{"id":68196,"date":"2024-01-08T14:14:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T14:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=68196"},"modified":"2024-01-08T14:14:31","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T14:14:31","slug":"abuja-where-financial-scandals-walk-on-two-legs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=68196","title":{"rendered":"Abuja, where financial scandals walk on two legs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scandals in Abuja <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Lasisi Olagunju<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Some cabinet members went to Western Region premier, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, to complain about the corruption of one of their colleagues. They said the man was stealing their party\u2019s funds and eating government money with reckless abandon. They said the gentleman\u2019s impunity knew neither the fear of the law, nor of the party and the people. \u201cHe is even building two houses at the same time,\u201d they rammed it in. Chief Akintola listened attentively to the complainants and their complaints. He then turned to the accused who was also seated right there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou heard that? They said you are building two houses at the same time; you are building one in Oyo; you are building another in Ibadan. You are the party\u2019s treasurer; you are also in charge of the government\u2019s finances. Can\u2019t houses be built one after the other? (Ngb\u00f3, w\u00f3n n\u00ed \u00f2 nk\u00f3\u2019le m\u00e9j\u00ec l\u00e9\u00e8kan soso; \u00eckan l\u2019\u00d2y\u00f3, \u00eckan n\u2019B\u00e0d\u00e0n? \u00ccwo ni treasurer egb\u00e9; \u00ecwo n\u00e1\u00e0 ni minister ow\u00f3. S\u00e9 il\u00e9 \u00f2 se\u00e9 k\u00f3 n\u00ed\u2019k\u00f2\u00f2kan ni?).\u201d If that line of <\/span>adjudication was strange to the complaint lodgers, Chief Akintola was still not done with them. He had some words for the accusers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEach of you is in charge of a ministry of government. If we flash a torch into your anus, won\u2019t we see faeces?\u201d He asked, looking straight into their eyes. They looked down. Then Akintola faced the leader of the accusers. \u201cAnd you, but I know that you have just built a house in Ibadan for one of your mistresses (\u00ccwo, mo seb\u00ed o s\u00e8s\u00e8 k\u00f3\u2019l\u00e9 f\u00fan \u00e0l\u00e8 re kan n\u2019B\u00e0d\u00e0n ni). The accusers were shocked by their leader\u2019s bent of justice. But they ought not to be shocked. The leader once said publicly that he was a master of equivocation. The premier didn\u2019t release his guests without a warning to both sides to be sensitive to public sensibilities in their use of public funds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr Omololu Olunloyo, a second republic governor of the old Oyo State, will be 89 years old this year. He once told me the significance of this year in his life but I am not permitted to say it \u2013 at least, not now. Where I come from, a man does not tell all he is told. Olunloyo also knows too much, perhaps that explains his \u2018refusal\u2019 to write his autobiography despite our prodding and pressure. But he told me stories, one of which is the Akintola story I just told above \u2013 although I have hidden the names of the accused and the accusers. I will tell yet another one from that former governor, especially now that the Federal Republic of Nigeria is enmeshed in an argument over whether or not it is permitted and legal in public service to officially move public money into private accounts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Olunloyo was very close to Akintola. He was also very close to Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. One day, Balewa drew Olunloyo aside and told him his story of helplessness: \u201cDoctor Olunloyo, this country is a country of thieves. As I sit here, my appointees managing the central bank are stealing money. If I move my seat from here to the CBN, right under my nose and supervision there, they will still steal money. Look, I just caught a thief, but they said I can\u2019t prosecute him because of where he comes from \u2013 unless I catch at least one thief each from the other regions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If Vulture claims that it is not today that the rains started beating him, you think he is lying. Please, believe Vulture. The two cases above occurred in the early 1960s \u2013 that was some sixty-something years ago. And it wasn\u2019t only the political class that was implicated. Even the wretched of the earth believe in fish eating fish to get fat.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1952\/1953, seven years before independence, there was a commission of inquiry into the administration of Lagos Town Council. The commission found that \u201cin hospitals, nurses require a fee from every in-patient before the prescribed medicine is given, and even the ward servants must have their \u2018dash\u2019 before bringing the bed-pan; it is known to be rife in the Police Motor Traffic Unit, which has unrivalled opportunities on account of the common practice of overloading vehicles; pay clerks make a deduction from the wages of daily paid staff; produce examiners exact a fee from the produce buyer for every bag that is graded and sealed; domestic servants pay a proportion of their wages to the senior of them, besides often having paid a lump sum to buy the job.\u201d Can you see the class of those implicated in those findings? Ordinary workers. Public and private sector workers still do it; politicians do it; they buy and sell positions. Indeed, our political situation has always been like eighteenth century England when \u201cit was taken for granted that the purpose for going into parliament or holding any public office was to make or repair a man\u2019s personal fortune\u201d (R. M. Jackson, 1958, page 345).<\/span><\/p>\n

