Prof Omotoye Olorode

*A Review of the Political Economy of Private Accumulation and the Current Socio-economic Challenges and Reality in Nigeria.

Omotoye Olorode

Introduction

A significant segment of the grievances of the officers of Nigeria’s Armed Forces that overthrew the first post-independence government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in January 1966 revolved around corruption in government and of public officers. The Coker Commission of Enquiry in Western Region and the Foster-Sutton Commission of Enquiry (of the early 1960s) in Western Region and Eastern Region respectively were about corruption in public institutions. I made a point somewhere in the body of this presentation concerning the issue of the alleged fight against corruption in Nigeria in the 1970s: “Yakubu Gowon’s October 1970 ‘nine-point’ transition program and the 1974 program that reneged on the proposed 1976 return to civil rule programme both featured eradication of corruption as a major goal!” General Yakubu Gowon’s Military government was subsequently overthrown partly because of popular disaffection regarding rampant corruption.

Needless to say, although the major complaint against the Shehu Shagari-Alex Ekwueme government of Nigeria’s Second Republic (1979-1983) was rampant corruption, what we call corruption remained the central complaint against the military regimes between January 1, 1984 and May 29, 1999; exactly the same complaints remain till date—two and half decades later under an alleged democracy!

Those who superintend the foregoing trajectory of pillage and underdevelopment in Nigeria and their local and off-shore intellectuals have meticulously ignored and covered up the centrality of the ruthless enforcement of capitalist and private accumulation and its political economy. They have, instead, reduced the entire tragedy to a fetish complete with generating and maintaining divisions and confusion among the victims of neoliberalism!

It is the foundation and processes of this capitalist accumulation, not the symptom which they call corruption that this presentation seeks to lay bare, and to outline how the victims must organise to terminate it.

This presentation is also about remote and contemporary history. The ideas and sources deployed herein are from different sources (including my own) which I may not be able to fully acknowledge here. I am articulating this political and intellectual debt here.

I have maintained the title for this presentation, more or less, as suggested by HEDA Resources Centre. The thrust of my perspective, as will be obvious presently is that this is a paper on “The Political Economy of “Corruption” in Nigeria: History, Consequences and the Way Forward”.

It is the material and economic foundations of society which direct political and social action that I think are central to various manifestations of what we call corruption. Needless to say, Nigeria’s subsisting political economy of primitive private accumulation co-opts various categories of professionals (accountants, lawyers, professors, consultants, etc.) for its actuation. It is the centrality of these foundations that I seek your indulgence to focus on in this address. I will return to these central conceptual issues at the end of this presentation. Perhaps one of the most curious aspects of the current public debate on “Corruption” or “War on Corruption” in Nigeria (and many parts of the World), has been the tendency to isolate the phenomenon of corruption from economic foundations of societies and social relations and the political superstructures that grow from, or pertain to, the economic foundations.

Let us summarise the nature of economics, politics, and the deployment of political power in the nexus between economics and politics. Economics is generally circumscribed as the “science” of production, allocation and, management of “scarce” resources. Well, clean air, clean water and undisputed “space” is becoming scarce as poor people on the streets are constantly reminded in places like Abuja and Lagos. But politics has to do with authoritative decisions on the mode and processes of production and allocation of resources; it has to do with who gets what, how much, when etc., ownership, power of resource alienation, etc. Political power, in most modern societies, is exercised through state apparati (soft or hard). It is no more in dispute that the state is organised power of the ruling class exercised by governments possessing different degrees and complexions of legitimacy. In this general regard, let us wrap up the dogma about the relationships between economics, politics and war; the last element, war, has been circumscribed by political economists as politics by other means. We may, in this respect examine the events and constellation of economic and political interests in the Middle East, South China Sea, Latin America and Africa!
Let us make certain axiomatic statements as part of this segment of our discussion. When an economic or production system grows (indeed a condition for its development) some accumulation happens. Generally, accumulation may be social (collective) or individual. When accumulation is largely social, inequality is minimal; the converse will be true if accumulation is individualistic. Social here means for an entire people in a territory or for all polities in a community of nations. The so-called trickle-down scenarios under individual accumulation regimes are not in contention here. In the decades that followed the defeat of welfare state ideology (i.e. since about 1973) itself the product of world-wide working-class and anti-colonial struggles during and after World War II—the second imperialist war, the triumph of neoliberalism, and liberal democracy enabled massive wealth accumulation at global levels and inside territories like Nigeria. The accumulation had been supervised by hegemonic capitalist states (USA, UK, France, Germany, Japan etc. especially), the trans-national corporations and multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, ADB etc. The corollary of this development is the growth of global, regional and intra-territorial inequalities and the development of legendary private empires and wealth (Amin, 2004; Bakan, 2004: Formisano, 2015; Klein, 2007; Olorode, 2016; Perry, 2008: Toyama, 2015; Wolfe, 1978).

The forces that supervise and enforce the development of these inequalities and the attendant consequences of mass frustration, deprivation and violence also apprehend the dangers to its own hegemony. In the capitalist metropolises and the subaltern territories, NGOs and philanthropies are unleashed and “corporate social responsibility” is canvassed among rampaging multinational corporations. In the process the overarching centrality of state power that empower neo-liberal accumulation and engender its inhuman consequences is hidden under the “campaign against corruption”, “War Against corruption” etc. In the metropolises and their peripheries the ruling class carries out the charade, periodically, of purging itself by selectively scape-goating a number of its members in order to regroup and re-invent their legitimacies. Jacob Shapiro (“A Purge is a Purge…” 2016 Geopolitical Futures: August 1, 2016) noted:
Coups may be going out of style, but purges are in vogue. Some of the world’s most powerful countries are in the midst of purges that reach deep into their political, military and security structures. Chinese President Xi Jinping calls it an anti-corruption campaign,…. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has reorganized his various security and intelligence services, is cracking down on corruption and cleaning house in some parts of the military. In Turkey, whether you want to call it a counter-coup or President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan taking advantage of the situation to eliminate what he refers to as the “parallel state,” the crackdown is wide ranging. In the U.S., we simply call it “elections.”Coups may be going out of style, but purges are in vogue.

It should, not take much effort to persuade all and sundry that those who control most private indigenous wealth in Nigeria are those who have controlled state power in the last four decades, or so, and their friends—not just retired generals and their “new rich” civilian friends who cornered massive wealth directly from public treasury or through deployment of state power to own OPLs; seize public lands, get commissions, contracts etc., buy property from public auctions of public property or simply get allocated huge sums of money through/as personal emoluments, through wreckage of banks and the stock exchange or twist the hands of banks to acquire shares as the case of the Transcorp shares! Some of these are documented more concretely later in this presentation. It is also these relationships that enable former public servants, heads of state, etc. to be the principal owners of the public assets that have continued to be auctioned, and yet maintained with public funds. These new owners of Nigeria are in all the political parties, which are actually factions of one party, as as the main movers, godfathers or financial props!

Overall, in the accumulation that goes on and continues to fuel what they call corruption, the role of Nigeria’s ruling class as the agents and middle men (and women) of foreign capitalist exploiters are made to be generally as opaque as it is strategic! As CEOs, Chairmen (and women), board members of foreign business organisations, companies (Abba, 1985: pp. 159-164), they oversee the entrenchment of corruption, exploitation and pillage of Nigeria. in the particular case of how prominent members of Nigeria’s public service (Permanent Secretaries, Director Generals of parastatals, Managing Directors of Public Corporations, Ambassadors to Foreign countries, as Vice-Chancellor, as Chairman of FEDECO, etc.), even judges retire into the board rooms of the major exploiting multinational firms that control Nigeria’s economy (Nigeria Tobacco Co., Beecham, Philip Morris, Leventis, Boots, BCCI, Dumez, Julius Berger, UAC, SCOA, Lever Brothers, Glaxo, John Holt, UTC, Tate and Lyle, Morgan Guaranty Trust of USA, Cardbury, Agip, Exxon Mobil, National Cash Register) and continue to influence economic and social policies that sustain Nigeria’s underdevelopment and subservience to foreign capital (Abba et al., 1985). The key roles played by influential members of the ruling class in the corruption scandals involving multinational corporations like Enron, BCCI, Halliburton, Wilbros, Julius Berger, etc. in the last decade (from 1999) of Nigeria’s current republic, are instructive here.
The foregoing constitute the history and the accumulation foundations of the “private-sector-will-lead-the-economy” mantra that underpins the economic and social policies of the ruling parties (PDP and APC) and their coalitions in Nigeria today and their predecessor in the military dictatorships since the mid-1970s. The mantra is hooked on neo-liberal capitalist ideology of private accumulation—privatisation and deregulation, trade-and-investment liberalisation, withdrawal of state from social provisioning (of education, health, housing, pensions, environment, power generation and, even, security). Being the logic of global capitalism, neo-liberalism is globalised and monopolistic for its own reproduction and, consequently creates centres and peripheries that obliterate the sovereignties of peripheries like Nigeria (see Olorode, 2016; Perry, 2008)!
In subsequent sections of this presentation we detail the actual events and processes of the development of state (political) and ruling class power towards entrenching private (many times primitive) accumulation—the economic and material foundation of what they mystify and psychologise as “corruption” but which we consider “the normal” of capitalist accumulation.
What they call Corruption: Foundationality of Private Accumulation and the Subversion of Public Purpose

Nogozi Okonjo-Iweala (NO-I) was especially upbeat about the “success” of the Obasanjo “Reform” regime in fighting Corruption (NO-I, 2012: p. 20):
Nigerians saw blows dealt to impunity among the ruling members of the elite, several of whom for the first time were sent to fact by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) were Nuhu Ribadu…the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) by introducing local and international competitive bidding, and value for money auditing of public contracts, saved the treasury billions of naira…increased transparency let the public know what monies were coming into public coffers…recovery of stolen assets from Switzerland amounting to $505 million dollars was another great success appreciated by public and civil society organisations.
As we show below with regard to the fraud surrounding privatisation and the activities of BPE, the facts do not match NO-I’s claim on eradication of corruption made by Okonjo-Iweala’s “reform”. It is also the truth that the EFCC under Ribadu, and subsequently, is generally considered, in spite of whatever claims of anti-corruption victories it makes even today, as an instrument for selectively intimidating those who fall out with the Presidency or to whom the powerful “reformers” object! This is why many cases leading to arrests and detention of alleged culprits simply fizzled out! And incidentally, the allegation of political persecution, by EFCC, of opponents of the Presidency was also made by the supporters of El-Rufai and Ribadu when they were thrown out of government. The duo, indeed, had to go on exile from where they waged resistance against Umaru Yar’Adua until his demise. Nasir El-Rufai indeed, told us what Ribadu did once he [Ribadu] decided not to support Obasanjo’s nomination of Umaru Yar’Adua, as Obasanjo’s successor. In trying to stop Umaru Yar’Adua (El-Rufai, 2013: p. 359) from succeeding Obasanjo:
Nuhu’s instinctive reaction was that of a typical policeman—dust off EFCC files and comb for petitions against Umaru…he dusted off all his files and found petitions against the Katsina state governor and launched investigations. He even arrested some local government chairman from Katsina as part of his investigation of diversion of local government funds by the state governor.
But perhaps the most serious problems of credibility that Okonjo-Iweala’s story about her team’s war on corruption has is the deafening and growing noise concerning corruption under Obasanjo’s regime and the even more strident allegations of corruption in Jonathan’s presidency where the de facto Prime Minister (if not the Senior Vice-President) is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. In a call that Obasanjo regime should be probed by Goodluck Jonathan (Ismail Mudashiru reporting “Probe Obasanjo now,…”Daily Trust Fri. May 3, 2013: p.6), Alhaji Balarabe Musa was quoted as saying, among other things:
No government can be more corrupt than the government of Obasanjo.
The former governor of Kaduna State was reported to have said that the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) filed a suit two years ago praying an Abuja High Court to force the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to probe Obasanjo. Alhaji Musa was quoted as saying [our emphases]:
The case was filed about two years ago and we are still in court. Many other organisations have called for the investigation and prosecution of Obasanjo because his tenure was the most corrupt one……..
The print media is replete with reports of corrupt practices from Obasanjo through Yar’Adua to Goodluck Jonathan; complete with high profile arrests, paraded prosecutions, and indictments many of which simply fizzled out. Concerning some of the reports regarding abuse of position or office, EFCC, ICPC and government simply looked the other way (see also Eugene Enahoro’s “APC: Old wine in new bottle”. Daily Trust Tuesday, August 13, 2013: p. 56).
The selectivity of the pursuit of those charged with corrupt practices and looting is further illustrated by what became Abacha-bashing. In contradistinction to the amount of media space and the truculence of verbiage on Abacha’s “criminal administration” (NO-I, pp. 84-85), relatively little, in terms of specificities, was said of the ramified corruption network run by USA and European corporations (Siemens, Julius Berger, Halliburton, Kellog-Roots etc.) involving prominent Nigerians in public offices! And it is not as if the pertinent information is not fully in public domain! A former military governor of Lagos State who was directly indicted for haven taken custody of some of Abacha’s loot actually became an Ambassador of Nigeria somewhere in Africa!

In the case of bad loans, that led to failure of some banks arising from “…acute capital erosion and building a non-performing loan portifolio of N747bn”, the debtors got a waiver of N31bn (Ayo Olesin reporting “Bad loans Saraki; Dangote, others get N31bn waiver” The Punch Monday Nov. 30, 2009: pp.1-2). On top of all these, the CBN used about N800bn of public money to “bail out” some of these “mismanaged” or looted banks! A report (Daily Trust, Troubled banks: Dangote, Otedola among debtors. Wed, Aug. 19, 2009: p.1, p.5) already had a detailed list that sounded like a roll call of who is who among the friends and financiers of those who wield state power in Nigeria.
The question of bad-loan waivers are also closely related to the so-called import waivers and the oil-subsidy waivers regarding which Henry Boyo’s (The Punch, “Waivers for the rich, hard labour for the poor”. Monday Dec. 10, 2012: p.92) Economic Renaissance observed inter-alia:
Curiously, government projects and policies overtly intended to improve mass social welfare have often transformed to a bonanza for a select few while the majority remain victims of such exploitation. Presidential import waivers are a good example of such misguided government interventions…..the damning revelation from partial waiver on fuel prices is another example of how a handful of Nigerians can collaborate with government officials to rip off the treasury…
The intervention of the CBN and Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria in the Banking sector also serve the same purpose as waivers…indeed the same officials who presided over the mess, were retained also ‘sanitise’ the system!
The waiver racket has now found fertile grounds in the capital market….
Of course the Ministry of Finance headed by the Chief “Reformer” and Coordinator of the Economy is at the centre of these and other policies that protect the gamblers in the stock market and use public treasury to fund their profligacy.

And on the poor and the intention of government policies, the goal of these policies as manifested in what they now call social safety nets is, at best, to achieve some trickle-down effect. Most of them like SURE-P simply aid and entrench ruling-class accumulation. Indeed at the National Assembly interaction with the Chairman of SURE-P, Senator Magnus Abe who chaired the session was reported (Sunday Trust Dec. 9, 2012: p.9) to have accused Dr. Christopher Kolade’s Committee on Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) of “defrauding the nation” as N2.2bn was said to have been spent on SURE-P Secretariat and N75m on “tours” in just four months!

Okonjo-Iweala’s chest-beating about the success of her “fighting corruption” ran into problems of credibility especially because she had been around Aso Rock more or less continuously for over a decade. Okonjo-Iweala’s fellow “reformer” under Obasanjo’s regime and one of those who originally recommended her to Obasanjo (Oby Ezekwesili) mounted rather sharp attacks on Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. In various newspaper reports (May/June, 2013), Ezekwesili has waged consistent criticisms against the Goodluck Jonathan government for squandering foreign reserves of N67bn inherited from Obasanjo and for the escalation of corruption in Nigeria. This generated mutual threats between Obasanjo and President Jonathan with the former daring the latter to probe him (The Guardian Mon. April 29, 2013: p.1; p.4) and the latter assuring Obasanjo that he does not intend to probe him (Obasanjo): Isiaka Wakili reporting “I’ve no intention to probe Obasanjo” (Sunday Trust June 2, 2013: p. 4).
On corruption, in the same report, Ezekwesili was quoted as saying (our emphases):
The corruption in the society now is so endemic it has almost become democratised and that is going to sink us…there is no need pretending that this country is not burdened by corruption. Every Nigerians knows that we have a problem.
Of course, the deployment of mutual threats and blackmail regarding charges and counter charges of corruption within Nigeria’s ruling class is as old as the intensification of private/primitive accumulation (as during the Tarka/Daboh altercations in the twilight of the General Yakubu Gowon’s regime)! In 2004 when allegations of egregious corruption among governors was mounting under Obasanjo’s regime, the then Chairman of the Governor’s Forum (Akwa Ibom’s Governor Victor Attah) was reported, by Shola Osunkeye and Wola Adeyemo in The two Trillion Naira Question (Tell June 7, 2004: pp.18-28), to have asked Obasanjo to warn the then Minister of Finance (Nenadi Usman) who spearheaded the attack on governors. According the despatch to Obasanjo, Attah told the President:

It may seem like a popular pastime to castigate the governors mindlessly but it must be said that, in the process, even you can be hurt, and a lot of harm can be done to democracy.
Could a threat to President Obasanjo have been more direct? It means “shut up or you may also be exposed!”. Balance of terror!
As Jonathan’s spokesperson observed, the foundations of Obasanjo’s policies, including endemic corruption as far as we are concerned, is what has been built upon since 2007. The specificities of corruption and corrupt practices are legion and continuous from 1999 to 2013; they even go farther back. More fundamentally, as we have observed, they arise from the dominant ideology of private, largely primitive, accumulation engendered by raw manipulation of state and class power.
Accumulation and corruption by the ruling class: the specificities and the endemicity (2001-2014).
We insist that corruption is the logical product of private accumulation, attacks on public purpose and the promotion of profitism and individualism by the ruling circles that have turned all these into a national ideology. Corruption has a long history which has created the governance ethics which also privatise state power and institutions and which creates personality cults, intellectual mediocrity, brigandage and impunity.
Consequently the media was suffused, on a daily basis, with revelations of atrocities that entrench ruling class economic and political hegemony. Below we provide a sample of media reports of ruling class atrocities that may have disappeared from public view forever.
1. Chiawo Nwankwo et al. Auditor-General queries N5.7bn N’Assembly spending, (The Punch Monday October 26, 2009: p.1-2)
40 Senators granted N4.6bn advances
30 Reps/37 Admin workers took N221.7m cash advances
N104.29m vouchers hidden from auditors
N’Assembly overdrew overhead cost accounts by N1.1bn
N33.8m accrued as bank charges
N128m goods in store cannot be traced.

2. Yemi Kolapo: When gangsters are in charge (The Punch, Friday October 30, 2009: p.64.)
My grouse with Soludo, as stated in my previous article is that he seems to be taking the banking public for a ride by not offering tenable explanations for the alleged record fraud that went on under his watch as CBN governor. It is just hard coming to terms with the fact that the system recorded non-performing loans to the tune of about N1.2trn, the bulk of which was insider-related, with the regulator suspecting knavery.
3. Kayode Ekundayo: How top officials shared stock exchange bonuses. (Daily Trust. Wed. Oct 31, 2010: p.19):
…forensic independent investigation concluded jointly by the law firm Aluko and Oyebode and the accounting firm KPMG…revealed that NSE (Nigeria Stock Exchange) Council between 2005 and 2008 as productivity had surplus shared over N1.390 billion.
The beneficiaries included some of the biggest Nigerian names in banking, insurance, commerce, etc. and alleged captains of industry! This sharing according to the report was said by the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission to be contrary to the provisions of Section 26(3) of Companies and Allied Matters Act, CAP C20 LFN 2004 and Section 6 of the Memorandum and Articles of the Association of the Exchange.
4. Jide Ajani et al. National Assembly Overhead: When Figures don’t lie. (Sunday Vanguard Dec. 5, 2010: pp.10-12):
This report…also computes the allocations to the national assembly and concludes that there is a disconnect between what members allocate to themselves in the annual budget and the responsibilities they have discharged on behalf of the long-suffering people of Nigeria.
5. Ini Ekott: KPMG report: 20 Nigerians EFCC should interrogate. (Premium Times 1st February, 2012)
6. For the Record: “Reps fuel subsidy probe recommendations” (Daily Trust Friday April 20, 2012: pp. 9-12).
Table on p. 9 carries the names of 15 marketers: those who obtained forex in 2010 or 2011 but did not import petroleum products. These include Business Ventures Nig. Ltd., East Horizon Gas Ltd., Emades Energy, Pokat Nig. Ltd., Synopsis Enterprises Ltd., Zenon Pet & Gas Ltd., Carnival Energy Oil, Crownlines, Ice Energy Petroleum Trading Ltd., Index Petroleum Africa, Ronad Oil & Gas W/A, Serene Greenfield Ltd., Tridax Energy Ltd., Zamson Global Res.
7. Turaki A. Hassan. Reps seek prosecution of Diezani, Ali, others (Daily Trust April 25, 2012: p.1; p. 5). See also the KPMG Report referred to above.
8. Nurudeen M. Abdallah et al. Iyabo’s firm benefit in secret oil block deal. (Daily Trust Friday Dec. 6, 2012: p.1; p. 5):
…without competitive bidding…the secrete allocations are against international best practice…Record made available to Daily Trust by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) shows that Iyabo Obasanjo Bello is the major shareholder of All Grace Energy.
9. Sunday Trust (August 5, 2012: pp. 4-5; p.7-8) Big Story: Princess Oduah under fire over N7.4bn airport contracts. National Assembly plans probe.
…the funds in use was not captured in 2011 budgets, contracts were not bidded for and evaluation of contractors was not properly done.
10. Isiaka Wakili. Big thieves block trial with looted money—Lamorde (Daily Trust November 23, 2012: p.6). This figures!
Some big thieves do not even ever get to be prosecuted; they have access to state power.
“Donations”: to Nigeria’s Presidents; to parties, to government
One of the specific cases of corrupt and unethical practices is the issue of the President of the country, the government party or highly-placed (or any) public officers receiving donations, contributions and/or gifts towards their private organisations, NGO’s or causes. Perhaps one of the earliest and most controversial and highly publicised of this tendency was in respect of Obasanjo’s Presidential Library (in Abeokuta) to which a plethora of contractors were said to have donated money. Subsequently, there was the case of the donation of a church to President Jonathan’s Otuoke home town. In Eugene Enahoro’s Alams gone with the wind (Daily Trust Tuesday March 19, 2013: p.47), it was observed among other things:

After getting a government contractor Gitto Construzioni (Nig. Ltd) to “donate” an ultra modern church to his community, Goodluck Jonathan then orchestrated a billion naira fund raising for his village church embroiling himself in further controversy.
Contractors and rich businessmen and women, many of them accused directly and indicted at public probes concerning privatisation scams of the BPE, Fuel Subsidiy scam (John Chuks Azu: “Hope party sues Jonathan over N160bn subsidy ‘campaign fund’ Daily Trust Tue. August 28, 2012: p. 4), questionable acquisition of huge bonuses from the Nigerian Stock Exchange (Daily Trust Wed, Oct. 13, 2010: p.19) Kayode Ekundayo reporting “How top officials shared exchange bonuses”. Are known to fund, or accused of funding campaigns for the Presidency (see Big Story Saturday Trust. May 27, 2012: pp. 4-13).
Contractors and companies were even harangued to “donate” money to run Federal Government business or government establishments like the Nigeria Police Force. A report by Everest Amaefule and Mudiaga Affe (“Nigeria@50: FG begs oil firms, others for N401m donation” The Punch Monday August 30, 2010: p. 1-2) was to the effect that the Federal Government was putting pressure on companies, including multinationals to pay money “to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation”. The case of Police Equipment Fund, canvassed and collected from companies under the noses of Government and police authorities, organised by what looks like an NGO, is now history. Nothing had so far happened to the masterminds.

Political corruption and the cumulative corruption of public consciousness
Because of the nexus between the concentration of wealth (accumulation) and political power in a few hands, it is logical to expect the level of political violence we see in the ruling class—mysterious and violent deaths, assassinations etc. It is not unexpected to see the incredible fluidity of political alliances, camping and decamping, disruptions of party machineries, god-fatherism, deep-pocket politics etc. etc. It is not surprising either to see the charades that pass for party conventions, elections etc. These are all reasons why elections at all levels (Federal, state and local government) are always so scandalously, compromised and why party leaders impose their wives, children, business partners and cronies on their parties as electoral candidates.
Accumulation then promotes personality cult and megalomania among alleged political leaders. It subverts collective morality and popular power. Members of the ruling class are thus imposed on public consciousness and the imposition has transformed public morality from cooperation and collective survival to private and individual survival, from public-purposed governance to private-purposed government policies.
The consequence of the above is self- and class-promotion of the ruling class. In our major cities especially Abuja, public monuments, buildings, roads etc. are named after those that sold our country into second slavery or looted our treasuries; the highest honours of the land are also bestowed on them! Wives (First Ladies) of our alleged leaders at all levels (federal, states and local government) become more powerful than legislators and ministers; they become laws onto themselves with open-ended budgets funded by tax payers! In a report on the First Ladies Summit in Malaysia (Daily Trust Wed. Oct. 13, 2010: p.4) Ibrahim Dooba reported from Malaysia that “Nigeria has largest number of delegates (37) at first ladies summit led by First Lady Patience Jonathan.
It has been in public domain that all sorts of people—governors, ministers, first ladies, senior civil servants, customs officers, police officers and minor public officers like the Executive Secretaries of the NUC—encourage their hangers-on to sing their praises in paid newspaper adverts on their birthdays, weddings, etc., in different ways, at public expense. Haven lost the bid to become the President of the World Bank. Okonjo-Iweala took a full page advert in at least one national newspaper (Daily Trust Friday August 20, 2012: p.18) congratulating and pouring encomiums on the World Bank and massaging the patent untruth that the “plight” of “the poor people around the World” is “at the heart of the mandate of the institution [World Bank]”. The said advert “We have made history” carries Nigeria’s coat of arms as if it was the President of Nigeria that was congratulating the World Bank!
Houdini actually escaped and became a king maker!

But nothing really gives the lie to the Okonjo Iweala/Obasanjo/Ribadu anti-corruption “success story” more than the exemplary and typical case of the former governor of Bayelsa State who was ridiculed in a cartoon reproduced in Okonjo-Iweala’s book (NO-I, p. 83) with the legend “A cartoon, by Tayo Fatunla, depicting Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and some Nigerian citizens”. And with the bye line, “OK HOUDINI….LET’S SEE YOU ESCAPE THIS”. But Houdini did escape. And he became a king-maker; and the President who appointed Okonjo-Iweala Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, had formally granted Houdini state pardon!

The Privatisation Rip-off: Its ideology, politics and myths.
On the reform Okonjo Iweala, (2013, p. 50) claimed:
Nigeria’s program of deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation remains controversial. Part of this controversy is ideological. There is a core of intelligentsia inclined towards socialism in Nigeria—in academia, in the media, in the labour unions, and elsewhere—who despite the obvious failures of the state in Nigeria’s case, still believes in the people of the state as producers, employer and equaliser in society.
Part of the controversy is due to suspicion among the general public—a suspicion that has sometime been borne out—that not all of the privatisation agenda has been carried out in an open and transparent manner. There has been political interference (leading to reversals of some deals) and there has been hints of corruption in the implementation of some privatisations in telecommunications, petrochemicals, steel aluminium and other industries. [Our emphases].
It [the privatisation program] also brought receipts from the proceeds of privatisation into the treasury—about 251.4 billion naira (the equivalent of US$ 2billion) between 1999 and 2011. Another US$ 10 billion in annual transfers to public enterprise was saved as a result of these reform efforts.

Various reports (see the Tables below) showed, not hinted, that indeed a lot of the proceeds of privatisation were not accounted for and the processes has no iota of integrity.
Nigeria: Privatisation as a Looting Programme
Media reports from the probe of activities of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) on the privatisation and commercialisation of public enterprises owned by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) since 1997 have clarified major issues for the Nigerian people.
We need to note that the probe sponsored by Senator Ahmad Ibrahim Lawan (Yobe North ANPP) into the activities of BPE in 2013 was not the first. In 2004, there was a similar probe panel chaired by Senator Azuta Mbata who raised the alarm on the missing proceeds (Table 1 below) from the privatisation programme. That was almost one decade ago!

Table 1: The Missing Funds

THE MISSING FUNDS
FIRST PHASE
NAL Merchant Bank -N1.4 billion
International Merchant Bank -N14.59 million
FSB International Bank -N1.69 billion
Assurance Bank -N856 million
African Petroleum -N2.8 billion
Unipetrol -N2.05 billion
Nat. Oil and Chem. Coy Plc -N9.02 billion
W. African Portland Cement -N2.98 billion
Ashaka Cement Co. Limited -N2.11 billion
Northern Nig. Cement Co. Ltd -N681.40 million
Nigeria Cement Company -N200 million

Note: These enterprises were divested through public offers or a combination of public offer and core investor sale.

SECOND PHASE
Festac 1977 Hotel -N1.01 billion
Niger Dock Limited -N3.50 billion
Sheraton Hotel and Tower, Abuja -N4.5 billion
Niger Insurance -N300 million
Nigeria Re-Insurance Corp. -N1.00 billion
Savannah Sugar Coy Ltd -N1.35 billion
Nat. Trucks Manuf. Kano -N800 million
Caterers Court -N620 million
Electricity metre Company, Zana -N400 million
Note: The Second phase of the programme focused on the public enterprises, which engaged in sectors, where the prices of their respective out put services are largely market determined.

Source: Copied directly from The Insider. April 5, 2004: No. 14, p. 23.

Firstly, the reports have reinforced ASUU’s long-standing conviction that “The establishment of state-funded [and state controlled] enterprises [in a developing economy] is not an accident; it reflects the needs of a backward, “third” world, underdeveloped country to rise to the challenge of enhancing the well-being of its people [ASUU University of Benin NEC Meeting: Nov. 17-18, 2001].

Secondly, the reports from the said probe of BPE activities confirm ASUU’s sustained position, that “The ostensible reason being brandished for privatisation [is] that public enterprises are not efficient…..is false”. [This is why] patriotic individuals and organisations, including the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), ASUU and the Nigerian Students have led a national campaign since 1979 that NIGERIA IS NOT FOR SALE” (again, the same ASUU NEC Communiqué of 2001cited above!). That was more than TEN YEARS AGO!
The ASUU NEC Communique of 2001 cited above then concluded that Privatisation means [ASUU’s State of the Nation 2001, quoting the Benin NEC Communique cited earlier]:
Handing over out public wealth to interests that have exploited and deprived Nigerians over the years.
Handing over Nigeria’s independence to the same forces that colonised and plundered our people for centuries.
Increasing mass poverty for our people
Making access to basic facilities and resource impossible and unaffordable for over ninety percent of our population.

Rewarding some Nigerians including politicians, public office holders, some military generals and others in private business for closeness to power.
The ostensible reason being brandished for privatisation is that public enterprises are not efficient. This is false. The fact of the matter is that the public enterprises are deliberately made inefficient in order to sell them. Today, the privatisation programme is part and parcel of the same process of recolonising Nigeria through the World Bank and IMF-packaged programmes of economic stabilisation, structural adjustment and liberalisation.
Thus, since 1984 and along with other patriotic forces, ASUU had struggled against the looting of public enterprises which successive regimes (military and “civilian”) have called Privatisation. Specifically in ASUU’s How to Save Nigeria (1984), the union foresaw privatisation as looting in the strategic IMF/World Bank SAP Programme of the recolonisation of Nigeria. The said strategic recolonisation programme has, of course metamorphosed into what they called Vision 2020-20 through Vision 2010 and the sub-programmes of NEEDS, “Reform”, NEPAD, the so-called PPP (Public-Private Partnerships) etc.
With the re-invigoration of the recolonisation [of Nigeria] Programme since 1999 (and the seizure of Nigeria by World Bank agents as Ministers, “technocrats”, advisers etc.) ASUU indeed went to court to try and stop the privatisation programme. Unfortunately, and curiously, the court ruled that ASUU had no locus standi to challenge the privatisation programme. We have since been wondering how any Nigerian could be construed to not have a locus standi when public patrimony is being looted!

Since Babangida’s Decree (of 1988) set up the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC), both public agitation and agitation inside Nigeria’s ruling class (military and civilian) have developed on the propriety and processes of the Privatisation Programme. For different reasons, Nigeria’s working people and patriots questioned the propriety of the SALE OF NIGERIA while agitation in the Nigerian ruling circles was about which cliques of the ruling class and their foreign masters would participate in the Auction of Nigeria!
Following Obasanjo’s frenzied fast-tracking of The Auction of Nigeria via the 1999 Public Enterprises Privatisation and Commercialisation Act, the looting process proceeded at such a high speed that Nigerians started apprehending the privatisation programme as a “RIP-OFF” ( Insider Weekly, “Privatisation Rip – Off”: April 5, 2004: pp.18-23). The grabbing and looting in the privatisation war is believed to underlie the war which broke out between the President and the Vice President and their acolytes on both sides including their loquacious accomplices who are now (August, 2011) blaming the then President and VP (Daily Trust Fri. August 12, 2011: p.1, p.3) for the crimes collectively committed by their class. As a matter of fact, both Nuhu Ribadu and El-Rufa’I were exonerating Obasanjo and vilifying various other people over Obasanjo’s controversial shares in Transcorp (see their interview with Sam Omatseye in The Nation 15th October, 2006: p. 1). It is significant that El-Rufai subsequently modified the [Nuhu Ribadu-El-Rufai] 2006 story considerably (see El-Rufai, 2013: p. 363.
In the struggle to buy Nigeria, President Obasanjo’s faction won through the amendment of the privatisation act which became the Privatisation and Commercialisation of Public Enterprises Act 2004 and which gave the President power to appoint the Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP). Nobody was therefore surprised when President Obasanjo was reported to have embarked on frenzied sale of public enterprises in the twilight of his presidency mid-2007!

The Privatised companies are not performing and private enterprises are not performing either.
We already observed above that public enterprises have been crippled purposely to enable those who crippled the enterprises, in the first place, and their friends to loot them. Many private enterprises (factories, agricultural firms, textile companies, air lines, banks, etc., etc.!) have collapsed and are indeed being rescued by public treasury bailouts and “nationalisation” as the banks, air lines, and textile industries are. Private enterprises across the world are asserting their unembellished characters as illegitimate offspring of public treasury!
As part of the propaganda justifying privatisation, the hoax concerning the efficiency of private enterprise and the advantages of competition for the privatised economy, vis a vis what the World Bank people call “statist” economy, are canvassed throughout NO-I’s book (NO-I, 2012: p. 37). The truth, however, is that capitalist enterprises are set for profit, not for competition and their so-called efficiency have many victims: workers, national security and the environment. The integrity of the claim that private enterprises are set up to create jobs is even more dubious as the metamorphosis of industrial cities like Detroit (USA) into ghost cities have shown: industries go to where profit can be maximized! In Nigeria, the recent closure of certain cement factories arising from competition between Ibeto and Dangote cement companies also amply exemplify the fickleness of the ‘love’ between capital and labour! Further on the myth of efficiency and competition, it was Dora Akunyinli (as the then Minister of Information) who provided a definitive verdict on the alleged success of the privatization of telephone services (the flag ship “success” of Obasanjo’s privatization programme) when she observed (Tell March 23, 2009: p. 25):
Because of poor services, Nigeria is the only country where people carry two, three, four phones. It is an embarrassment.
We always know that privatisation had never been about rescuing the Nigerian economy. It had always been about looting public resources. We have always known that privatised enterprises are not performing and will not perform in spite of the slave wages they pay their workers and the primitive conditions under which their workers (as in private educational institutions, the Nigerian Stock Exchange, banks, hospitals, factories, construction companies, agricultural establishments and private companies) are forced to operate! This is why it is significant and curious that it had taken President Jonathan and his Vice-President and some state governors, so long to acknowledge that the privatised enterprises are not performing (See Zakariyya Adaramola’s report, “As Jonathan, Sambo confirm collapse of privatised firms”: Daily Trust Thur. May 26, 2011: p. 26; and “Zamfara Government reverses sale of government property by Shinkafi” Daily Trust, Wed. June 1, 2011: p. 49).

Facts of looting, corruption and fraud in the processes of privatisation
Reports by the media in the recent Senate Ad hoc Committee probe of BPE are replete with instances of fraud, corruption, bending of rules and plain evidence of looting of public assets. Alleged captains of industry are accused frontally of buying public assets with fake documents (MOUs) and the stripping (the plain term for which is looting!) such enterprises of their assets. The public is also raped and short-changed by BPE simply selling at outrageously low prices and rigging the bids against preferred bidders (see Table 2 below).

Table 2: The current “tip of the [looting] iceberg

S/N

Enterprise

Valued at

Sold at
To preferred bidder?

1.
Delta Steel Company
$1.5 billion
$30 million
No data

2.
NICON Insurance
Worth over N6 billion
Bought with fake MOU & fake cheques and stripped of most of their assets
No

3.
Ajaokuta Steel Co.
$1.5 billion
$30 million
No data

4.
ALSCON
$ 3.2 billion
$130 million
No data

5.
Nigeria Re-Insurance Corp.
N50 billion
N1.5 billion
No data

Source: Modified from Adamu Adamu: “BPE: Behind Closed doors” (Daily Trust, Friday August 12, 2011: p. 64).
And these privatised enterprises are not performing, cannot perform, or are performing only in the fertile imagination of the succession of the illusionists in BPE!
Sale of infrastructures, roads, sale of public houses, sale of towns, sale of the country
The ruling class are not building their own towns, roads and houses. They build houses and whole towns like Abuja with public money and sell to themselves. They even sell (“concession”) public roads (as the Lagos-Ibadan Express road to Bicoutney!) to themselves and they have converted GRAs in all state capitals to their own private property! They superintend these massive frauds by means of huge bureaucracies called parastatals and supervised by a multiplicity of “fat cats”.
But even at prices that make privatised infrastructures (such as telephones, water supply, power supply etc.) unaffordable to ordinary people, the privatised organisations provide shoddy and unreliable service! The claim of the private sector leading the Nigerian economy is a myth, an illusion and a fraud! It explains the sudden, unexplained and unexplainable wealth of a tiny minority of unknown characters who have become multibillionaires overnight buying government roads, telecom companies, power companies, estates, insurance companies, industries etc.!
Privatisation of the Education Sector
Regarding looting, privatisation and deregulation, the sector that had perhaps suffered the greatest assault especially in the last decade is the education sector. For, really, looting is “forceful” take-over and ownership of resources created by agencies other than those that take them over. By underfunding and deliberate neglect of the public-funded education sector in the last decade, the sector had been forced into the private-sector mode substantially. This is in spite of the generalised poor quality and inaccessibility (to most Nigerians) of the privatised sector of education: nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary.
The privatised sub-sector of the education sector being driven largely by profit motive and backed up by ruling class propaganda, is also dominated by “demand” of those who can pay, leading to proliferation of myopic curricula (like marketing, entrepreneurship, banking and finance, accounting etc.) and down grading and neglect critical areas like basic sciences, languages, history and various intellectual pursuits that re-think the world and humanise it! And all of these are carried out largely in social environments that are sectarian, exclusivist, rabidly individualistic and creating religious and other fundamentalisms among the Nigerian youth as most private institutions are confessional establishments while public institutions that integrate society are being killed by deregulation policies! In spite of all the hype about private universities, of over 124 universities in Nigeria in 2012 the 50 private universities have only 3% of the total number of students!
Systematic privatisation of the education sector is looting because the most important factor in the sector—manpower–had been the product of public sector investment in the last fifty years! This is the factor that “traders” in the education sector have seized and are exploiting with slave wages to teachers and restrictions on their basic social rights like the right to belong to trade unions.
From Abubakar Abdulsalami to Goodluck Jonathan (1998-2013), and in spite of often murderous rancour (exploiting ethnicist and confessional advantages) among themselves, the ruling class has maintained a general integrity within itself and loyalty to foreign state actors, multilateral financial institutions, multinational corporate interests (Motorola, Haliburton, Fora, Wilbros, Carnegie, Kellog, Ericson, Enron etc.) and quasi-state and international institutions like USAID, DFID, UNDP, IFC etc. etc.
One thing that runs through the accounts of major actors in the enforcement of the programme of recolonising Nigeria is the attempt by the actors to insist on their altruism and patriotism. They insist that there is no alternative to neo-liberalism and especially to what they call private-sector led economy; they are unabashed about their relationships with their IMF and World Bank intellectors in the imposition and implementation of re-colonisation policies.

In peripheries like Nigeria, the definitive hubris of the ideologues of neo-liberalism underscores the backwardness of what Gunder Frank called the lumpen bourgeoisie (the parasitic elite) in the peripheries of global capitalism. Thus while this parasitic elite continue the ideology of looting of public enterprises which they call privatisation, those who taught them the “a, b, c” of privatisation are much more reticent; they are even revising their views. Thus in a long and, at times laughable, apologia by Jeffry Sachs (the so-called Shock Doctor of Harvard) in his “What I did in Russia” posted on the internet on March 14th 2012, this intellector of our World Bank enforcers in Nigeria asserted concerning privatisation and the capitalist oligarchic vultures in Post-Soviet Russia (all the emphases are ours):
During the entire period of my advising, I had only a tangential role in the plans for privatization of major industries………..

My main concern was governance of the large enterprises, specifically how to establish some measure of corporate governance over management and workers [43]. My proposal was to convert current state-owned enterprises, which by now reported to nobody, into a corporate form with a supervisory board. My hope was that a proper supervisory board, largely appointed by the state as the main shareholder (perhaps a combination of federal, provincial, and local government-appointed members, plus representatives of workers and management) would stop the self-dealing of managers and the stripping of enterprise assets. Once corporatization was completed I envisioned that there would be many pathways to privatizing the state-owned shares in subsequent years………..
The Government’s privatization strategy was to move radically and quickly, so that there would be no reversal in political power and no reversion to a communist regime. The idea was to push the assets out into private hands as quickly as possible, even if corruption and unfairness ensued. This was not my approach, and I disagree with it. I was worried from the start of this process in Poland that corruption in privatization or manifest unfairness would not only damage the economy but also damage the society, by undermining the support for democracy, economic reforms, and social justice.
In the end, Russia went the course of quick and reckless privatization, to my dismay. Even many of my “reformer” friends accepted this situation. Why did they do so? Did they really fear a return to Soviet communism? Were they naïve? Was the lure of corruption and personal gain too much for some? I do not know.
During my final trip to Moscow in early 1995, the infamous “loans-for-shares” deal was just getting underway. This deal involved a massive and corrupt transfer of natural resource enterprises to the Government’s cronies, disguised as a collateralized loan to the Russian Government by Russian banks. The arrangements were blatantly corrupt from the start. I spent my final visit in Moscow visiting Western officials to warn them about what was happening. I felt that my antennae were pretty sound at that point, and that my perspective would be helpful to head off a disaster. I was stunned by the obtuseness of the response, from the IMF, an OECD visiting mission, and later from very senior U.S. officials, including Larry Summers.
….. I regard a pure “free-market” economy as a textbook fiction, not a practical or desirable reality.”

In today’s Nigeria, as in post-Soviet Russia, privatisation is also looting. Public expenditures are incurred by the ruling class to hand the products to foreigners and members of their class. Nothing exemplifies this more than public housing and estates in the states and especially Federal houses and estates as the Osborne Road houses in Lagos and government land and estates in the money sink called Abuja! And the mode of transfer and acquisition of these prime properties are sources of perpetual and acrimonious war within the ruling class (see El-Rufai, 2013: pp. 239-312). Clearly, and El-Rufai did not seem to countenance this, the closer anyone is to decision making power in government, the more likely, even with the alleged transparency of processes, that such people are to become catapulted to the class of owners of Nigeria. El-Rufai’s This Day (September 30, 2011) statement which he quoted (El-Rufai, Ibid. p. 263) captures this fact succinctly:
The acquisition of a home is usually the single largest investment made by most people in their lifetime and home ownership is what catapults people to middle class status. Owning a home also present an opportunity to alienate it and raise money for investment in other real and financial assets, thereby leveraging societal resources and encouraging entrepreneurship.
Various other reports insist that privatisation is a “rip-off” (The Insider weekly Sept., 23, 2002: pp. 21-25) The BPE czars directly changed the laws on privatisation without recourse to the National Assembly thus making a lot of the activities of BPE illegal and criminal (The Insider Weekly, Sept., 23, 2002: 21-26). In 2001 or so ASUU challenged the legality of privatisation. The illegal acts were justified when the law courts ruled that ASUU had no locus standi. ASUU contention in the say was the general subversion of the Nigerian people by the whole privatisation project and the specification of the changes in the enabling laws by the Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation via amendment Public Enterprises (No.2) Order 2001 which expand the privatisation Act without recourse to National Assembly (again, see The Insider Weekly: Ibid).
As for NO-I’s complaints about political interference and vested interests (NO-I, 2012: p. 50) creating controversy in the privatisation process, we assert categorically that –privatisation of public assets is a political matter. The ruling class know that privatisation has been criminal and that is why it is backed by so much propaganda and secrecy. No single political party ever, anywhere, told the Nigerian electorate during campaigns that they will sell these assets; they dare not because many of their big wigs profit from the auctions.
Privatisation and deregulation as looting: the ruling class and the dominance of private primitive accumulation.
What we have seen with the overlapping generations of members of the Nigerian ruling class had been the consistence of their pretence that their public policies are the products of altruistic and patriotic motives. In the 1970s for example, Obasanjo’s administration had acquired many of the [private] companies when the ideology of state capitalism was in vogue “Maer, 2000: p.297). Before the looting spree which they started calling privatisation and deregulation, Maier (2000: p. 297) observed:
Several of his [Obasanjo’s] ministers including Power and Steel Minister, Bola Ige, had in the recent past voiced hostility to selling what they considered to be the nation’s patrimony to Nigerian businessmen who they believed had acquired their wealth by illegal means “You the people who are now mouthing ‘privatise’, they are looking for ways in which they can invest their stolen money”. Ige told me in December 1998. “It is not that they are anxious that those things should work better. It is that they want to buy government—established companies at lower rates that they should be. They just want to invest their ill-gotten gains there. So it is not privatisation; it is looting”
Precisely because privatisation is looting and it involves reaping where the reapers did no sowing, the processes continue to generate acrimony in the ruling class with losers yelling about sharp practices and frauds such as the case of the sales of PHCN power plants. A report on these sales captioned “Sale of power firms a fraud—say Govs” (Daily Trust Friday Oct. 19, 2012: p.1; p. 5) went as follows:
Governors of Edo, Ekiti, Delta and Ondo states have rejected the company selected as the preferred bidder (Vigeo) for the Benin electricity distribution company, saying the power sector privatisation process was fraudulent.

The governors were in favour of a different Disco (distribution company)—Southern Electricity Distribution Company—which lost the bidding to Vigeo. According to the report, governors—Uduaghan, (Delta PDP); Oshiomole (Edo ACN); and Fayemi (Ekiti ACN)–declared in an Abuja Press Conference, on 18th October 2012 that “the bidding process was fraught with sharp practices and vowed never to allow Vigeo take charge of the Disco”.
The war over the looting of public property (privatisation) is also waged through ruthless deployment of political power within the ruling circles occasioning unceremonious sack of ministers, reversal of “concessioning” agreements (Zamfara Government reverse sale of government property by Shinkarfi, Daily Trust Wed. June 1, 2011: p. 49): “There have been looting and selling off of government property…I hereby reverse all the sales made within the past one month.” Alh Abdulazeez Yari stated this shortly after his inauguration as new governor. In this war, the triumphant factions even deploy state security paraphernalia against loser factions in the war. In recent times, we have witnessed the rescinding of concession of Lagos-Ibadan express way, the rescinding of the Manitoba Electric power sale, reversals of land allocations in Abuja and other places and power play on land allocations between the incumbent first lady and her predecessor! As far back as December 2012, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria passed resolutions, after Senate voted to adopt the report of a committee that investigated the privatisation process since 1999 (Abdul-Rahman Abubakar reporting for Daily Trust Senate rolls back OBJ privatisation, 21/2/2011: p. 1; p. 5):
[ask] The Federal Government to cancel key sales of public enterprises executed during the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo over alleged breach of due process and failure of core investors to meet their obligations…the senate asked President Jonathan to fire the Director General of the Bureau for Public Enterprises Bolanle Onagoruwa, and the security agencies to prosecute former heads of BPE Nasir El-Rufai, Julius Bala and Irene Chigbue over their roles in faulty privatisation processes. Privatised companies that the Senate want seized back from their present owners are NICON Luxury Hotel, Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Sheraton Hotels and Towers Abuja, Daily Times Nigeria. Delta Steel Company, Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON), Bacita Sugar Company, Sunti Sugar Company and Volks Wagon (sic) Nigeria.

Of course very little of any of the foregoing resolutions proceeded beyond the Senate chambers itself as the Executive arm of Government has ultimate responsibility of implementing the resolutions of the legislative houses.
As we show amply in subsequent sections of this presentation, the development of the commitment to privatisation and deregulation among members of Nigeria’s ruling class is closely related to the dynamics of political power in the last thirty years or so. The development has been accompanied by accumulation of legendary private wealth especially among past military rulers and their friends and hanger-on. A lot of this wealth arises largely from parasitizing public treasury, contract kickbacks (as are variously reportedly in the cases of Halliburton, Julius Berger, Enron, Siemens, Wilbros etc.), investments in oil blocks and companies fronted by less visible agents etc. These loots are now available for buying public properties that are up for grabs in the privatisation spree!
There are cogent reservations on privatisations even among those who believe, like Adamu (BPE: Behind closed door [II]. Daily Trust Friday 19th August, 2011: p.72), that “perhaps there is nothing wrong with privatisation; and there may even be something good about it; but certainly not in the way it had been done in Nigeria”. Adamu’s observations on the problems hit the nail on its head:
Business in Nigeria is the crooked foreigner’s paradise. A front to with a host of patrons backing him to the hilt, the foreigner can do as he pleases—and often does. He swindles Nigeria with the help of those whose duty it is to keep its trust. Without the right regulation in place to enforce the goals of privatisation and without the will or even desire to make the new owners of privatised enterprises play according to the rules, the exercise becomes an economic bleeding wound. With its commanding heights in the hands of foreigners and the downstream sector of the economy comatose. Nigeria becomes a perpetual captive market and a dumping ground.

As for big Nigerians backing the new foreign owners of Nigeria’s patrimony, nothing is more corroborative than the reports about who and who will be the owners of PHCN whose privatisation has been going for almost a decade, into which massive public funds have been pumped within the same period, and whose work force remain under massive threats of being laid off. Among the successful bidders for the new power companies are previous military head of state of Nigeria Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar others who are very close to those in the Federal Government such Femi Otedola, Emeka Ofor (15 power firms: IBB, Otedola, others get 15 days to pay. Daily Trust Friday February 22, 2013: p.6).
As we noted above, many informed opinions insist that the whole privatisation business had always being a fraud, a daylight robbery. Obasanjo, the ultimate leader, the demi-urge of the Okonjo-Iweala Reform Team has been directly accused by various individuals and groups of being responsible for the entire privatisation fraud. Part of the accusations includes allegations that he and his cronies benefited directly from the auction of Nigeria. Adamu Adamu (op. cit.) for example observed:
Today, everything points to Obasanjo as the culprit who has misused his office to subvert a process that was at the heart of his so-called reform programme. He had already been fingered in the messy acquisition of NICON Insurance by Jimoh Ibrahim…the former president is also accused of forcing BPE to sell enterprises to his cronies at give-away prices sometimes even when their companies have not participated in the bidding process. In the process, the nation was thoroughly short-changed.
In a similar vein, in a reaction to Obasanjo’s challenge to President Goodluck Jonathan (see Emeka Anuforo’s “Obasanjo dares Jonathan on probe of corruption” The Guardian, Monday April 29,2013: p. 1; p. 4) that the latter should probe him instead of harassing those who worked for him (Obasanjo), Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa urged President Jonathan to probe Obasanjo now (Probe Obasanjo now, Balarabe urges Jonathan: Daily Trust Friday, May 3, 2013: p.6). We shall return to this when we address the issue of what they call corruption.
There are more viable alternatives: Strident calls from different angles, including those of former and/or incumbent WB/IMF operatives and collaborators.
Below, we present excerpts (all emphases are mine) of informed opinions on the subject matter of economics, economic restructuring, the globalization of economic crisis, neo-liberalism, the so-called market forces, privatization and corruption, and the local, class and international economic and political forces that shape all these.
Joseph E. Stiglitz [Nobel Laurate in Economics, Professor at Columbia University; he was Chairman President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers; he was also President and Chief Economist of the World Bank].
The post-Crisis Crises [Posted on the internet on7th January, 2013: Excerpts—all emphases mine]:

“Just as the Great Depression arose in part from the difficulties in moving from a rural, agrarian economy to an urban, manufacturing one, so today’s problems arise partly from the need to move from manufacturing to services. New firms must be created, and modern financial markets are better at speculation and exploitation than they are at providing funds for new enterprises, especially small and medium-size companies.
Moreover, making the transition requires investments in human capital that individuals often cannot afford. Among the services that people want are health and education, two sectors in which government naturally plays an important role (owing to inherent market imperfections in these sectors and concerns about equity).
Finally, there is a worldwide crisis in inequality. The problem is not only that the top income groups are getting a larger share of the economic pie, but also that those in the middle are not sharing in economic growth, while in many countries poverty is increasing. In the US, equality of opportunity has been exposed as a myth.
The developed countries have not lived up to their promise in Doha in November 2001 to create a pro-development trade regime, or to their pledge at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 to provide significantly more assistance to the poorest countries.
The market will not, on its own, solve any of these problems. Global warming is a quintessential “public goods” problem. To make the structural transitions that the world needs, we need governments to take a more active role – at a time when demands for cutbacks are increasing in Europe and the US”.
Anatole Kaletsky:Trying to fix broken economies [Posted on the internet on April 4, 2013: Excerpts]
“Here is a list of economic questions that have something in common. In a recession, should governments reduce budget deficits or increase them? Do 0 percent interest rates stimulate economic recovery or suppress it? Should welfare benefits be maintained or cut in response to high unemployment? Should depositors in failed banks be protected or suffer big losses? Does income inequality damage or encourage economic growth? Will market forces create environmental disasters or avert them? Is government support necessary for technological progress or stifling to innovation?
What these important questions have in common is that professional economists can’t answer them. To be more precise, economists can offer plenty of answers about government deficits, printing money, inequality, environmental issues and so on, but none of these answers is authoritative enough any longer to persuade other economists, and never the world at large.

