JONATHAN SAYS MASSIVE CORRUPTION IN OIL, BANKING SECTORS

President Goodluck Jonathan told a Swedish Journalist that the Oil and Banking sector in Nigeria is riddled with massive corruption, vowing to tackle the menace.

The Nigerian President in an exclusive interview with Jonathan Power, a Swedish journalist and commentator, said that his administration had brought down corruption in fertilizer procurement and distribution at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.

“Corruption is not just one group of people. Look at fertilizer. When government used to distribute it, there was a lot of corruption. Today the farmer buys fertilizer directly from the manufacturers and dealers. The government subsidies the fertilizer. We give farmers tokens so they can buy it and cut out the middleman. So corruption is reduced,” President Jonathan said.

“That’s exactly what I want to do with the oil sector and also in the banking sector.

There are massive corrupt practices.”
Jonathan said, however, that it was not corruption per se that was slowing down the development of Nigeria, as many states with committed and focused leadership have succeeded in transforming their states. He cited Uyo and Port Harcourt as examples.

“To make a state rich does not require that much money. Most of our towns except Lagos and Kano are not very big. I don’t think the issue is corruption per se, alone.

“It is commitment. But now you see this in many states.
You see this in Uyo, capital of Akwa Ibom State, and in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital,” the president noted.

He described as contradictory, the pervasive level of corruption in Nigeria despite the fact that Nigerians are among the most religious-minded human beings on earth.

Prodded to enumerate the legacy bequeathed to him by the Obasanjo administration, Jonathan said that his predecessor introduced far-reaching reforms in agriculture, power and the economy. “I can’t remember anything negative,” he stated.

The president also defended the Obasanjo regime, saying that he did not rig the elections conducted during his tenure. He said that election rigging in Nigeria did not start in Obasanjo’s time.

Jonathan noted, “In every government all over the world the opposition parties want to take over. For them to do so, they must challenge your credibility. If you talk about elections we had controversial elections before Obasanjo. It wasn’t only in his time. This time round, we changed the psyche of Nigerians and said: ‘Look, your vote must count”’.

The president dismissed the notion that the Islamic sect, Boko Haram is striving as a result of poverty, pointing out that the sect’s membership and mode of operation did not suggest that it was borne out of poverty.

“I am not one who associates crime with poverty. Yes, it correlates with poverty where the means of survival are difficult, but this excessive violence of Boko Haram is beyond poverty.

“Some of the leaders of Boko Haram are medical doctors. The violence is a psychological problem. You probably know of that church in Latin America where the whole congregation committed suicide by drinking poison under the influence of its leader. Someone came with some strange ideas and people are very gullible.

“How does Boko Haram survive, how do they eat, buy the fertilizer they need for explosives? The rifle is expensive. I don’t think it’s poverty per se,” he stated.

On what his administration was doing to check extreme poverty in the country, the president revealed that the government had made a special provision for agriculture and would also be refining all the nation’s petroleum needs.

He said, “We are looking into petro-chemicals and being able to export petro-chemicals and fertiliser. We have launched a programme to create temporary jobs for young people. We are encouraging companies to adopt them. We will give the companies an allowance. Then, over time, companies can train them and decide to keep them.

“Also we will recruit them for building sanitation projects, primary schools, health centres, planting flowers and trees, beautification. We will pay them an allowance. Over the long term this is not sustainable but they will be trained to be skilled workers as carpenters, builders and plumbers.”

On measures to boost agriculture, Jonathan disclosed that the administration was working hard to make Nigerians see agriculture not as mere farming but as a flourishing business with huge potentials for massive employment.

“This season we are subsidizing the interest rate on farmers’ loans to bring it down from 15% to 7% per annum. We are going to guarantee through the banking sector 70% of the principal of all loans for the supply of seeds and fertilizer.

“We are introducing policies to encourage the substitution of home-grown cassava for imported wheat flour in bread-making. Bakeries will have 18 months to make the transition and will enjoy a tax incentive of a 12% rebate if they obtain 40% blending.

Wheat flour importers will have to pay an import levy of 65%. Similarly there will be a 25% levy on brown rice and 100% on polished white rice. All this will have a big effect on aiding local production,” the president said.

President slashes 2012 budget by N101bn
Meanwhile, due to the partial removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, President Goodluck Jonathan has asked the National Assembly to make a downward review of the 2012 budget by over N100 billion.

This was contained in a letter sent to the Senate and the House of Representatives which was read during plenary by the Senate President David Mark and speaker, Hon Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, yesterday.

Jonathan had presented a budget proposal of N4.749 trillion to a joint session of the National Assembly in December but now seeks N4.648 trillion instead.
A breakdown shows that against the aggregate expenditure of N4.749 trillion earlier proposed, the president was seeking the issuance of N4.648 trillion from the Consolidated Revenue Account of the country for the 2012 fiscal year, leaving a difference of N101 billion.

Also, Jonathan added in the letter that the 2012-2014 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) will also have to be reviewed because of the effects of the partial removal of subsidy on revenue items and other factors.

The letter reads in part, “Recent domestic developments, key among which was the partial withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products and the ripple effect on government revenue and expenditure items have necessitated the revision of the 2012-2014 MTEF, and the 2012 budget proposal.”

In the capital expenditure, a proposed cut of N35.5 billion has been sought, which means that the initial N1.319 trillion proposed will now be N1.284 trillion.

On the recurrent (non-debt) expenditure, there was a N39.3 billion reduction from the N2.471 trillion initially proposed, making it N2.432 trillion which the executive now seeks approval for, while statutory transfers was also down by N25.3 billion from N397.9 billion to N372.6 billion.
Not affected by the proposed review, however, was the debt services component of the budget which was maintained at N559.6 billion.

The presidency also sought approval for the sum of N180 billion as part of funds needed to implement the subsidy removal reinvestment (SURE) on assumption of 90 dollar per barrel for crude oil.

Shell confirms theft of 150,000 barrels crude daily
Meanwhile, the country losses 150,000 barrels of crude oil daily to thieves, Royal Dutch Shell has revealed.

It added that attacks on oil pipelines, the dearth of funding from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and regulatory uncertainty have dampened appetite for exploration of Nigeria's huge oil and gas reserves.

In a speech to an oil and gas conference in the capital Abuja, Ian Craig, Shell's director for sub-Saharan Africa, said loss of oil to theft in Nigeria was currently in the region of 150,000 barrels per day. Under the current crude oil price in the international market, this would amount to about $18 million or N2.88 billion every day.

He said Nigeria could produce 4 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) but that big changes would be needed for this to happen.
Stakeholders say thieves in the oil-rich Niger Delta use explosives or even just hacksaws to cut open pipelines and siphon out oil, a practice known as bunkering that hurts production and is thought to be part of a large international criminal enterprise.

Since an amnesty for militants in 2009, attacks on oil facilities have become much less frequent and less destructive, but bunkering operations remain a costly headache.

"We still face major challenges ... (there is) chronic underfunding of the onshore joint ventures where NNPC (the national oil company) is the majority shareholder," Craig told the conference. "The greatest challenge, however, is the massive organised oil theft business and the criminality and corruption which it fosters. This drives away talent ...increases costs, reduces revenues both for investors and the government and results in major environmental impacts.”