Above, you read about people buying public and private jobs in 1952\/1953 Lagos. You would think 60 years of independence should be long enough for a people\u2019s redemption to occur. But jobs are still being purchased in Nigeria of 2024. If anything has changed in our story over the last six decades, it is that the acorn of misdeeds of the past has grown to become an oak. The oak is that behemoth no one wraps their arms around to climb. The oak is igi os\u00e8 in my part of the world. If you are Yoruba, you should be familiar with this incantation: W\u00f3n d\u2019\u00f2y\u00ec k\u2019\u00e1p\u00e1, ap\u00e1 \u00f2 k\u2019\u00e1p\u00e1; w\u00f3n d\u2019\u00f2y\u00ec k\u2019\u00f3s\u00e8 ap\u00e1 \u00f2 k\u2019\u00f3s\u00e8\u2026). That is what corruption has become. The law is helpless before the powerful because no sane person looks into a deep well and jumps into it. It is our major gain in sixty years of flag independence. Our country is fully vaccinated against all virtues. Follow the variegated stories around Emefiele. Instead of retail stealing in the central bank, the CBN itself has been stolen \u2013 what we have there is \u2018k\u00f2r\u00f2fo \u00ecs\u00e1n\u00e1\u2019 \u2013 a matchbox without matchsticks. Follow other recent scandals in Abuja. Instead of government ministers being content with stealing their ministries\u2019 money \u201cto build two houses simultaneously,\u201d they are stealing the ministries. Yet, nothing happens to the plunderers because they are like human eyes \u2013 they come with divine immunity from intrusive fingers \u2013 \u00c0\u00e1n\u00fa oj\u00fa k\u00ec\u00ed j\u00e9 k\u00ed w\u00f3n t\u2019ow\u00f3 b\u2019oj\u00fa. They are also like rattle snakes \u2013\u00ccb\u00e8r\u00f9 ej\u00f2 k\u00ec\u00ed j\u00e9 k\u00ed w\u00f3n te ej\u00f2 m\u00f3\u2019l\u00e8. Another incantation!<\/span><\/p>\n

You saw a document that surfaced some days ago signed by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu. In that memo, Edu directed the Accountant General of the Federation to transfer the sum of N585,198,500.00 into a private account belonging to one Oniyelu Bridget. There was a national uproar. If you were part of the outrage, it means you no get job. Did you not see that the minister did not disown the document? With her full chest, she owned it and declared what she did as legal. She also did not forget to blame the leakage and the outrage on her enemies. She called them desperate persons implicated in an earlier scandal of N44.8bn in the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA). She said they wanted to \u201cstain her integrity because she alerted the government on the ongoing N44.8 Billion fraud in NSIPA\u2026\u201d She was referring to the scandal that has led to the suspension of the National Coordinator and chief executive of the NSIPA, Mrs. Halima Shehu, by President Bola Tinubu. There are reports that Halima moved that amount (N44.8 Billion) into some unusual accounts. We do not have the details. And, we have not heard her own defence direct from her mouth. But her own people plead her innocence; they are accusing her enemies of being behind her ordeal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ms. Halima Shehu.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, weighed in on Saturday. She said although her office received the said request from Edu, it ignored it. She said she did not make the payment as instructed because the procedure was wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

