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Mr. President Sir, Your Time is Up By He is an international statesman, hard worker and a good father - as testified to by his eldest daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello recently, but among the president's numerous talents, one would have to leave out responsive leadership and the sincere ability to fight corruption. The president has proved beyond every doubt, reasonable and unreasonable, that he is incapable of lifting the nation beyond its present morass. What is worse, he even lacks the aptitude to appreciate the nation's problems. He simply does not know what purposeful leadership is about. He is too obtuse, and starkly so for the Nigeria of today. There is no kinder or more respectful way of putting it. It now seems quite clear that the Olusegun Obasanjo of 1976-1979 is not the same one we have inadvertently foisted on ourselves as a result of which we are now dearly paying for that mis-step.
In April 1999 after he was declared the president-elect, Obasanjo boarded the nearest aircraft with the excitement of a schoolboy on his maiden overseas trip. He travelled to the United States and across several countries of Europe. When at a point Chief Sunday Awoniyi, one of the nation's greatest men, who the president-elect had contracted to fashion out a blueprint on aspects of running the incoming democratic government especially as it pertains the civil service, noticed this misplacement of priority, he called Obasanjo aside and admonished him against such undue excitement and advised him to sit at home to plan the onerous task ahead of him. That was before he was sworn in on May 29th 1999. The newly elected president allayed the fears of this first-rate administrator and told him that he intended to do all his travels before being sworn in so that he would face the obviously difficult work of re-engineering the nation, which even at that time could be likened, among other misfortunes, to a huge economic tree hollowed out by termites. Now, three years later and just six months to the next election, the president has travelled out of the country (since May 29th 1999), 100 times for a total of 350 days and still counting. The governments of the United States and Great Britain no longer accord him the honour and respect lavished on visiting presidents. Since he got sworn in as president, he has travelled to the United States nine times - that is if one discounts his visits to the country between his election in February and swearing in on May 29th 1999. He has travelled to Europe over 20 times in search of investments and the only thing he can show for it is the marriage of his daughter to a British clergyman recently in a profligately celebrated wedding ceremony complete with several owambe parties in London. What kind of president is this? As a newspaper recently said, by the Yoruba custom, that wedding should have properly and appropriately taken place in the bride's house, which in this case should be at Abeokuta or even Aso Rock in Abuja since the Nigerian people have not evicted him from the Villa yet (he has nine more months to go hopefully). If that had happened, it would have been an opportunity to showcase our nation's rich culture for what it is worth.
By the president's own confession made more out of frustration than a mea culpa penitence, he told the Financial Times of London in April this year that, "in three years, I went round the world and I didn't get anything. From April 1999, I went round the world and I didn't get anything. From April 1999, I went round the countries of Europe, twice over. I went to Japan, to America, to Canada and got good words but no action at all." My president doesn't get the drift that he has become a nuisance and a laughing stock. He does not know that the only way to attract investment is to stay at home and make his country investment friendly. Nobody will come with money to Nigeria if it continues to remain a country famous only for its insecurity of lives and property and if its NITEL, NEPA, ports and all other infrastructures remain in a shambles. The Americans are withholding their investments and goodwill till after 2003 because they reason that this democracy is a one-man show. That is not their idea of democracy.
Some time ago during a luncheon organised for him by some government officials in London, a cocky master of ceremonies in making a few comments on the president remarked that, "last week the president of Nigeria had breakfast with us, today he is here for lunch, maybe next week we will be lucky to have him for dinner." Everybody including the president applauded. Obviously the sarcasm was lost on him. These days, Mr. Tony Blair, the British prime minister refuses to see him and has left him to the mercy of under-secretaries and for the United States, even the Secretary of State, Colin Powell refuses to meet him at airports or even meet him at his hotel. The last time the president of Africa's largest country was in the United States, he had to drive to the State Department himself and queue up to see Colin Powell as a contractor would in Nigeria when soliciting contracts. Obasanjo has turned our country into a beggar nation and brought our name to disrepute. But he has also turned himself into a thing of pity and cheapened the high office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He will need to apologise to us.