Summarising the run-up to 2023.
We can assert with reasonable level of confidence that the fight against corruption as canvassed by Nigeria’s ruling coalition today, is less credible that it was in 1984.
This is because global ideological circumstances have entrenched the accumulative foundations of corruption and the political-economic circumstances of Nigeria’s ruling class has changed in favour of further entrenchment of capitalist accumulation. The development of this conjuncture has also traumatised and further weakened the victims of accumulation as organised in nationalist movements, the labour movement, movements of the students and the youth and patriotic organisations of the professionals (NBA, NMA, NUJ, etc.etc.).
It is important for our understanding of corruption, as a permanent feature of capitalist accumulation, to remember that the various factions of the Nigerian ruling class had touted “war against corruption” or eradication of corruption” as a key if not the main element of their interventions since the January 1966 coup—exactly fifty one years ago (Bennett and Kirk-Green, 1978; Bienen and Fitton, 1978; Dent, 1978), Yakubu Gowon’s October 1970 “nine-point” transition program and the 1974 program that reneged on the proposed 1976 return to civil rule programme both featured eradication of corruption as a major goal! Murtala Muhammed’s intervention was more thorough-going and socially more broader-based but brief; the success, too, was only partial. The Buhari-Idiagbon intervention (1984-1985) was largely against incumbent politicians; it also involved rather sanguine repression against the media and civil society. The IBB and Abacha regimes were largely about accumulation among the leading lights and their friends; it was maintained with high dose of repression. The title of Max Siolun’s book (2013), Soldiers of Fortune correctly characterised the period between 1984 and 1999 as an era of accumulation.
But as we made concrete in the penultimate segments of this presentation above, what has been happening since 1999 had been the manipulation of the scourge of corruption largely for political advantage in the war of accumulation inside the ruling class and as a means of entertaining and co-opting the victims of ruling class accumulation. The maintenance of the economic ideology that entrenches and reproduces corruption in the last fifty years, the characteristic selectivity and limited reach of the anti-corruption war and the spectator role assigned to the masses of the people in the alleged war all combine to make it a war of limited, if not dubious, integrity!
The war against corruption under President Muhamadu Buhari has followed the same general patterns of 1984 in that it is largely about financial crimes alleged to be committed by holders of public office especially and almost entirely at the federal level. The business and financial barons have been largely unaffected. Corruption at state and local government levels has been largely unaffected. This situation will, ultimately leave a significant chunk of the collaborators of these accused untouched.
The point about selectivity of the anti-corruption effort had been made in various quarters, in terms of the limited time span and actors in public office; some individuals are even touted as “untouchable”!
A report by an on-line medium, News Express posted on December 9, 2016 was captioned “Corruption: Ex-ASUU President seeks arrest of Obasanjo, IBB, Abdulsalami, Tinubu, Amechi, Fashola”. The said former President of ASUU (Professor Assisi Asobie) was reported to have added with appropriate intensity of cynicism, “They will think you are mad when you say it”! It was reported to be at the 2016 International Anti-Corruption Day (IACD) roundtable organised by US Embassy in Abuja on December 8, 2016.

2023, as Capitalism is discredited again under the Nigerian ruling class!
On April 5, 2017, the Buhari administration launched its economic blueprint which it called Economic Recovery and Growth (ERPG) programme. The ERGP was alleged to be the means of getting Nigeria out of economic woods and make life better for Nigerians. The ERGP was erected on the World Bank-derived policy that the so-called private sector will lead the Nigerian economy. The policy among other things is erected on what, over time, has been characterised as neoliberal economic policies and it is dictated and supervised by the global financial institutions (the IMF, the World Bank) and their subsidiaries such as African Development Bank (AfDB).
The launching of ERGP, two full years after General Buhari became President is pivoted on all the principles and conditionality’s that underpinned the programmes of enslavement of Nigerian masses since 1977 and especially since 1984 (SAP, Vision 2010, NEEDS, Vision 2020-20, etc.!): devaluation of the Naira; withdrawal of subsidies from PMS, agriculture and social services—education, health, etc.—reduction in public service establishment, privatisation and auctioning of public assets, imposing more taxes on the poor (VAT, etc.); killing of local industries via trade liberalisation, deregulation of wages and crack-down on trade unions, using government money and facilities to promote the enrichment of big business etc.
These were all elements of the same programme which the military wing of the ruling class forced on Nigeria especially since 1984 when it was clear to the World Bank that their Nigerian agents in civvies could not proceed safely with the program. That is where we have been, and it is not surprising, the same neoliberal forces and personnel have been ripping Nigeria off since in the last forty years

“Thief carry am, Thief collect am!”: Enter Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON)
Section 1(1) of the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) Act established the corporation. It was an Act to establish the asset Management Corporation of Nigeria for the purpose of resolving the non-performing loan Assets of Banks in Nigeria. The Act came into law on the 19th of July, 2010; AMCON is said to be “… created to be key regulating, stabilizing and stabilizing tool established to revive the financial system by efficiently resolving the non-performing loan assets of the banks in the Nigerian economy.” [amcon.com.ng: accessed October 13, 2022].
In the last two decades or so of neoliberal globalisation and in all capitalist economies, finance (banking), insurance and real estate (FIRE) dominated. It is not different in Nigeria. Having been fully privatised especially since the SAP of the mid-1980s, investors in the banking sectors manipulated and profited from the control of the sources of credit. By the early 2000s, many of the banks were ruined via toxic loans leading to collapses, mergers and forced recapitalisation.
Debts of many of the allegedly commercialised and privatised companies were funded with tax-payers’ money (as direct bailouts and through government rescue of indebted companies such the energy costs incurred by the power Generating Companies— GENCOs—following the so-called unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria—PHCN).
Needless to say, because those who control government and government power, along with their friends and business partners, also own the companies that suck blood from workers, tax- payers and the country, AMCON serves largely to protect capital and capitalists; the companies owing AMCON are owned by who-is-who in Nigeria!
Consequently, those who wreck a particular company (bank, road construction, hotel, industry, power companies, etc.) are found also to own, or part-own several other companies and businesses that keep ripping off Nigeria. The capitalist “limited liability” paradigm of class reproduction ensures the maintenance and longevity of this mutually-reinforcing relationship between private accumulation and state (political) power.
And when these relationships between government power and capitalist power cannot hide anymore, the facilitators try to confuse the people and lie to them especially when the victims begin to understand. Buhari’s Minister of Works and Power was in the news recently: Fashola (on PPP, Privatization; Channels’ [Sunrise Daily]: “It Can’t Be a Governance Model; Fashola Faults Candidates Promising Privatisation” Channels Television [Sunrise Daily] Updated December, 21,2022):
“… it cannot be an official model of governance … That was the model that we met [PPP] They [the private sector] don’t even have the capacity…”
Employment by private companies [according to Fashola in the report]: Micros: less than, or equal to 10 people; Medium < 50 people; Small < 200 people….
[Buhari’s government] priorities repatriation of funds stolen by previous officials… to fund its infrastructure projects”.

CAST-Nigeria Understanding of Nigeria’s Economic Crisis in 2023 and beyond: Privatisation, looting of public assets, and continued, enrichment of the ruling class; AMCON as ruling class panacea.

On October 2 2022, the Campaign for Socialist Transformation of Nigeria (CAST-Nigeria) Campaign Organisation addressed a Press Conference in Abuja on the nature and consequences of Nigeria’s unending economic and social crisis; that was as the ruling class was perfecting the illusions around the then upcoming 2023 General Elections. A summary of the perspectives of the press conference, especially concerning the role of ruling class private wealth accumulation as the underlying cause of unending economic crisis, mass poverty and breakdown of infrastructures, educational and health institutions, etc., is outlined below.

Once the “civilian” segment of the Nigerian ruling elites settled down in power as allegedly democratically-elected government in 1999, the ruling class proceeded full scale to privatize remaining public assets as previously ordered (as a key element) by the World Bank in the Structural Adjustment Programme which the military wing of the Nigerian elite came to enforce after the overthrow of the Fourth Republic (1979-1983).
Two important bureaucracies, Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC) and the Bureau for public Enterprise (BPE) were established to oversee what some media outlets described as “RIP OFF” of Nigeria.
No matter what segment of the morphing political wing the key players belong to, the auctioning was frenzied and feverish. The OBJ team that supervised the auction project was led by Atiku Abubakar and Nasir El-Rufai facilitated by World Bank Nigerian technocrats who were recruited for OBJ from Washington, USA. It was clear by the 2000s that privatisation was a looting programme as members of the Nigerian elite, spread across the country, invaded banks and other financial institutions to acquire loans and other facilities to buy the public assets that were being auctioned literally and at give-away prices. In many cases, the buyers did not, and still do not, even, pay!
Needless to say the acquired enterprises were destroyed by their acquisitors; the loans became toxic and the lending banks were bankrupt or threatened with bankruptcy. Once this happened, AMCON (Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria) set up by their government came to the rescue of the rampaging acquisitors of the public resources via various strategies of quantitative easing (bail-outs, etc.) as exemplified by scandalous examples as in the banking and electricity generation and distribution sectors.
But beyond, the pampering of those who become rich capitalists overnight, via primitive and related accumulation, ruling class governments, especially from 1999 to date, have continued to preferentially enlarge the accumulative and exploitative capacity of their class collaborators and business partners.
In crude oil trade and solid mineral mining trade, the ruling class governments have continued to give special support to capitalist companies in spite of the growing inequality and poverty in Nigeria caused especially by escalating unemployment and withdrawal of public funds from education, health, basic civil infrastructure, rural and urban security, and food security.
While revenues from Government-Owned-Enterprises (GOEs) are being embezzled or otherwise unaccounted for, as we show in other parts of this document, various sources of public revenue are awarded as gifts to capitalist foundations while workers and pensioners are unpaid for months on end while VAT increased on various purchases and as fuel price and school fees and cost of living increase generally. Big capitalist companies such as “Dangote, Lafarge, Honeywell and 43 other major beneficiaries” reportedly received tax wavers, concessions and relief totalling N16.7 trillion between 2019 and 2021 (Sahara Reporters: September 19, 2022). The requests for similar waivers, concession and reliefs by another 186 companies are reported to be pending and means of maintenance of ruling class-power.
It is left for us to emphasize that the processes of the fraud associated with what they generally refer to as “waivers” had always been traditionally opaque and the same coterie of capitalists have been profiting from them! A report of February 4, 2014 news was carried by Ships & Ports (www.shipsandports.com.ng) in 2022 titled, N1.4trn import duty waivers: Lawmakers probe NNPC, Oando, Dangote, Coscharis!—waivers granted by Nigeria’s Federal Government between 2009 and 2013! That was more than one decade ago! Regime after regime of the ruling class, nothing has changed.
The loss of revenue to government arising from waivers, etc. discussed above is directly related to revenue losses to Nigeria arising from outdated conditions for deep off-shore Production Sharing Contracts signed between the NNPC and the International Oil Companies and in which government officials ignored 2015 legal advice that the contracts that subsisted since 1993 be reviewed in favour of Nigeria (see Brisktrade: https://www.. Brisktrading.net; August 14, 2017)

