instead of remitting every kobo into the CBN? Is that how they have been running the country all along? If it is true that the petroleum ministry had not been remitting every kobo to the government’s banker, then, the minister may be guilty of a felony of a treasonable nature. And if the president knew this all along and has done nothing about it, then, this is clearly another impeachable offence. The money doesn’t belong to them.
With all these happening, it is quite befuddling how anyone will want Jonathan to continue as president beyond 2015, as a few jesters are currently doing. Anyone, no matter who that person is, who wants President Jonathan to govern Nigeria beyond 2015 is an enemy of the Nigerian state.
EARSHOT
Nigeria’s Future According To Jim O’Neil
A very interesting analysis by the world-renowned economist, Jim O’Neil, was the subject of discussion last week. O’Neil is the well-acclaimed author of The Growth Map: Economic Opportunity In The BRICs And Beyond which I have read several times. O’Neil it was who coined the term BRIC nations, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2011 as alternative economic powers. Later, the name became BRICS to include South Africa. Some people even attempted to further expand the name to BRINKS, to include Nigeria but that didn’t work.
He has now coined another term, the MINT nations, comprising Mexico, India, Nigeria and Turkey, but O’Neil also said it will take 30 years for the MINT nations to join the world’s 10 largest economies. He had earlier predicted that Nigeria could emerge the 20th largest economy by 2025.
If O’Neil is postulating this fairly-rosy picture with our current third-rate leadership, what will then happen when we get civilised leaders who understand that nations are perpetually in competition with themselves for the future? If we are growing at an average of 7 per cent annually (though a funny growth without job creation) with a president like Jonathan, what happens if we solve our corruption problem? What happens when we start to benefit from our sundry natural resources that flood every single state in Nigeria? And what happens when we start taking advantage of our millions of hectares of arable land? What happens when the NNPC stops diverting Nigeria’s public funds? Indeed, what will happen by the time we get leaders who know that the most important priority for a nation is the qualitative education of its youths? What would happen can only be imagined. If we get such leaders, we will arrive there much earlier than O’Neil’s 30 years’ projection. But if we continued with presidents like Jonathan, we would never get there. In that case, O’Neil’s MINT could become the MIT nations. But God will not allow that.

I understand that for you to acknowledge that progress is being made in the affairs of Nigeria would be asking too much of you because clearly you are one of those who, as Simon Kolawole says, see only problems in Nigeria.

I am concerned enough to draw your attention to the several instances of uncomplimentary self-revelations exhibited in your most recent column. The article, which bore the above title and was published on the back page of the Leadership newspaper of Monday, January 13, 2014, spoke more about your uncharitable attitude towards President Goodluck Jonathan than the purported missing $10.8b. In the said column you said “It is quite befuddling how anyone will want Jonathan to continue as president beyond 2015, as a few jesters are currently doing. Anyone, no matter who that person is, who wants President Jonathan to govern Nigeria beyond 2015, is an enemy of the Nigerian State”.
In the first instance, it was most revealing that you, as the Chairman of the Leadership Group, chose to ignore the fact that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had given a satisfactory account of the supposedly missing $10.8b only a few days before your article was published. This unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of an official explanation from a statutory body on a matter of public interest is very disturbing as it sheds a most unflattering light on you, more so as you are a person who also aspires to high public office, in the near future.
This is because your newspaper, Leadership, published a story titled “How We Spent Unremitted $10.8bn – NNPC.” An online version of the story, dated January 11, 2014, is still viewable at your newspaper’s website. Part of the report reads: “the NNPC group executive director, Finance and Accounts Directorate, Bernard Otti, said the $10.8b reflected expenditures incurred by the corporation during the period under review and are really made up of the following: subsidy claims, $8.49b, pipeline management and repair costs, $1.22b, products/crude oil losses $0.72b, and cost of holding the strategic reserve.” Following this explanation, as reported in your own newspaper, you deliberately chose to ignore the facts and play to the gallery by repeating the unfortunate smear campaign started by the mistake-prone Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. As you know, the CBN governor, who began this misleading campaign against the government of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan-a government which he is a part of has since recanted his claim that the outlandish sum of $49.8b from the sale of the nation’s crude oil was unaccounted for.
You will recall that when the CBN governor was confronted with evidence of his error, he owned up to his mistake, sought to revise the number down to $12b, but was again called out for this new error by the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Despite these facts now being public knowledge, you went ahead to posit that some imaginary 10.8b is still missing somewhere. Beside the sheer deceit in this uncritical furtherance of errors started by a central banker who ordinarily should have been more circumspect, it appears that you have chosen to remain in the ranks of those that the THISDAY columnist, Simon Kolawole, has described as people who see only problems in Nigeria.
In a Sunday, January 12. 2014 article titled “Minting our Way to the Top”, Kolawole wrote:
“I keep asking myself: why does the world tend to believe in us but we seem not to believe in ourselves? A typical Nigerian sees only problems. A typical outsider sees opportunities.” I mention Kolawole’s column here because his article focused on the recent news that Jim O’Neill, a British economist, best known for coining the economic acronym “BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), has coined a new economic acronym “MINT”, meaning Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey; countries he describes as “emerging economic giants.” You, in your “Earshot” panel, also wrote about the “MINT” countries but still managed to find a way to denigrate the office and person of the President despite this cheery economic news.
While there is some debate as to who should be given credit for “MINT” (some sources claim the acronym was actually coined by Fidelity International, an asset management firm, based in Boston and not Jim O’Neil), what is important is that the world is keenly aware of the economic achievements of the President Jonathan-Ied administration. If not for anything else, it is a fact, as was shown in a presentation by the Minister of Finance, Dr Okonjo-Iweala, at a recent interactive session with the private sector, that the Federal Government created 1.6 million jobs in the year 2013.
Moreover, it is also a fact that late last year, the well-regarded international magazine, Forbes, named Minister of Agriculture, Or Akinwumi Adesina, Africa Person of the Year 2013 for empowering more than six million farmers across the country to practise agriculture as a business, and not as a development initiative without any incentive for growth.
Furthermore, today in Nigeria, the President Jonathan-Ied government has ensured that fertilisers are sold straight to the farmers-not to any government ministry and not to middlemen-thereby reversing the sad and unfortunate practice where real farmers were deprived of essential needs such as seeds and fertilisers for over 40 years.
These are just a few instances to show that the picture of doom and gloom that you have chosen to constantly paint of present-day Nigeria in your Monday column is a creation of your imagination and not the reality. I understand that for you to acknowledge that progress is being made in the affairs of Nigeria would be asking too much of you because clearly you are one of those who, as Simon Kolawole says, see only problems in Nigeria.
And yet I must let you know that it is the height of brinkmanship to seek to inflame passions over a “missing” amount of money, which has been proven by the relevant agency not to be missing at all, and recently enumerated the purposes for which the money was spent. Your Leadership newspaper proclaims it exists: “For God and Country.” If this is truly the case, you and your newspaper owe God and Nigerians a patriotic sense of balance in presenting facts and, even, opinions on national issues.
Though politics has eaten deep into, and ruined the socio-cultural fabric of Nigeria, I urge you and other influential Nigerians in the media to put the interest of the nation first in your publications over and above personal interest and selfish political and sectional agenda which are capable of heating up the polity and leading to pernicious division in our nation. Please, accept assurances of my highest consideration.
Yours sincerely,
Chief (Dr) Tony Anenih, CFR
(Iyasele of Esanland)
Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees