Date Published: 08/24/09
NIGERIA IS BURNING WITH WARS RAGING ON ALL FRONTS (2)
By Temple Chima Ubochi
Poverty makes you sad as well as wise. (Bertolt Brecht)
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. (John F. Kennedy)
I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. (William Shakespeare)
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money. (P.J. O'Rourke)
Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit. (Eli Khamarov)
As if to lend credence to the Part 1 of this article, the Associated press (AP) analysed that poverty and graft are behind Nigeria violence. The Press wrote that the two-day outburst of (Boko Haram) violence is just the latest wave in a familiar cycle of bloodshed and a sign that the corrupt government is unable or unwilling to confront the myriad problems that keep Africa's most populous nation mired in unfulfilled promise. At the heart of the radical Islamic insurgency that sparked the violence are dire poverty and political maneuvering with religious undertone. The attacks had been committed by frustrated, unemployed youths and orchestrated by religious leaders and politicians who manipulate them to retain power. Salisu Suleiman of Next Newspapers saw the outburst of violence as an explosion of pent up grievances, especially as hunger and unemployment create fertile grounds for unrest.
In the north, governments have done little over the years beyond commissioning reports after particularly bloody bouts of violence, never acting on them because those orchestrating the violence have links to well-placed members of the elite that has controlled successive governments. The foot soldiers dying for nothing are ill-educated manual workers or the unemployed who are easy to manipulate. It’s one of the legacies of British colonization that has never been rectified. The colonizers ruled northern Nigeria indirectly through sultans and caliphs. In the southern part, they governed directly and missionaries brought Western education. The gulf remains to this day.
Corruption and inefficiency are to be blamed for the persisting poverty in Nigeria, the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter and fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports. More than halfway through his term, Nigerians have lost hope in Yar'Adua's promises of reform, including a chaotic and corrupt electoral system he (Yar'Adua) even admitted left questions about whether he really won the election that brought him to power. Like previous Nigerian governments, he has failed to deliver even basic services like pipe-borne water, electricity and health care. His pledge to fight corruption remains unfulfilled, with ex-state governors charged with stealing millions of dollars still on the loose. It seems he is a prisoner of corrupt vested interests that helped propel him to power.
The Niger Delta militancy is caused by deprivation, taking of people’s wealth and leaving nothing for them other than pains, miseries, hardships and environmental degradation. Then, the people decided to ask for their right to the ownership and control of resources within their zone: They would want to take a greater control of their lives and their God given resources. The government is at its deception again by offering the militants a Greek gift in the name of amnesty. What good is the amnesty when it was cloaked in deceit and falsehood? Why was it not based on dialogue between the government and the militants instead of on monologue? The government offering the militants amnesty for them to lay down their weapons, is not giving anything in return other than money without addressing the root cause of the militancy. Amnesty can’t work without the Joint Task Force’s (JTF) withdrawal from the zone.
A country that should be rich on prodigious oil reserves is getting poorer by the day; Islamic radicals are seeking to impose a Taliban-style all over the country; Angola has surpassed Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer; the situation in the Niger Delta, tensed due to attacks by militants demanding a greater share of the wealth their region produces, have reduced oil output by a little more than half and led the way for Nigeria to lose its historic place as Africa's leading oil producer to Angola; the militants have carried out a string of devastating attacks on pipelines and other oil installations as well as kidnappings of petroleum company employees. When the militants attacked a fuel depot in Lagos, for the first time striking outside the delta region, the government reacted by freeing Mr. Orkar, the long-jailed leader of MEND and urging negotiations! But the militancy will likely continue as long as the government fails to address decades-long grievances about the unrelenting poverty of the Niger Delta (as well as Nigerian) people.
AP was right when it also wrote that oil is no gift for Africa's poor. The Press wrote amongst other things that Nigeria is one of Africa's top two oil producers, yet most of its people live in wretched poverty, often in shanties dwarfed by fire-belching derricks.
Despite the widespread perception that corruption at all levels of government is endemic, there has been no full or completed public investigations or prosecutions of government officials for two years now. Corruption has long kept oil revenues from making life better for ordinary Nigerian, and the growing anger, which swells the ranks of militant groups, creates instability that threatens the world's fuel supply. Few weeks ago, it drew the attention of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she visited the country. Clinton stressed the need for greater accountability and transparency, and urged the government to allow the people to gain from the oil wealth. She told Yar’Adua and his band of thieves in government point-blank, that they are corrupt to the bone marrow and some of them are boiling instead of burying their faces in shame. David Mark, EFCC and PDP can jump into the Atlantic, if they feel that Ms. Clinton wounded their pride by telling them who they are to their face. On the other hand, they can swallow their shameful pride by heeding Clinton’s advice and start working for the good of the people.
Clinton can tell them all she wants, because, the money the corrupt Nigerians are stealing are partly American money from oil exports. In 2008, the U.S. imported 1.05 million barrels of oil a day from Nigeria, almost as much as it bought from Saudi Arabia, making Nigeria its fifth biggest oil source. The petrodollars allow people like David Mark to think they are above foreign or national criticism. Big oil revenues are a curse instead of a blessing to ordinary Nigerians. More than 80% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. Many feel neglected by their leaders. Thousands have been killed over the years in the delta region, where the military battles the militants by firing into slums from helicopter gunships and the militants react by bombing pipelines and kidnapping foreigners.
Amnesty should be more about restoring peace/sense of belonging back into the Niger Delta rather than the surrendering of guns alone. Government offering amnesty had put nothing in place to convince the militants what it had in stock for them and their people. The caliber of arms that were surrendered so far are mainly low caliber-weapons returned by unidentified youths claiming to be militants all in the hope of getting a share of the amnesty. We hope the government is careful not to deal with agitators and hooligans who are parading themselves as militants. As it stands now, the purpose of the amnesty could be defeated as those returning weapons might be fooling Yar’Adua and his government. There are all kinds of criminals, bandits, thieves and miscreants parading themselves as militant freedom fighters there right now.
The real militants had vowed not to return their weapons without the government proving its commitment to finding a lasting solution to the root cause of the agitation. MEND dissociated itself recently from the amnesty and warned the government to beware of an impostor and fraudster claiming to be representing their interest. In their words: “Our integrity and reputation is something we will guard jealously at a time when criminals have tainted the amnesty program with bribery and corruption. By compromising certain individuals to put up a show aimed at deceiving the public that the amnesty program is on course, MEND is watching the charade from a distance and can predict the outcome.”
The government is just addressing the symptom and not the main cause of the problem. The militants are going to take the money to buy new weapons and new groups would spring up here and there. There are now cracks in the militants' ranks. At the end, the amnesty is going to be an exercise in futility. Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi summed it up when he said “All we are saying as the Niger Delta Governors is, yes, it is a wonderful idea but these boys are not fighting just because they want amnesty. They started fighting and causing confusion in the system because there were some specific issues to be addressed and the main issue is that of the management of oil resources. How do you manage the oil revenue? What is our interest? How do you protect your interest? So, even though amnesty is a wonderful idea, we must go beyond it to address these basic issues that led to the crisis in the first place. If they are not addressed, some others (agitators) would come up and use them as an excuse for another round of violence. So, I am saying that after granting amnesty, we must look at the reasons for which these young men committed the crimes they committed. The approach has to be holistic. There has to be development that creates employment opportunities because basically most of these boys are unemployed. I always crack a joke that if all of them were working in Shell, nobody would leave his place of work to kidnap another person. It is unemployment and poverty that led to this crisis we have in the name of kidnapping, oil theft, destruction of oil pipelines and so on. So, if we are able to provide opportunities that accommodate all these interests, we won’t have all these problems”.
People have been warning the government to fast track the amnesty, because many of the south-south politicians are willing to buy over the weapons for the 2011 elections. And if this is the case, it will be disastrous for the nation. We learnt that top politicians from the South- South geo-political zone have started lobbying members of the leading militant group in the region, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, for support ahead 2011 polls. Some politicians had already started falling over themselves to acquire their guns for use in the 2011 general elections. What an irony; First, they (politicians) called the federal government in to kill them (the militants), now top South-South politicians are lobbying surviving militants for support ahead of 2011. That’s the same case with T.A. Orji. Orji wants to invite the JTF into Abia State to fight the kidnappers, but, soon as the 2011 draws near, he will be courting them (the kidnappers) in order to use them to intimidate his opponents. (I will deal with this issue in the next part of this article)
In the south east, the only thriving industry now is kidnapping/armed robbery caused by corruption, poverty, unemployment and ostentatious living. Because of corruption, the politicians cannot provide jobs and social amenities for the people, rather the people are going hungry for days, but, the politicians are moving around in vehicles costing about N18 million each, living in mansions costing millions of naira. What do one expects some of the people with greedy instinct to do, other than devising ways and means to live like those corrupt politicians who are also robbers with pen. The latest was the kidnapping and releasing of Chief Pete Edochie, a popular actor who came to limelight by acting Chinua Achebe´s Okonkwo. He was kidnapped on August 16, 2009 at Nkpor near Onitsha and was released a day later. Although his kidnapped demanded a ransom of N10 million, it is still unclear whether the amount or any other was paid to effect his release. In A different but related case, a five-year-old boy, Chidi Gwacham, was also abducted just after the kidnappers whisked away Edochie. It was disclosed that the hapless child was in the vehicle with his parents and their driver when the kidnappers struck. While fleeing in the ensuing melee, the parents and the driver abandoned the boy in the vehicle. The kidnappers after abducting Edochie, immediately went after the innocent child and whisked both of them away. Upon his release, Edochie, confirmed what I‘ve been writing all along. That poverty drives kidnapping. He explained that his kidnappers seized him in protest at the obscene display of Nigeria's stolen wealth by politicians. Edochie said his kidnappers told him they were not happy at the situation in the country. He said they told him that they were into the criminal act because they wanted to get their own share of the wealth being displayed by politicians. He said the kidnappers stated that although people were repulsed by the act of seizing people, there was nothing else they could do. He said they refrained from shooting victims to show Nigerians that they were just focused on making money and not taking lives. Edochie, who described his captors as young men, said he was grateful to them for the respect they accorded him.
Edochie did not end there, he went on to say that in Nigeria, we interpret democracy as the exploitation of the masses by an unrepentant privilege few and this is why we keep having incidence of violence, because people are beginning to revolt against these exploitation. He said further that if one goes to the Niger Delta, most of their lands have been wasted by oil exploitation and they are entitled to some better treatment. That it will cost the government nothing if they spend so much money in developing Niger Delta. He would want the government to give these people some sense of belonging, good roads, water, good schools, improved environment and to put all the youngsters who are involved in violent act through schools. He then adviced the government to create circumstances that will enable those violent youngsters convert their talents into something positive, because as long as government allows the present situation to persist, then we should be having such violent social eruptions and they are going to become very regular. In his words: “If we allow what happened in 2007 to be replicated in 2011, I will not be surprised if this country eventually disintegrates. America predicted in the year 2000 that they were giving us only fifteen years for us to go to pieces, I am praying to God that it does not happen. For you to develop beyond the experience you already have, you have to first and foremost, accept you limitations and criticism, but if you are impervious to criticism, you don't learn and our politicians do not appear to learn. But I want to tell you the youngsters are not ready to take this. I never dreamed for a split second that I Pete Edochie will be kidnapped, but it happened and the young men wanted opportunity to tell me how they feel and at the end of the day, I shook them and bade them well”.
The south west is the hotbed of armed robberies and human parts dealings. Ogun and Oyo states are robbers’ fiefdoms where they operate unmolested. Just two from multitude of examples: Recently, commercial banks in Ogbomoso were forced to close for two days, after robbers attacked some of them, carting away undisclosed amount of money and killing five people. We also learnt that Ore has lost its soul, owing to activities of armed robbers. Unlike before when drivers and travellers have fun all night long, Ore now goes to sleep as early as 10pm. We learnt from the SUN (18.08.2009) that Ogun State Police Command paraded 6 suspected armed robbers, who were caught at various locations in the state. Different dangerous arms and ammunition, as well as other lethal weapons that were recovered from them were also exhibited. Also, three suspected cultists were also paraded along with a 34-year-old herbalist who was found with human skeleton. The suspect herbalist, Mr. Rasaki Yekinni, while answering newsmen questions, regretted his action, saying that he wanted to use the human part for money-ritual purposes. We were told that no fewer than 21 assorted stolen vehicles (seven Honda models, Toyota RAV 4 car, Nissan Primera, Nissan Sunny and Mazda) were recovered from the suspected robbers.
But wait a minute, the biggest bank robbers in Nigeria are some of the business elite and those who made Forbes list as amongst the richest in the world. Now we know how they managed to amass such wealth in the midst of poverty, unemployment, diseases and despair.The Daily Trust (19.08.2009) wrote that companies belonging to top operators of the nation’s stock market and the oil industry, as well as well-connected billionaire businessmen, featured prominently on the list of largest debtors of the five troubled banks released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). On the list are president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange Alhaji Dangote, NSE Director-General Prof Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke and erstwhile president Oba Otudeko, whose companies together owe a total of over N53 billion non-performing loans to Intercontinental, Union and Oceanic banks. Dangote’s Dansa Oil & Gas owes N8.8 billion, Dangote Industries N2.5 billion, Transnational Corporation chaired by Okereke-Onyiuke owes N40.8 billion, while Otudeko’s Honeywell owes N1.6 billion. Ms. Okereke-Onyiuke said Transnational Corporation, and not she, is the debtor.
Many other operators of the capital market, who featured on the list, collectively owing dozens of billions of naira, are Mr. Femi Otedola, Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim, Mr. Fola Adeola, Chief Lulu Briggs, Mr. Aig-Imokhuede, Dr. Peter Odili and Alhaji Arisekola Alao, whose companies owe billions of naira to the five banks. A breakdown shows Rahamaniyya Oil and Gas Ltd, which has AbdulRahman M. Bashir owing the Intercontinental Bank N12.8 billion and Oceanic Bank N28.6 billion; Transnational Corporation with Okereke-Onyiuke as chairman owing Union Bank N30.87 billion and Intercontinental Bank N6.6 billion. Others are African Petroleum with Otedola as the chairman owing Afribank N12.8 billion, while his own Zenon Oil owes Union Bank N6.25 billion. Global Fleet Industries Ltd owned by Jimoh Ibrahim owes Oceanic Bank N14.78 billion; Tijjani Babangida’s plaza owes Finbank N450 million; and Chanchangi Airlines owned by Alhaji Ahmadu Chanchangi owes Union Bank N423 million.
Ascot Offshore (Henry Imasekha and co.) owes Intercontinental Bank N44.67 billion; Rockson Engineering (Engineer J.1. Arumemi-Ikhide and his wife) owes Intercontinental Bank close to N37 billion; Lister Oil with Alhaji Arisikola Alao as major shareholder owes Intercontinental N5 billion; Mobitel owes Intercontinental Bank N1.38 billion; MTS First Wireless Ltd with Lulu Briggs as shareholder owes Union Bank N9.85 billion; and IRS Airlines Ltd owned by Khalifa Isyaka Rabiu owes Oceanic Bank N3.33 billion.
Saharareporters (17.08.2009) wrote that “James Ibori, the notorious former governor of Delta State who has been indicted for corruption, is behind the near-collapse of two banks -- Oceanic and Intercontinental banks. Ibori is Nigeria's most powerful political operative, who has now emerged also as its biggest economic menace. According to sources at the Central Bank of Nigeria, he is owing Intercontinental bank N40 billion. The debt, which Ibori secured through his buy-over of Wilbros Nigeria Limited, led the bank to fail substantially, leading to the CBN removal of its CEO, Erastus Akingbola”. Erastus Akingbola has fled abroad, in spite of earlier claims by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that there was no escape route for the ousted bank chiefs. The question becomes why he was allowed to slip out of the country, can Waziri’s EFCC ever get anything rightly done? We are learning that some of the bank chiefs, who knew that the bubble would soon burst, started relocating their families abroad since 2008 where they are living in opulence. I hope those still on the loose would not abscond.
Another bombshell came from Moyo Fabiyi who wrote this on 20.08.2009 (I hope these are mere allegations, or else Nigeria is a finished entity) “In what has been described as the ‘Great Bank Robbery’, the immediate past Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo has been fingered as the chairman of African Finance Corporation, which is owing Oceanic Bank N32 billion.Emerging facts on the five troubled banks have revealed that Prof. Soludo was chairman of African Finance Corporation Board during his tenure as the boss of Nigerian’s apex bank, the CBN. And it was alleged he might have used his position to secure the N32 billion loan for the company. Other companies and personalities mentioned in Oceanic Bank’s N278 billion non-performing loan include Notore Chemical Industries Limited, formerly National Fertilizer Company of Nigeria, NAFCON, whose chairman is Nigeria’s former military ruler, General Yakubu Gowon”.
Biodun Sowunmi summarised it all when he wrote “The big boys are the real robbers of our people. They hide under their companies to obtain billions of Naira in loans without the minimum collateral safeguard. The loans are mopped away from the companies leaving the loans unserviced. The corrupt bank chiefs receive fractions in cuts and tangible sums donated to the ruling party and governance operators. The shareholders and depositors are left in ruins. The corporate robbers buy state of the art Yacht "boating" away on the lagoon under the watch of Madam Farida. Egwu is busy suspending ASUU members’ salary to assist the corporate robbers' cash liquidity who donated lavishly towards his party. Madam Akunyili is busy rebranding sick Nigeria. The great Bank Robbers escape with their loots. The equally sick Sanusi released N400 billion public funds to replace the N500 billion depositors’ funds looted, keeping mute on the N100 billion difference belonging to depositors. Meanwhile, the looting continues with the sick President on a spiritual journey to Saudi Arabia for medical check-up and consultation with marabouts on what to do with MEND. What a way to manage a country!”
Meanwhile, on August 21, 2009 (Daily Trust), the CBN admitted errors on debtors list, making a top economist to describe the CBN action as a “mad rush to nowhere” while another added: “This is not banking, it’s craziness. I think they have to be careful. They need to follow due process in all that they do. This is more of politics than banking.” I hope Sanusi is doing this with all genuineness and that the whole thing has no ethnic coloration to it. We will see if this is a ploy to reverse all Soludo worked hard to achieve for the banking sector and to northernise the sector at the end of it all, just as they (the northerners) have the oil and gas sector and the economic power of Nigeria in their firm grips. May be, all the northerners want is to cap it all by taking over the last frontier – the banking sector. The CBN will be asking local and foreign banks and investors to bid for the ownership of five banks whose chief executive officers were fired, and that may be the opportunity for this administration to continue fostering Fulani control over all facets of life in Nigeria. At last, the Fulanis may end up owning all those embattled banks. They are not stupid as people think.
To be continued
THE THANX IS ALL YOURS!!!
Continued from Part 1