Yet in 2014 CBN advances to the Federal Government of Nigeria was N256.70 billion, the advances rose by more than 7000% to N18.89 trillion in 2021! (www.agorapolicy.org). CBN advance is, of course, generally considered to be a euphemism for CBN printed money!
According to a report by Dave Ibereme (legit.ng: October 12, 2022), “CBN prints another N4 trillion in seven months for President Buhari as Debt Hit N22 trillion” (see Table on the escalation of Nigeria’s debt profile below), the total amount printed is said to have increased from N789.7 billion in 2015 to more than N22 trillion in 2022 and up from about N17 trillion in December 2021. The report also noted that crude oil price had increased in that period.
National Debt Increases, Nigerian Government borrows more, CBN Prints more Naira, and spends profligately!

FG Debts: 2011- 2021(N)
Year Domestic External Total
2011 5.7 546bn 6.17trn
2021 19.2trn 13.86trn 33.11trn
Increase by 435% Increase by 242% Increase by 2,435%
Source: AGORA POLICY (www.agorapolicy.org)

While budgeted FG revenue and actual revenue were N3.35 trillion and N2.57 trillion respectively in 2011, and the corresponding categories were N6.77 trillion and N4.63 trillion in 2021. It is also significant that FG’s expenditure was N4.48 trillion in 2011 and N12.5 trillion in 2022.
On top of all of this rain of revenues, according to a Report in October 2022 (https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/10/OT/world-banks-750 million-aid-to-nigeria-is-all-bout-hijacking-the-2023-general-elections/), “The World Bank announced $750 million credit line to Nigeria for helping 36 states in Nigeria to push through reforms which will [allegedly] ultimately attract investment and create jobs…”. That is apart from a recent report that the European Union (EU) offered Nigeria $1.7billion allegedly “to diversify the economy”!
Of course; it is a generally known fact today that World Bank loans are veritable means of continuing the enslavement of peoples in countries like Nigeria via World Bank conditionalities that insist on privatisation of public resources, liberalisation of trade and killing of local industries, imposition of more taxes, and the removal of so-called subsidies etc. These are all aided by the Nigerian ruling class from one government to another. This is why the launching of Buhari’s Economic Recovery and Growth Program (ERGP) of 2017 came directly four months after the instructions from the World Bank other-wise known as Article IV Understanding earlier in 2017(see Uchenna Uwaleke, Reflections on IMF 2017 Article IV consultation with Nigeria; Jide Ojo, If Buhari’s ERGP will not be a paper tiger: The Punch, Wednesday April 19, 2017, p. 20).

Big Business and individuals keep “Ripping Off Nigeria”!
(1) Dangote Cement Dispute with Kogi State of Nigeria illustrates the virulence of the power of capitalists over and above government power especially when there is a conspiracy between the two!
(2) Federal Government of Nigeria is killing the Government-owned Refineries; funding (FGN Investments in) Dangote Refineries amounting to $2.7bn 20% stake worth billions; and guaranteeing Crude Supply of 300 thousand barrels daily to it. All these with Tax Wavers to Dangote.
Big business and environment crisis: big business in agriculture; crude oil, mineral explorations, and other extractive industries occasioning air, land and water pollution, monocultures, deforestation, pesticides, seed companies monopolies and erosion of crop biodiversity, GMOs; inorganic fertilizers.
Private Land acquisition: turns native landowners and communities into labourers on their own land (again as in case of Dangote Cement; as in the plethora of criminal seizure of peoples’ land at Otta, Malete in Kwara State, and at Mambila, Nassarawa and Cross Rivers States, etc,) thus generating and exacerbating a plethora of inter-community violence across Nigeria and varietis of ecological emergencies such as flooding gully erosions, etc.; export promotion of raw material returns Nigeria to full neo-colonial economic relationships and exploitation; Private ownership of oil wells and oil blocks—privatize and destroy communal environments; avoid costs of remediation to keep profits high.
Spending sprees at all levels:
(1) Security Votes;
(2) State Governments jets and chartered flights
(3) General Privatisation of the State resources by parastatals and MDAs

Direct Stealing of Proceeds from oil; PIB is virtual privatisation of NNPC;
Oil Smuggling; Oil theft; NNPC as Cash Cow!

“Nobody really wants to know how much oil is consumed daily in Nigeria because state functionaries are stealing the proceeds; they must then blame smugglers”.
And when they say they are “creating jobs” it’s always a stupendous fraud! How much do they pay? How secure are the jobs? How much of trade union rights which enable workers to negotiate conditions of service, exists?

Uncollected Revenue or Collected Revenues Not Unaccounted for.
The Cash Cows: CBN (VAT uncollected; unremitted since 2015); GOEs; Customs; JAMB; CBN Currency Printing; NPA

Over the last decade or so, it is generally known, governments of Nigeria incure revenue losses because revenue-collecting or generating agencies have abandoned their responsibilities because they profit directly from such irresponsibility. They have either not collected or they have collected and either sat on the revenue (instead of remitting into federation account) or they have neither collected nor cause the appropriate agencies or companies to make payments or remittances.

Massive uncollected revenues include various ones referred to by Femi Falana, SAN, in letters to agents of the Federal Government of Nigeria in the last several years (according to the reports by Brisktrade, This Day, Channels TV, The Punch, and other media outlets.
Among others; (1) $62 billion is said to be withheld by international oil companies (IOCs)in the last eighteen years; (2) $22 billion and $481 billion are said to be withheld from Nigeria’s Federation. Account, by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) according to the National Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI); (3) Oil companies are reported to have custody of unrecovered $21 billion being the value of crude oil allegedly stolen and discharged at Philadelphia Port in the United States between 2011 and 2014; (4) “… the management of the Central Bank of Nigeria ( in 2006) illegally withdrew $76 billion from the nation’s foreign Reserves and fixed same in 14 commercial banks… the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Godwin Emefiele has consistently ignored our persistent demand for the recovery of the principal sum of $7 billion dollars and the accrued interests….”

Uncollected (or is uncollectable?) Debts owed by the few rich: 100 companies, individuals, owe Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) N953.43 billion in 2016.
We have referred somewhere else in this document to horrendous sums of public money which the ruling class use to aid their class who have taken over public resources and enterprises, and destroyed them.
Like the uncollected revenues we referred to earlier on, debts owed by members of the ruling class and taken over by the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) are unpaid, uncollected or are largely uncollectable.
In a report of July 28, 2016 giving details of debts owed AMCON by 100 companies and individuals O. Penelope (https://thenerveafrica.com/author/penelope-o/) observed: “The Nigerian businessman have for decades survived on bank loans. While they make huge profits from ventures and have risen to the top of the industries where they operate, they hardly pay back loans. They plunged the banking sector into crisis years ago before the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) bailed out the banks, buying all the bad loans, priced at nearly N2 trillion. But years after AMCON intervention, many of these businessmen have refused to settle their obligations with the company (AMCON).
… the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) instructed AMCON to publish the list of 217 chronic debtors. The Company has published a list of 100 out of a total of 12,744 obligators on its books, with debts totalling #953.43 billion ($3.4 billion). However, the list is only the first batch of many to be published…. The amount owned by 400 obligators can cater for more 70% of Nigeria’s 2016 budget.”

Senate Probes NDLEA for Spending N200 million on Security vote without Budgetary Allocation [Samuel Ogidan: Independent January 16, 2022].
This “probe” by senate in 2022 was in respect of Auditor General queries of 2016 (2016!) regarding unbudgeted expenditure and unauthorized overspending beyond budgeted spending profiles. As we show repeatedly in this statement this is standard practice among revenue- collecting agencies whose bosses are direct appointees of government leaders under whose noses all manners of stealing and misappropriations occur!
What happened to N89 trillion Stamp Duty collected by Central Bank of Nigeria?
Our money and the Big story that is Never told; By Jubril Ibrahim.
A Presidential Committee was set up in June 2022 to collect Stamp Duty from 2015 to date.
N89 trillion Stamp Duty was collected. Only 60% was remitted, Hon. Gudaji Kazaure “raised the alarm of the theft of stamp duty precedes. He says Emefiele is essentially the beneficiary of the budget fraud in Nigeria’s history as the CBN sends only 60% of stamp duty revenue to government…” [National Record Dec. 23, 2022] https://nationalrecord.com.ng/our-money-and-the-big-story-that-is-never-told-by-jibrin-ibrahim/

Oil and Oil money as a central source of private accumulation.
While oil money that goes directly into public treasury feed the accumulation and corruption machine, oil money in the custody of Government-Owned-Companies (such as NNPC) and International Oil Companies (IOCs) also form the mainstay of private accumulation by the generality of Nigeria’s ruling class the bureaucracies, and other arms of government (executive, legislative etc.)
Members of Nigeria’s ruling class are able to assert and maintain their influence in various aspects of oil production via award of prospecting licences, ownership of oil blocks, supervision of direct stealing of crude oil and imposition of taxes on consumption which they call removal of oil subsidies.
Because of the obvious centrality of crude oil production and sale in primitive accumulation, overlapping regimes strive to concoct all kinds of stories as to how crude oil is stolen, smuggled and how such activities affect the aggregate revenue that is available to government for meeting its obligation to the Nigerian public.
The fluctuations in crude oil price and production levels, had been central elements of the excuses that the ruling class tout consistently to justify and cover up their pillage and liquidation of public accounts which they call corruption and to explain and excuse their irresponsibility.
First of all, everybody knows that for all sorts of reasons, avoidable and unavoidable, crude oil production and price are bound to fluctuate. The ruling class governments actually invariably erect very low bars for crude oil revenue during annual budgeting exercises. They, therefore rake in, invariably, more oil revenue than they actually project in the annual budgets.
Some statistics concerning the above will be in order. In January 2011 crude oil (CO) production was 2.9 million barrels per day (mbd); it dropped to 1.08 mbd in 2021. Most attention for this decline was diverted to oil theft etc.; but there is ample evidence that a lot of the decline also arose from decaying and out-dated facilities.
But all the decline (by 56.63%) in production notwithstanding, Government revenue (in Naira) more than quadrupled (300%) as a result of massive Naira devaluation. And having regard to all sorts of other sources of money available to government (as discussed already), public treasury had been constantly awash with money (Naira) and dollars (the latter especially since March 2022 when crude oil price jumped to $117.25 per barrel); it was $79.8 dollars in December 2022 [see macrotrends.net; https://www.statista.com; AGORA POLICY (www.agorapolicy.com)]

Precisely because a tiny minority owns Nigeria (the banks, the real estate everywhere) and use political power of access to the treasury to steal what they don’t own, poverty has escalated.

