By latest reports, Nigeria’s debt profile stands at United States 60 billion dollars. US 150 billion dollars was stolen in the last ten years. Included in this vast unimaginable sum are funds meant to build a formidable army, provide services in hospitals and clinics, generate power to power business developments and provide jobs for many unemployed youths, establish the basis for development of the rural communities, build strong national infrastructure to integrate social and economic life across the nation. The opportunity cost of the stolen billions is actually unfathomable. Yet, beyond the stolen billions are monies appropriated through legalized looting of the treasury. This has been possible through manipulated contract awards and unjustifiable earnings of gargantuan sums from the President, governors to chairman of local councils. It was a long season of fleecing the Nigerian people without and moral compunction. All these unfolded with near impunity. Yes, there were pockets of radical minds that saw everything wrong in this system of legalized looting. This established constituency of conscientious defectors from the prevailing insanity is the one that has acquired the moral rights and leverage to advise the administration how best to proceed in the onerous task of excavating Nigeria’s odious accretions in the difficult effort of instituting a new compass for national rejuvenation.
In Jerry Rawlings Ghana, Generals Acheampong, Afrifa and company did not have such ahistoric advocacy. In comparison to the unimaginable loot hauled into personal accounts by Nigerian public thieves, the executed former Ghanaian looters in high public office were mere petty thieves. On a scale of 1 to 10, they can be scored a mere critical nuisance value of 0.1 as against a ruinous and devastating magnitude 9.9 by the conspiratorial Nigerian elite. Against this background, General Abdulsallami and his group of well intentioned nationalists come across as emissaries of the ancien regime pleading for a soft landing for a privileged class determined to ruin the future of Nigeria.
From this perspective, the intervention of the peace committee offends the sensibilities of the victims across the nation of the continuing expression of illustration of this perceived elite conspiracy. Now, reminding President Muhamadu Buhari that the current dispensation is positively a democratic one and not a military regime is distasteful. To express concern for and reminding of President of due process, one wonders who would advocate on behalf of the real victims of this elite conspiracy. Again what mandate has the Peace Committee setting up extra constitutional parallel structures to hear out everybody? Would they hear out the mass victimized who are truly doubly jeopardized by the planned intervention that is obviously driven by fear of the coming justice in the form punishment for Nigeria’s perpetually sinning elite caught in the act. To state, in the current context, that we need to reaffirm that this is our country and to state that the only thing we can collectively be opposed to is injustice, iniquity, corruption is a marvelous double speak that contemptuously spit in the face of Nigerian masses. The Committee in turn need be reminded that it is the licensed rogues in high places who have been unjust to their compatriots and are the clan of the iniquitous in the nation. Those who seek to bring them to justice are gallant and unpretentious Nigerians that do not need the unfortunate reminders being peddled by the Peace Committee.
Meanwhile, while the Committee proceeds in defense of the sinful elite, the consequences of the sixteen years of deliberate systemic decay are haunting this nation. One poignant reminder is the condemnation to death of hitherto gallant soldiers who were forced to retreat from battle against heavily armed Boko Haram as they could not fight with their bare hands. Has the constituency of high profile do-gooders mumbled a word about real due process for these victims of a degenerate system and the need to set aside the kangaroo court marshals assaulting the sensibilities of Nigerian masses to save the lives of victims of the rot? It is blatantly unfair to the nation to begin by defending the interests of those whose brigandage has brought Nigerian to its knees.
And there is a history to this. General Sani Abacha’s crimes are unambiguously legion. Yet, for all his crimes against Nigeria, including the incarceration, and ultimate death, of the first truly democratically elected president whose mandate was uniquely approved across all Nigeria’s historic divides, Moshood Abiola, and the broad daylight killing of his wife Kudirat Abiola and many other pro democracy activists, Gen Abacha’s family, like many of his colleagues still alive, has built on his wealth stolen from Nigerians to create a dynasty that in less than one generation has remorselessly launched itself into the mainstream of Nigeria’s politics. A national hospital is named after him.
General Ibrahim Babaginda, the man largely accredited with introducing parcel bombs to neutralize political opponents well before Boko Haram improved on that technique, is ensconced in his palatial mansion in Minna. Meanwhile, his equally treasury looting Baby General accomplices of his time now dominate the public sphere. Under Babaginda, decent soldiers and gentlemen like Ebito Ukiwe were shunted aside in preference for the likes of Abacha and other certified dunces.
General Olusegun Obasanjo belongs to a peculiar class of his own as he continues to bestride the public domain with vacuous arrogance, while seeking to obliterate history with his long and vain self odyssey. This is a man under whose military terror over 300 Nigerian students were massacred in 1978. As a democratically elected President, the wiping out of Odi and Zaki Biam communities by the Nigerian military would remain indelible stain not only on the Nigerian military but also on the conscience of all who were in a position to speak up or do something but refused to do so. Obasanjo has come, more than anyone else, to personify the tragedy of this prostrate land. The incriminating and treacherous silence and all these compromises for the peace of the graveyard have eroded the moral foundations of the Nigerian state and society.
The Abdulsalami initiative as good intentioned as it may be has a danger to perpetuate the ugly underpinnings to Nigeria’s rot. Again, what true compensations has the Nigerian state offered the victims of the crimes committed by the aforementioned self serving and dangerous ogres of Nigeria’s sad national historicity? Yet, as is often said, good intentions are not enough. Beyond the demands from Nigeria’s traditional ugly constituencies are also difficult legitimate demands on the scope and breadth of Buhari’s national sanitation project.
Ben Nwabueze, an iconic and very revered statesman, in a highly cerebral and logical treatise representing the voice of Igbo elders, affirms critical conditionality that are required to validate any probe to be instituted by President Muhammadu Buhari. It demands that such a probe must not be limited to the Jonathan administration and must cover all the previous administrations that had not been examined in the past, including Obasanjo presidency. No one can deny the rightness of the demand, because the Ebele Azikiwe Goodluck Jonathan administration in many respects is equated as a proxy Igbo presidency.
Any probe of that administration it is feared may disproportionately impact the Igbo elite in the political class than any other ethno-regional interest group. Ethno-regional perspectives or not, one cannot fault the logic behind the call for a non selective and comprehensive forensic audit of the national ledger. Yet the probe must begin from the Jonathan administration for a number of practical reasons. The first is the immediate benefit to the nation of recuperating the most recently stolen monies that reports indicate is the single largest hemorrhage of the national treasury into private hands in the entirety of the nation’s lifespan. Secondly, the trail of the stolen loot and evidence are relatively hot. Finally, there is expressed international will to facilitate the repatriation of these recently stolen monies from abroad. The international climate is thus conducive to the probe of the most recent administration.
Meanwhile, the Senate decision to probe of the Obasanjo administration’s failed power project is most welcome. Perhaps, the Senate would also include the failed huge multi-billion naira identification project under his administration that came to nothing in its brief.
Mr. Osuolale Alalade is an author and a Nigerian diplomat
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