Last week, Transparency International, the global anti-corruption
watchdog released its ranking of world corruption index among countries.
Nigeria was ranked the 25th most corrupt nation on earth. This was a
drop from the 27th position it occupied at the last ranking. To most
Nigerians who are living witnesses and victims to the pervasive culture
of corruption which has, under the Jonathan regime, been elevated to
directive principle of state policy, this was a conservative rating and a
flattering of a system that now rests solely on corruption. It is trite
saying that corruption has completely overwhelmed the country as no day
passes without stories of mind boggling corruption reported in all the
sectors of the country’s governance.
From the over N2 trillion fuel subsidy scandal to the looting of the
pension fund, from the purloining of the police pension fund to the
financial fraud going on in all federal ministries and parastatals, from
the gargantuan oil theft scandal, which according to government
officials, poses serious threat to the nation’s economy to the sordid
details of the cleansing going on in the ant-infested oil industry, from
the revelation that N500 billion had been stolen from the ludicrous
SURE-P fund to the disclosure by the Customs Director General that the
country lost a whopping N603 billion to abuse of import waivers between
January and September this year, from the Aviation scandal otherwise
known as Oduahgate to the now trending allegation of massive stealing of
kerosene subsidy, from the looting of the excess crude account to the
emptying of the foreign reserves, it is one long and endless story of
bizarre stealing, looting and corruption, which has come to define the
face of the Jonathan government.
The audacious plundering has retched up a new breed of novou riche
Nigerians, most with no known means of livelihood and some with well
known criminal history. These have moved in to buy private jets, acquire
massive landed properties and veered off into the new fad, which is
ownership of universities. Conversely, Nigerians pass through the worst
form of deprivation in the history of the county as life hovers on the
barest of levels. The level of want in Nigeria is best captured by a
recent World Bank report, which states that about 130 million Nigerians
live bellow two dollars a day! This is an incriminating report for a
country that had been harvesting unflagging oil boom for the past
fourteen years the PDP has been in power. Strange enough, President
Goodluck Jonathan, assailed on all fronts by wide scale criticism of his
tolerant attitude to corruption, told Nigerians that our greatest
problem is not corruption but ethnicism. Even recently, an anti
corruption group in Switzerland, Berne Declaration revealed that the
NNPC and a group of Nigerian and international oil traders dupe the
country in the sale of Nigerian oil. The group revealed that Nigeria was
short changed of over $6.8 billion between 2009 and 2011!
One would have expected the overwhelming reports of wholesome looting
of the country’s resources to overstretch an anti corruption agency
like the EFCC. One would have expected the prison walls to be
overstretched by the number of culprits held in respect of these
criminal plundering. But not for the present EFCC. No one has been
arrested, least of all prosecuted for these mind boggling acts of
economic crime. No one is questioned, except when Nigerians rose up with
heightened anger to protest the decision of the Jonathan government to
pass the cost of the fuel subsidy scam on Nigerians through increased
prices of petroleum prices. Jolted by the massive outpouring of
Nigerians against such effort, the EFCC said it was going to take in and
prosecute the fuel subsidy thieves. It moved in to pick one or two of
them and these were quickly released and there the story ended. Of
course Nigerians still pay for the prodigality of these thieves through
high prices of petroleum products. They were merely rattled and left to
continue plying their trade in a mock trial aimed to deceive the long
suffering Nigerians. Of the other cases of monumental corruption listed
above, the EFCC has not even betrayed any whimper of knowledge, talk not
of arresting any person to answer for these infractions. And the sordid
plundering continues in reckless and more audacious impunity.
Last week, Imo State governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha was to raise an
alarm of what he called unrelenting EFCC harassment of the officials of
his government. To those conversant with happenings and politics of Imo
State, this alarm was long in coming as the EFCC seems to have
relocated to Imo State for the sole purpose of harassing, intimidating
and distracting the purposeful government in Imo State so as to make the
state pliant for the return of the rapacious PDP whose 12 years tenure
in Imo governance left the state despoiled, traumatized and prostrate.
It is this disheveled story that the Rochas government has boldly been
addressing since 2011 when he wrestled the entire armada of the PDP to
get to power. Since then, neither the PDP hierarchy, the Jonathan
government nor the dislodged mandarins who ate down the state in twelve
years have rested in trying to re-launch the good old days of wanton
free loading. The PDP, which has been pining and ruing the loss of the
feel good days is being commissioned by the presidency, eager to boost
its sagging flanks, to launch a warfare in Imo State and the EFCC is the
arrowhead of the war. That was the message Okorocha was sending when he
raised the alarm and discernible Imo citizens know this fact. They know
that EFCC has made it a duty to make ceaseless rounds in Imo State,
arresting officials at will based on the many specious and outlandish
petitions the moths and rodents that people the state PDP generate
against the state government.
Imo State for the nearly three years Okorocha has been in power, has
been one of the laudable stories of recovery from the waste laying
between 1999 and 2011. All sectors have been targeted in a massive
effort to recover the years eaten away by the locusts and the state has
picked up its pieces from where Mbakwe left it. 305 brand new model
schools are being built all over the state, state pupils in primary,
secondary and state owned tertiary institutions are enjoying a
historical free education replete with other accompanying accoutrements,
all the decayed roads, streets in Owerri, Orlu and Okigwe have been
recovered, rebuilt and remodeled while fifteen kilometers of rural roads
have been constructed in each of the 27local councils in the state.
Twenty seven modern hospitals are being built in the 27 local councils
in the state while all the colonial relics and kitchen lines that formed
the face of government buildings for the period the PDP renters wrecked
the state, have all given way to modern edifices and structures that
compliment a modern civil service. Employment and jobs are being created
and filled in through the community councils that targets even and
effective distribution of resources to all the communities in the state.
These are few of the land breaking features of governance which never
existed in Imo for the twelve years the PDP, through such amorphous
groups like apex leaders, stakeholders, god fathers, etc despoiled the
state ate down the state.
The Imo state chapter of the PDP and its national hierarch are not
pleased with the good fortunes of Imo people and that is why they have
sworn to ensure that Governor Okorocha does not nick a re-election. It
does not matter if they have nothing, just nothing, to advertise as
their achievement in power for twelve years while Okorocha has a
bountiful harvest to show for his brief tenure at Douglas House. They
now live in forging frivolous petitions against the regime and trusting
the EFCC which has become the political hatchet dog of the PDP to launch
an unending war against the Imo government. They freely boast of this
even when they have pending questions of what they did with the twelve
years allocation of Imo State still shoveled under EFCC’s bulging
carpet. They believe that by 2014, when Governor Okorocha would be
standing for re-election, they would have mutilated his achievements and
soften the ground for their comeback but they are gravely mistaken for
Okorocha is etching his achievements in indelible imprimatur and in the
minds of the ordinary Imo man and this will defy the erasing capacity of
the minions in PDP. It is instructive that the funding for these
nefarious operations in Imo State is from the well heads of corruption
that has been opened in the present government, as reported above and
which should form the primary business of an EFCC concerned about the
culture of corruption that is ravaging the country at present.
I am not against directing the klieglight on those in power and this
should be made clear. I however believe that such klieglight should be
on real and provable cases of economic crimes-the type being perpetrated
under the nose of the EFCC by the federal government, which is
threatening to bury Nigeria at present. Since the EFCC started its
self-deceitful fancy ride round Imo, it is yet to publish any worthwhile
report that indicts any Imo government official and it has not brought
any official to prosecution yet it won’t stop and attend to the
overwhelming evidences of corruption that mire the PDP federal
government because it is a mere hatchet in the hands of PDP. Running
rings in Imo where evidence of prudent management of state resources is
even obvious in the sheer volume and impact of projects that have been
undertaken these past two and half years, is like searching for needle
in a haystack. Nigeria is being ran aground by corruption and the EFCC
knows this. It is rather preoccupied with chasing rats all round Owerri
in deference to the consuming narrow interests of the present PDP
government while Nigeria crumbles. We wish them luck but they should
remember that whenever the history of the sordid present is compiled,
they should expect to be rightly captured on what they did to encourage
the rot of the present.
.Oparah writes from Ikeja, Lagos.
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