In the run-up to the 2015 Presidential Election General Muhammadu Buhari tasked one of his associates, Professor Femi Olufunmilade, Head of Department of International Relations and Strategic Studies, and Sub-Dean of the School of Post Graduate Studies and Research of Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State, to help him craft an electoral strategy that could unseat President Goodluck Jonathan. Olufunmilade obliged him with a strategy paper that outlined how Frederick Chiluba, John Kufour, Abdoulaye Wade, Mwai Kibaki, Yayi Boni, Ernest Bai Koroma, Alhassan Quattara and Peter Mutharika were able to oust sitting incumbents in Zambia, 1991; Ghana, 2000; Senegal, 2000; Kenya, 2002; Benin Republic, 2006; Sierra Leone, 2007; Cote d’Ivoire, 2010 and Malawi, 2014 respectively.
In all of the cases above, the incoming leaders accused the sitting parties of widespread corruption, mismanagement and nepotism, and promised radical changes chief of which would be retrieval of stolen monies from the agents of the previous governments. In none of those countries was money retrieved. As a matter of fact, in none of those countries was any serious prosecution undertaken.
Having been shown what to do in Nigeria, apparatchiks of the All Progressives Congress (APC) went to town in a whispering, nay shouting, campaign that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had stolen the Treasury dry, and promised that they would retrieve monies that had been stolen. Fantastic amounts were boldly mentioned. In order not to be outdone, Adam Oshiomhole told the media that an American official confided in him that one former minister in the Jonathan cabinet stole five billion dollars. The Americans categorically denied that anyone told him so. He swallowed his pride with raw egg on his face and did not dare to continue the discussion.
It is one thing to apply an idea that worked somewhere for a specific gain, it is another to keep a nation at standstill on the basis of that concocted strategy. It appears that President Buhari and the APC have forgotten that the many allegations they made were to whip up mass hysteria to sweep them into office. The only person that they have been able to pin something on is former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, who is alleged to have diverted monies meant to procure arms to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in the north east to PDP stalwarts in the run-up to the 2015 Presidential Election. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been busy locking up suspects and making them pay back what was given to them. The main supposed distributor has been clamouring for his day in court but the Federal Government has refused to produce him in court for months on end.
That is not what a party that is righteous and want to prove a point does. The Federal Government, in this instance, appears to be the party that has something to hide. It is the Federal Government that sought a secret trial, which the courts rightly refused. It is the suspected criminal that is insisting on an open trial. Something does not ring right here.
Every Nigerian government since independence has been accused of corruption. It was the chief reason Kaduna Nzeogwu gave for the January 15 1966 putsch that overthrew the Tafawa Balewa government. After General Yakubu Gowon was toppled in 1975 the nation was treated to the drama of probes that saw to the confiscation of landed properties belonging to members of his regime, including military governors. After Alhaji Shehu Shagari was overthrown in 1983 by the present President it was another round of circus that saw military tribunals handing down two hundred years sentences in some instances. The governments of generals Babangida, Abacha, Abdulsalami, Obasanjo were alleged to have robbed the national till. After President Umaru Yar’Adua took ill in 2009 his signature was procured for the National Appropriation Act of 2009. The rumour mill says emphatically that the man was in coma and that his signature was forged so that the many things already padded into the Appropriation Act could be taken out. If Nigeria has had such a chequered history of being “fantastically corrupt” as David Cameron, the Prime Minister was caught on camera saying, and with President Buhari agreeing with him, it would amount to a mind-blowing miracle if members of Jonathan’s government did not also dip their hands where they should not have. Saying that corruption went on under Jonathan is not saying anything new. If there is evidence that some persons stole what did not belong to them they should be taken before the courts and if found guilty, punished. It seems doing that would pull the rug from under this government so they keep the issue of corruption by the past government on the front burner. Buhari and his party were so faithful to Olufunmilade’s strategy during the campaigns that they started believing what they were selling to people. They do not plan to make a turn and start the process of governance. After all, if the people were gullible enough to believe what they were told during the campaign they may be gullible enough to believe the same lies for four years
After President Jonathan shocked Buhari by conceding the 2015 election to him before the result was officially pronounced, Buhari and APC went to sleep. They had expected resistance from Jonathan and were preparing for war and strategies of setting up a parallel government, as the APC National Chairman, Odigie Oyegun, warned Nigerians before the election. After Jonathan stole their thunder they became inert. It took Buhari all of six months to name his ministers! After one year in office there is nothing to assess. Buhari has, simply, squandered the first year of his presidency blinking and bemoaning the “mess” he inherited from PDP. It is fashionable these to talk of 16 wasted years under PDP. That, simply put is a lie. Putting Sambo Dasuki and his nemeses Olisa Metuh and Femi Olukayode (FFK) in gaol are the notable things Buhari has done. Additionally, he put a treasury looter like Rotimi Amaechi in government. The former deployed the monies they got to stop him from coming to power, while Amaechi and co stole from their state governments to help him to power.
Shortly after General Olusegun Obasanjo became President in 1999 he emplaced a National Empowerment and Economic Development Strategy (NEEDS) which achieved some of the results Nigerians were told it would achieve. Yar’Adua came up with a Seven Point Agenda which he did not live to fully implement. Jonathan came with a Transformation Agenda that built the most roads by any government in Nigeria’s history, and that saw Nigeria upstage South Africa to become Africa’s number one economy while battling with a full blown insurgency in the north east. With the benefit of hindsight, if all the successors of Obasanjo had stayed with NEEDS, occasionally tweaking it as the need arose the songs on the lips of Nigerians may be different from what is being sung today.
Rather than the do-little, wail and moan, and blame PDP that the Buhari government is doing it should get its act going by looking at previous strategy documents, tweaking them where necessary or come up with an entirely new one. It is when a government unveils a vision of where it wants to take the country and people that the people can mobilize their resources, energies and enthusiasm to work towards shared goals; it is what a country’s diaspora can mobilize support for; it is what the private sector takes its cue from; it is what public servants take their direction from. Surely, APC has within its ranks enough materials that can help craft a national development strategy. Or, is everything in the head of President Buhari and we should just leave them there?
For months on end so-called Fulani herdsmen unleashed sorrow, tears and blood on communities in Nigeria. Communities, peopled by indigenes of Nigeria, often went to sleep only for the herdsmen, or rightly put Fulani militias, to attack them, send many to their early graves while maiming yet more. The same thing kept happening in Taraba, Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa states, and has recently moved to Delta State and the south east. The impunity displayed by the militias is alarming. As the Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, informs us the militia did not attack and run away. They have occupied the lands of those they displaced. And this, in a land that has a government in place! The fact that President Buhari is Fulani like members of the militias being complained about is no coincidence. That they are so confident as to take over and occupy lands belonging to others without fearing consequences from law enforcement agencies is no coincidence either. At the height of its giddy campaign of terror Boko Haram did not dare to take territory in Nigeria’s hinterland. It sequestered itself around Nigeria’s north east borderlands. The Fulani is taking lands in the hinterland, in places as central as Plateau and Benue states and the President does not see anything out of the ordinary. Only once did his spokesman tell us that the President had given orders that the “herdsmen” be dealt with. President Buhari does not think that what the Fulani militias are doing to other peoples is what he should vigorously address.
What President Buhari and his government have done in the past year is nothing. We have not seen anything that they have done. This government has not struck the earth with a digger in any part of Nigeria, say nothing about building one kilometre of road. As they say on the street, bullshit can take you to the top, but cannot keep you there.
President Buhari has been telling Nigerians that he wants to repatriate “our” monies that were stashed abroad and make those monies work for “us”. The first question to ask is: What monies? Everywhere he goes in the world the authorities have promised to cooperate with him to repatriate Nigeria’s money through the legal process, but the implication of what was promised seems to flown over his head completely.
It is not the duty of those jurisdictions to look for Nigeria’s monies in their banks. It is the duty of the Nigerian government to provide details of the monies it is seeking to recover including:
What the monies were budgeted for; From which MDAs the monies were diverted; Who and who were involved in the diversions;
The accounts from which the monies were drawn and the trail of the monies to the accounts in the countries from which Nigeria is seeking recovery.
It is the details as above that the Federal Government would need to provide irrefutable evidence of that those governments can approach the courts with for forfeiture and repatriation. Those governments are not in a position to do the tracing for Nigeria and would not, even if they could. These are monies sitting in their banks that their citizens access for loans to start and grow their businesses. Unless Nigeria makes a water-tight case those governments are not going to lift a finger to help Nigeria repatriate anything. Under Obasanjo, seasoned foreign forensic accountants were paid to trace monies that were recovered from the Abacha family, its friends and associates. I am not aware that the Buhari government has taken that first step. Without taking that step, and waiting on assurances of cooperation from leaders of those countries casts Buhari and his government as unserious in the eyes of those leaders.
If it is monies “stolen” that Buhari is waiting for to begin the business of governance in Nigeria Nigerians should prepare their minds to wait another three years to vote out this President. He has not done the things he ought to do to achieve repatriation of “stolen” monies and none would be repatriated to his government. Mass hysteria can achieve only so much!
Written by Olanrewaju Aderemi Obafemi.
