I have read and watched several arguments pervading the public domain
since the announcement of the removal of the fuel subsidy. I have been very
circumspect in pitching my tent during these turbulent times.
However, it is clear that all Nigerians are
justifiably angry. By Nigerians I refer to the majority of people who have
their own hands in their own pockets!
Despite the fervent uproar that heralded
this unpopular government policy, some things have been achieved. What amazes
me is the speed at which these two things have been achieved:
First, the truth is coming out concerning the mono-trade that props-up
our nation. Veiled behind contrasting facts, figures and extrapolations is the
truth. More people have come out with their own versions of the real reason why Nigeria needs to stop a
subsidy that should not have existed in
the first instance.
Second is that Nigerians have become more perceptive at seeing the big
lie that has been sold to them for the past fifty years.
The government has been
a big lie, its policies a poignant reminder of the wickedness of man to man and
its appetite for waste compares only to Usain Bolt’s abilities to break his own
world records over and over again. Subsequent Nigerian governments have
elevated corruption and wasteful spending to a new art form. No stable nation
competes with us in this genre, we are record breakers!
Let us briefly examine the origins of the fuel subsidy, and the carnage
of catastrophy that has followed. We discovered oil in the southern part of
Nigeria and sited refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna. In typical
Nigerian style, our refineries were left to deteriorate while Turn Around Maintenance contracts were constantly awarded to incompetent firms.
Miraculously too, our leaders also forgot to build additional refineries to cater
for the burgeoning population. Our three refineries were built when Nigeria’s
population was about eighty million people. While we doubled in size, our
leaders were more focused on lining their own pockets than planning for a
growing population.
As far back as the Babangida years, Nigeria had been experiencing
shortfalls between internally refined petroleum products and actual demand for
petroleum products. Professor Tam David
West managed the challenge by exchanging crude oil for finished products. He
devised a system where countries were paid in crude oil for refining petroleum
products, ensuring that nobody made money from the situation.
This problem of lack of internal capacity to refine crude oil is
perennial, just that the politicians took over and devised a clever way of
making money from their own incompetence.
The politicians created a class of super rich Nigerians who became
cohorts in funding elections and perpetuating corrupt people in government. How
else can you explain the fact that everyone who has donated two hundred million
naira to the presidential campaign fund in the past two elections are all major
players in the oil sector? How would they be paid back? SUBSIDY!
People like Aliko Dangote, Femi Otedola and Wale Tinubu all became purse
keepers and financiers for the politicians, empowered and capable to provide
cash for political conquest. Some of them barely existed ten years ago! The
politicians neglected the refineries, did not build new ones and created the
elaborate scheme of phantom subsidy in order to solve their own problems, not
ours!
Like all businessmen, the “oil marketers” were quick to sense opportunity.
Several of them set up accounts with banks to harness the business opportunity
of subsidy, not petroleum products marketing. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi provides
insight into these fraudulent dealings in his write up. This is a transcribed copy (in part) of his submission at the Town Hall meeting on deregulation of refined petroleum products which was held on the twenty-second of December 2011:
“You establish an LC for importing 20,000MT of PMS and the
PPPRA says this is at a landed cost of N145 for example per litre. So you know
that for every litre in that vessel you will get at least N85 as subsidy. Now
you have a number of "possiblities":
1. You can off load 5,000 MT and bribe customs and other
officials to sign papers confirming you offloaded 20k MT. Then do the same across
the chain with a paper trail showing you delivered 20k MT to a tank farm, and
maybe even that you transported it to Maiduguri entitling you to a share of the
price equalization fund. Maybe for N20-N30 per litre youbribe all those who sign
the papers. The 15k MT you take to Benin or Ghana or Cameroun and sell at
market price thus makin an additional "profit" of N55/ltr on
15,000MT!
2 you can just forge documents and have them stamped without
bringing in anything and collect the subsidy-PPPRA pays based on
DOCUMENTS.
3 you can bring in the fuel, load on tankers, sell some at
N65N some at 80 some at 100 some across the land borders.
You can do all this and no one can catch it or prove it
because somebody was paid to sign off on documentss. And with a high enough margin
there is too much temptation to be resisted and firepower for bribing
officials.
When I spoke to the house of reps I told them why I was
suspecting fraud. It starts from PPPRA "allocations" based on
"capacity". You will find a company like Mobil with capacity for say
60,000 MT and a relatively unknown name with a capacity of say 90k MT. Red
alert number 1.
Although PPPRA is supposed to give license only to marketers
with a national distribution network you see names of companies where you have
never seen a filling station in their name.
I
was a chief risk officer in UBA and in FBN for many years approving loans so I
know the name of every big player in every industry that nigerian banks lend to
as these are among the biggest banks in the country. I see names on the list I
don't recognise either from portfolios. I looked at or industry studies over
the years. Red alert number 2.
I studied the papers presented to PPPRA in a short period in
2010 (I won't tell you how I got them!). And I was surprised that on some days
over 10 vessels are said to have discharged cargo in lagos on the same
day-clearly the same officers stamping and "verifying" that the
vessels were SEEN. Is it really realistic that on the same day 13-15 vessels can
discharge in Lagos? Red alert number 3. “
According to the same write up, Femi
Otedola’s Zenon and AP owe the Nigerian banking system about 220 billion naira
in bad loans that have been taken over by AMCON, yet he did not have stock of
petroleum products worth a fraction of that amount. You can bet he also did not
have the cash in his corporate accounts. More importantly, he could still
afford to give the Jonathan/Sambo campaign organization 200 million naira during the election
season.