Last week, the president jetted out of Nigeria again on yet another junket at taxpayers' expense and in cold disregard of public opinion even on the eve of an election year. One of the countries he visited is so strategically unimportant to our interests that we did not even deem it fit to appoint an ambassador there. He went to Jamaica, Barbados and Senegal. But this time, he went with Joshua Dariye, the governor of embattled Plateau State whose Langtang South local government has been engaged in a civil war of sort. If it was a show of unwisdom and crass insensitivity for the president to have included the governor on his team, it was clear irresponsibility for the governor to accept what was glaringly an offer to feast and picnic. Barbados is renowned only for its resorts and Jamaica for its reggae music. Well, nobody should be surprised about Dariye. He has been consistent.
If our president is not junketing and marrying off his daughters to foreigners, he is passing-off Gbenga, his eldest son around world capitals as a top businessman. I am still not certain whom between Gbenga Obasanjo, the current First Son and Mohammed Abacha, a former, has benefited more from government contracts. The only difference is that while Mohammed Abacha is currently in jail as a result of the undue advantage he had as his father's son, Gbenga Obasanjo would have to serve his own after 2003. I don't need to be a Pastor Bakare to know this. It is just common sense and about the inexorable law of retributive justice. That law never fails. Gbenga is involved in the multi-billion dollar continuous fuel importation business. He is involved in the National Identity Card project in conjunction with a son of Pieter Botha, the apartheid president of South Africa. He is also poised, in collaboration with the son of President Arap Moi of Kenya to pick up the nation's Mint, through De La Rue Ltd in which the Kenyan family owns a substantial interest. I am not sure Mohammed Abacha was this brazen.
When Obasanjo took over power in 1999, the economy was by far a better managed one than what he has currently mismanaged it to. Then at least we had a working budget. General Sani Abacha whom he now reproaches was by a long stretch, a better manager of the economy. Abacha's naira was far stronger than what we now have. Abacha's exchange rate was maintained throughout his tenure at $1 - N80.00. Under Obasanjo, it has plummeted to half that value. And one reason Obasanjo cannot maintain the value of the local currency at respectable levels is the unprecedented and unexampled corruption that has come to define his government. Nigeria is now technically bankrupt because Obasanjo's men have stolen the nation dry. There is no money to run the nation. There is no budget but we are already operating a budget deficit - that has never made sense to me though. The Senate has also told us that N11.7 billion of the N40.7 billion recovered from the Abacha family has been stolen, which only goes to prove the anxiety expressed by some of us that the government's torment of the Abacha family is actually a fight among thieves. Also it has been reported by the Senate committee on public accounts that the GSM licence auction proceeds of N144 billion are not reflected in the Federation Account more than one year after payments have been effected by the licencees. This is an outrage!
As well, apart from the revelation by the British government that 55 percent of the corruption in Nigeria is perpetrated in the presidency; the official financial recklessness in the president's office in the face of the choking poverty in the land is simply cold-blooded. A ready example here is that though the 2001 budget approves only N6.2 billion for the president's office, the presidency last year managed to guzzle a whopping N31 billion in a year that medicines were not supplied to government hospitals and aged pensioners who had served their nation in their youth were dying of hunger.
Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, the prodigious director-general of the BPE recently informed us, and we should be thankful to him, that over $2 billion has been spent on NEPA in the last three years of this government. And, clearly, most of this amount should have been spent by Liyel Imoke's technical committee on NEPA, which reported directly to the president. Though government officials lied to us as is their wont that by December 2001, the nation was generating 4,000 mw as promised by the president, the truth is that the nation actually generates less than 2,100 mw of power. This is just about where we were before the squandering of the $2 billion. So it would be in order to ask the president where this stupendous amount went.
Since the president assumed power in 1999, there have been about 30 probes of corrupt practices between the Senate and the House of Representatives on the activities of the Obasanjo government. Nigerians are still waiting for the outcome of these probes. Nigerians are interested, for instance, in knowing the outcome of the investigation by the Senate of the N2.3 billion NEPA fund; the probe of the sale of MV Trainer, Nigeria's only surviving trainer vessel; the probe of the House of Representatives of the inflated purchase of 61 houses for ministers by Obasanjo's one-time Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Alhaji Ibrahim Bunu and on which the Minister of State for Finance, Martins Kuye lied to the nation. Imagine your Minister of Finance lying and still sitting pretty in his office two years later. Does that not tell of the character of the president himself? The government spent N2.98 billion in that scam. There is also the probe by the National Assembly of the expenditure of N397 million by the executive in the hosting of the former American president, Bill Clinton; the probe of the illegal payment of N12 billion by the presidency to Julius Berger. Nigerians also want to know the outcome of the investigation on the N10 million, which was said to be a contribution of NAFCON towards the electoral expenses of Obasanjo.