The engine of Nigeria\u2019s bureaucracy has broken down. The Yoruba would say if the short one is not wise, what about the tall one? Were civil servants in Edu\u2019s ministry who presumably drafted the memo for her to sign not aware of the existence of the laws guiding the processing, movement and use of public funds? There is Nigeria\u2019s Financial Regulations 2009. Its Chapter Seven, Section 713 states that \u201cpersonal money shall in no circumstances be paid into a government bank account, nor shall any public money be paid into a private account.\u201d If the civil servants didn\u2019t know the law, you would think the person signing that half-a-billion naira memo would pause and check. Was there not a retreat shortly after the ministers were appointed? What were they taught at those opulent sessions?<\/span><\/p>\n

Things are happening. We only know what our husbands allow us to know or what \u2018accidentally\u2019 leaks like the N44.8 billion suspension and the N585 million memo. The present Federal Government with its three branches is particularly audacious in doing the unthinkable. The unthinkable is what you calmly do when you know you\u2019ve conquered the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

We can dismiss all these and say they do not matter, that after all, no money is lost (yet). But that deadly, slithering being called snake has a way of climbing its way to the top of the raffia palm. Ninety-two-year-old British political scientist, Colin Leys, in 1965 wrote on the consequences of corruption, impunity and sleaze on the future of Africa. Writing in his \u2018What is the Problem about Corruption?\u2019 Leys argued that \u201cIf the top political elite of a country consumes its time and energy in trying to get rich by corrupt means, it is not likely that the (country\u2019s) development plans will be fulfilled.\u201d His prediction reeked of doom. About that time, Ronald Wraith and Edgar Simpkins published their book, \u2018Corruption in Developing Countries\u2019 (1963). They looked into practices in African countries, including Nigeria. They said they saw a \u201cjungle of nepotism and temptation\u2026 a dangerous and tragic situation.\u201d They described the landscape as \u201cthe scarlet thread of bribery and corruption.\u201d They witnessed malfeasance flourishing \u201cas luxuriantly as the bush and weeds which it so much resembles.\u201d They saw the toxins of corruption \u201ctaking the goodness from the soil and suffocating the growth of plants which have been carefully and expensively bred and tended.\u201d I suggest you read that metaphor of gloom again. If nothing fruitful grows today, it is because the earth was scorched yesterday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The vaccine that will cure our political elite of greed has not been made. Lanrewaju Adepoju, a Yoruba performing poet who died recently, looked at a situation like this in the 1980s and declared that nothing overwhelmed a babal\u00e1wo more than being confronted with a bad case that permitted no remedial ritual. The Nigerian situation is pretty much like a terminal illness \u2013 or worse, like a carcass being mobbed by a pack of wolves and a wake of vultures. Everyone tears at it, exacting their share. And the predators are very bold and daring. Socialists and Marxists will blame this tragedy on the greed of capitalism and its lack of shame. English trade unionist, Thomas Dunning (1799-1873), quoted by Karl Marx in his three-volume work \u2018Capital\u2019 said \u201cWith adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 percent, positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both\u2026\u201d Just sit back and, like Akintola, take a long look at the accused and the accusers in the current scandal in Abuja. Look at the entire business architecture of government. Corruption is the only business that yields returns here. In 60 years plus, the Nigerian state has established itself as a crime scene. We all know that things can\u2019t continue like this without the world coming to an end. But the questions are: Where is the face of the saviour? And who really is clean?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25cf Mr. Olagunju is a columnist with the Nigerian Tribune.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The scandals in Abuja By Lasisi Olagunju Some cabinet members went to Western Region premier, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, to complain about the corruption of one of their colleagues. They said the man was stealing their party\u2019s funds and eating government money with reckless abandon. They said the gentleman\u2019s impunity knew neither the fear of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":68200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[913,6445,6446],"class_list":["post-68196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-opinion","tag-abuja","tag-olunloyo","tag-scandals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}