I have taken time to quote the
Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank in order to show you, my reader, the sleaze
that makes for an arresting Hollywood thriller. On all sides, you see
subterfuge, greed and corruption. You see institutionalized kleptomania across the value chain, oil
marketers, port officials, PPPRA, DPR and bankers who knew the truth and never
said it until now!
It is clear to me that the subsidy
scheme was created and executed by the government to enrich their friends and
themselves. It means the nation budgeted huge amounts of money which we knew
was going to be pocketed by a few people.
Why is the Goodluck government
removing the subsidy? Profligacy is not sustainable on the long run! They now
want us to pay for their incompetence. It is clear that no official wants to
let the truth out of its hiding place. We are broke! Our external reserve is
down to 27 billion dollars from 80 billion when Obasanjo handed over.
Our
internal debt is 5 trillion naira. External debt is back to 35 billion dollars.
Excess crude oil account is down to
zero. We are broke yet the only rich people in Nigeria are politicians and some
pastors. Politicians who earn more than every other earthly government and
pastors who collect earthly money, lay hands on and promise heavenly bliss to
men of shady character. Some of these super rich pastors are not saying
anything now. Some of them are speaking as a matter of expediency. Some of them have private jets with which to fly out of Nigeria. They share that same luxury with the dirty politicians they bless and celebrate with front row seats in their churches.
We need to ask our government what they are getting paid for. Is it the
national pride that we currently enjoy or our infrastructure that is out of
this world? We still have polio in Nigeria in 2012. We have hospitals that are
not fit to treat animals. No government primary school competes with a public
school in South Africa. Our universities provide better criminals than
scholars. We do not have roads. in the place of roads we have long stretches of
death traps designed to keep the population in check through untimely death. We
do not have electricity. We have lost our factories to Ghana. Just a few
grumbling manufacturers remain, who are yet to get land in Ghana.
We have lost everything we met on the land. Cocoa, palm oil, groundnuts,
cotton, cashew and rubber have been forgotten and are better produced by
nations who came to learn from us. We have lost our moral compass, our society
is fractured, our statehood is threatened. Our citizens are in all prisons around
the world. Some of them prefer foreign prisons to Nigeria. Our
passport is treated with disdain everywhere you present it. Why should our
Senate Leader earn 600 million naira per annum? Why should our senators earn 30
million naira per month? Why should our National Assembly gulp 1.2 trillion naira per
annum while we try to save 1.4 trillion from subsidy removal ? Why should our
government be this big with special advisers on cassava and beans affairs? Do
we need 52 ministers and 36 states? Do we need a Minister for Water Resources when 95 percent
of Nigeria cannot recognize a water faucet? Why would our president spend close
to a billion on food while close to eighty percent live on less than a dollar a
day? Why should he budget a billion for
generators and diesel when he is urging us to believe in his power sector
reform? Why does our President need 9
private jets? Why do our governors move around with twenty-vehicle convoys while
David Cameron has just two vehicles and one outrider?
Why should our
politicians keep their salaries when Obama slashed his? Why should we continue
to be wasteful when the handwriting on the wall says “danger”? Why should we believe
this government when it says the subsidy gain will be properly reinvested? Despite my utmost respect for Christopher Kolade, I have this ominous feeling that he is being set up to be rubbished. Same for Alfa Belgore!
Labaran Maku must be suffering from foot and mouth disease if he really
used that cavity to announce 1,600 buses as palliative measure for 170 million
people. Lagbus has 500 buses. What impact will that make? You mean the government
of Nigeria needs to subject her citizens to hardship in order to buy 1,600
buses. On the strength of the initial information on how the savings will be invested, given by Labaran
Maku and the minister for Labour, the
government is bereft of both ideas and dictionaries!
To move Nigeria forward, we must do the following:
· Demand more transparency from the government
especially in oil dealings and allocations. Remember the way Okonjo Iweala was
publishing the allocations to all tiers of government.
· Demand immediate reduction of the size of this
government and its wasteful ways.
· Demand specific prioritized projects which should be tied
to the subsidy savings (if we negotiate a reduction instead of outright reversal).
· We need to demand same from our state governments,
prune down the waste.
· We need to ensure our protest is peaceful and organized
to avoid loss of life.
· We need to resist provocation and divisionist
tendencies.
· We need to pray for Nigeria. I still believe God can
use this moment to make a change in Nigeria.
Pray that anyone who steals from Nigeria’s commonwealth will experience
pain and sorrow. Pray for God to help us in the same way he intervened
Abacha-wise.
· Share additional information online, do not stop the flow
of information. The more we know, the better we become.
Just an addendum, later today, I shall be publishing specific line items from Nigeria's 2012 budget to expose the financial recklessness of this administration that is asking Nigerians to sacrifice. Make sure you check in!
I have posted a new entry on how our money is stolen through overblown and unrealistic budgets. I picked out line items from the budgetary allocations of the office of the Vice President in the 2012 budget. Please read that post. It makes interesting reading.