Is the president aware of the revelations investigators made at the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) recently, where his points man at the South West PDP, Commodore Bode George (rtd) holds sway? For those who don't know, Commodore George is the apparatchik that the president has entrusted with the uphill task of winning the South West for him next year. And because of that, he operates the NPA as a personal fiefdom even though he is just a titular chairman. Even the supervising ministry of transport cannot question Olabode George once he has taken a decision. The investigators reveal that billions of dollars, which NPA realised between 1999 and 2001, could not be accounted for. They include $567,301,934,772.66 revenue by London and Lagos offices of NPA; the foreign exchange amounting to $376,054,200 sold by NPA to various banks between June 1999 and December 2001, and $41.8 million procured by NPA from CBN which was meant to fund projects approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) from the seven percent port development surcharge paid by all port users.
Still on corruption which has now become the signature insignia of the Obasanjo administration, where is the Education Tax Fund stolen money? Mr. Kayode Naiyeju, the current Accountant-General of the Federation was the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) when the money was said to have been missing. Why was he promoted to the loftier office of Accountant-General instead of punishment and regurgitation like Mohammed Abacha?What about the corruption relating to the extension of the National Assembly complex and Ambassador Yusuf Mamman's seemingly incontrovertible indictment of the management of FRCN of massive corruption and theft? What about the money stolen by Obasanjo's men who took over from the Buhari-led management at the PTF? Who does Otunba Johnson Fasawe, who now corners all the fat contracts in the country, work for? But most importantly, what is the source of the approximately N40 billion that has been set aside for the president's re-election. The president's spin-doctors and palace intellectuals insist that the president is not a thief. They say he is only unfortunate to be surrounded by thieves. Quite ingenious!! What name does the Nigerian statute call a clean man who receives stolen goods? Please keep the answers to yourselves.
Now human rights. Early this year, the Human Rights Watch condemned the human rights record of the president. The NGO cited the Odi and Tiv mass killings of innocent people most of whom were women and children. So many Nigerians are being detained without trial and even those like Mohammed Abacha who have been freed by the courts through due process are still being held by government. On a visit to Dakar, Senegal, immediately after this indictment, the president dismissed the report of the Human Rights Watch as a sham. But I think we would have to leave that judgment to posterity.
Last week, Professor Wole Soyinka declared that the Abacha regime was more humane than this one. Before the president had the opportunity to pass the judgment of senility on him as he did Prof. Sam Aluko, Senator Ike Nwachukwu, a PDP Senator and one who has not been known to have openly criticised the president, called for his (the president's) resignation on account of non-performance. I don't know why it took him this long to realise that Obasanjo does not understand the job description of a president. Earlier, Senator Idris Kuta had declared in his characteristic forthrightness that if Obasanjo becomes the flag bearer of PDP, the party would lose the presidential elections. And before that, the irrepressible Speaker of the House of Representatives had even declared that he would decamp from the PDP if Obasanjo wins the PDP nomination. In spite of what Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano and Alhaji Sule Lamido tell the president about his popularity in Kano, the president assessed his rating first hand when he visited the city a few days ago. In recent history, nobody has won the presidency without Kano. Not with its sheer population and number of delegates. I think the president should take the last Kano debacle as a referendum on him in the Northern states. With the resentment against his person, it would have been worse in a state like Benue. He will also not win any election in the East even with the planned rigging. The people are just simply tired of his rudderless and anti-people style of governance. He has lost his sheen and has added his quota to the already dirty business of politics.
A few days ago, the American government passed what looked like a no-confidence message on the 2003 election that has not even taken place. If the president needed confirmation that his time is up, that was it!!
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