According to AGORA POLICY (www.agorapolicy.com), between January and June 2022, N1.59 trillion was expended on “petrol subsidy” whose existence had been disputed by various individuals and organisations. And in these regards we quote below from the report by The Punch (Punch Newspapers—punchng.com: 19th September, 2022) on the alarm by Nigeria Customs Service on the so-called petrol subsidy including NCS’s call for a probe:

The vexed issue of malpractices associated with petrol imports, supply, and subsidy, has bounced back forcefully into the public space. Coming under appropriate scrutiny at the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, data from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited on products released and consumed daily did not add up. They never have, and this calls into question institutional practices and accountability. With a prohibitive N6.4 trillion subsidy bill haunting the 2023 federal budget, the haemorrhage must be stopped.

For all of the 12 months of 2022, N4.28 trillion (N462 billion for social development and poverty reduction, N876 billion for health, N1.34 trillion for education and N1.42 trillion for infrastructure). Consequently, oil subsidy is over 25% of the total budgeted expenditure on social services and infrastructure. This had been the pattern of ruling-class extortion since the late 1970s!
It is no wonder, then, that general unemployment rose from 5.9% in 2011 to 33.3% in 2021; and youth unemployment rose from 8.04% in 2011 to 42.49% in 2021.

Stealing by Public Officers, Governors’ spending spree, and other forms of Capitalist Accumulation: The “Tip of the Iceberg”
The growing crisis of poverty in Nigeria today has a long history that started getting visible to everyone especially since when the ruling class robbery became armed in 1984 under the armed wing of the Nigerian ruling class supervised openly by IMF via SAP!
We summarize, below, various and detailed reports of the amount of public resources that the Nigerian ruling class and their foreign partners have seized and turned into their own; we emphasize that these are just few examples:

1. Customs boss, Ahmed Ali blames DPR, NNPC over petroleum smuggling
[Abdul Seye Reporting: August 16, 2021]
2. $6.4 billion debt: NEITI threatens action against oil companies.
[Vanguard, Obas Esiedesa reporting: July 15, 2022]
3. As Nigeria expands borrowing, 77 oil companies owe government #2.6 trillion.
The debts of oil companies include various taxes: income, profit, company, education, VAT, withholding, royalty, and concession on rentals!
[Premium Times: September 28, 2021; Ayodeji Adegboyega reporting]

4. 18 Terminal Operators owe FG $753m, N1.61bn—AGF.
“The Office of the Auditor General of the Federation has queried the National Ports Authority over the failure of 18 port terminal operators to remit a total of $753m and N1.61bn to the Federal Government.

The operators are the Lagos Port Complex, Tin Can Island Port, Delta Port, Rivers Port Complex, Onne Ports Complex, and Calabar Ports Complex.
…..the amounts form part of the debts standing against the operators as at December 31, 2019.
….the operators were indebted to the government to the tune of $852.094m and N1,878,560,509.57.” [punchng.com; 15th August, 2022]
5. Ex-Governors’ jumbo pension package crippling states’ economies.
[Chucks Oluigbo et al. Reporting]

According to this report, and in spite of this virtual looting of the states across Nigeria, “… the first quarter review report by the Nigerian Pensions Commission (PenCom) released in March 2016 shows that 24 out of 36 states of the federation, in total violation of the pensions Reform Act 2014, have failed to implement Contributory Pension scheme (CPS) and Group Life Insurance for civil servants in their states.”

It is also generally reported that the several state Governors “squander millions on private jets” Some of these are same governors that were advising Buhari recently [Premium Times, August 17, 2022; EXCLUSIVE: Governor ask Buhari to take 33 steps to rescue Nigeria’s economy] to put many, many more burdens on Nigerian masses including retrenchment and heavier VAT, etc.!

6. Again, regarding the profligacy over time of Nigeria’s state Governors, the report: Wike, Fayemi,Tambuwal, and 6 others governors squander millions on private jets. [Daily Trust (dailytrust.com), 20 May,2022] merit close attention about how generations of state governors and others cripple Nigeria!
“Daily Trust reports that there are 38 presidential candidates in both APC and PDP including Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan…

While all the aspirants have been travelling across the country in chartered aircraft, the spending of nine serving governors has attracted public attention and scrutiny…[including]… Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Aminu Waziri Tambuwal (Sokoto), Bala Mohammed (Bauchi), Emmanuel udom(Akwa Ibom), Ben Ayade (Cross River), Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Mohammed Badaru Abubakar (Jigawa), and Yahaya Bello (Kogi).
And in regard to the foregoing, the report, 10 Nigerian State Governors who Acquired Aircraft While in Office [autojosh.com] is also quite pertinent on the squandramania of several state governors.

7. RMAFC begins exercise to recover N10 trillion from government agencies: The unremitted revenues are for the period between January 2016 and December 2019.
[Bassey Udoh reporting: September 28, 2022]

The DG. Budget office of the Federation disclosed during the town hall meeting with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in Abuja, according to the report, “In 2018, the federal government and several of its own enterprises, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) owned about N10 trillion in unremitted operating surplus as at the end of August that year”. This is contrary to the provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007, Sections 21 and 22.
The foregoing is, indeed, the tip of the iceberg. The more the one looks, the more one sees! All the facts are in the open about these things! Clearly the reason nothing is done about the deepening crisis is that all the critical functionaries of Nigeria’s neo-colonial capitalist chimera are direct beneficiaries of the decay.

Conclusion: Capitalism is the cause, corruption is only a consequence.
Whichever way we look at it, stupendous amount of money from Nigerian crude oil, solid minerals, taxes (from income, company, VAT, etc.) petrol-subsidy, duties etc., is in the hands of the tiny ruling class spread across all ethnic and confessional groups in the country. The wealth in the custody of this tiny group fund their political parties and power, generate and maintain poverty and inequality, keep the victims down by police and military power, and keep the victims divided by generating!

The 2015 campaign of APC’s Muhamadu Buhari as distinct from the “party” itself, was hoisted on the promise to fight corruption and to attend to the obvious economic and social problems (exchange rate, unemployment, school feeding, insecurities) and problems of infra-structure (power supply 24/7) etc. The credibility of the campaign derived largely from the knowledge (or is it belief?) among the electorate of what they considered “Buhari’s record” of honesty and personal integrity and their general frustration with the ruling circles in the previous four years especially.

However, both Buhari and the segment of the electorate that voted for him seem to believe that all that is required is Buhari’s integrity and their votes! They seemed not to appreciate the fact that certain kinds of political economy simply entrench and reproduce corruption.
It is the foundation of that political economy of capitalist accumulation, now globalised for its reproduction that needs to be understood and defeated. Buhari’s personal integrity or that of any other person for that matter who leads government(s) under these conditions is, at best, peripheral to the resolution of the crisis of what they tout as corruption.

Just a little less than forty years ago (May 1985), and one and a half years into Muhamadu Buhari’s first coming as a military dictator, Alkasum Abba and others (Abba et al., 1985: p. 13) characterised Nigeria’s (now sixty three-years-old) underdevelopment crisis, which embeds private accumulation and corruption, as follows:

Far from being an instrument of development……the public service is a vast machinery for private accumulation. It shows that the way top public servants move straight into the board-rooms of subsidiaries of multi-national corporations, on retirement, reveals that in reality, the distinction between the public sector and the private sector in the Nigerian economy is a myth. There is actually a single private sector, organised by those in control of government for private accumulation by themselves and the multinational corporations. This is at the roots of the current crisis. For, as is show, unless the holding of public office is separated from the private accumulation of wealth, in a definitive and substantive way, even elementary national planning, let alone economic recovery, will be impossible. It is proposed [in this chapter] that this involves various reforms, but must include, the mobilisation of the people of Nigeria, made literate and numerate, and engaged in productive labour, to control the public services, through their democratically-elected organs.

The point of emphasis in the characterisation above will require the overthrow of Nigeria’s ruling class, not just some segments of it that are made scapegoats of the crimes of the class and imperialism. Only the conscientised victims of this situation can carry out that task! That is why the question is, constantly, “Reform or Revolution?”!

Since 2015, the crisis of accumulation has deepened considerably. On February 24, the eve of Nigeria’s 2023 general Elections, the Campaign for Socialist Transformation of Nigeria (CAST-Nigeria), in a well-publicised Press Conference, did a prophetic prognosis of the disaster that the elections and their outcomes would represent. The foundation of that disaster was that given the neoliberal consensus of the “leading” presidential candidates and the virtual absence of a socialist alternative on the ballot, the existing neoliberal disaster was going to deepen! Our country is, today, in that deepened disaster that CAST-Nigeria foretold on February 24, 2023!

Whichever way we look at it, the “war against corruption” is a political action. In a class society with violent war of accumulation inside the ruling class and sustained war between the ruling class (with its foreign and local allies) and the exploited and oppressed (with their allies), the structure, the dynamics and the sociology of the war and our understanding of it is imperative. As professionals and patriots, and as intellectuals in our own right, this understanding is important for forging our capacity to support and enhance the organisations of resistance of the mass of Nigeria’s oppressed who are the ultimate victims of private accumulation and its corrupting influences.

Dedication

This address is dedicated, with reverence and fond nostalgia, to memories of Chief Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi, Mr. Alao Aka-Bashorun and Mr. Bamidele Aturu whose legal activism gave us hope and continue to inspire and strengthen us. It is also dedicated to all those who have shown courage on the bench especially those whose paths we crossed while we were under the scary threats of military dictatorship. I want to mention in this particular regard, Justice Rosaline Omotoso of blessed memory and Retired Justice Moni Fafiade.

*Omotoye Olorode, B. Sc. (Ife), M.A., Ph. D. (Kansas)
Member, Secretariat Collective,
Movement for Socialist Transformation (MOST): Campaign for Socialist Transformation (CAST-Nigeria).
[email protected];
[email protected].