The Altitude of Corruption

As corruption grinds the Nigerian masses under the present administration, President Jonathan has lapsed into fantasy – to escape responsibility

With a pinch of native psychology, and a long hard look, any Jack can fairly tell the cross between denial and delusion: both ignore facts to grab whatever quickies any event can offer. And President Goodluck Jonathan’s soliloquies on national issues in recent times hint he’s been reeling in such reverie. Few weeks ago, the President shocked Nigerians during a graveside address at General Andrew Azzazi’s funeral in Bayelsa. “Corruption is not the cause of our problem [in Nigeria],” he told the mourners.

Yet those interested in Nigeria’s development have insisted corruption is the nation’s most virulent canker worm. Oby Ezekwesili, a former World Bank Vice President, has never been mealy-mouthed about it, though she was once in government. Some years ago, she said Nigeria had lost more than $400 billion of its oil revenues, earned since independence, to corruption. And currently, the lady is hitting Jonathan and his predecessor smack-dab for frittering away Nigeria's wealth.  She stated in her recent speech on accountability that $45 billion in foreign reserves and another $22 billion in the Excess Crude Account, pickings from the recent oil boom, were handed over to the successor government in 2007. And as of last year, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) grossed in N5 trillion. That’s more than 2013 budget, and about what some analysts say Nigeria needs to fix its power problem. In the same period, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) made $100 billion in crude sale, which is around N15 trillion. “Where did all that money go?” She asked.

The Transparency International (TI) has been trying to follow the money. Nigeria, one of the world’s largest oil producers, remains the 35th most corrupt nations on earth, according to the TI Corruption Perception Index for 2011. Even local anti-corruption watchdogs aren't disputing that. “It is sad that with all the opportunities and resources available in our nation, there is still under-development, massive unemployment and pervasive poverty,” said Ekpo Nta, the chairman of Independent Corrupt Practice and other related offences Commission (ICPC) in Katsina last July. “The root cause of all these is corruption that has almost become a culture.” It was the same reality of widespread poverty that has stuck with Hillary Clinton, former U.S minister of states, in her many visits to Nigeria. And her verdict: “The corruption is unbelievable”. She told her audience in a town hall meeting in America two years ago.

But Jonathan will still deny all this. He first did so in the wake of the TI report, claiming in his October 1 speech that the same anti—corruption watchdog rated the country better. He would later blame the ballyhoo that followed his false proclamation on his speechwriters. And now, the president sees something else to hang for Nigeria’s woe. “If we change our attitude of doing things, most of the things we think are caused by corruption are not,” he said.

For attitude, many believe Jonathan’s a jellyfish. And that spinelessness has brought his administration’s anti-corruption campaign under attacks by his critics. The Patriots, a group of senior citizens led by Prof. Ben Nwabueze, said Jonathan’s’s loose handling of high-profile corruption cases is responsible for the “failure to punish appropriately and promptly” the few politicians prosecuted for corruption.

In Nigeria, this character flaw has a suite of other monikers, depending on the namegivers. Lai Mohammed, ACN's national publicity secretary, would describe it as “an amazing lack of political will”. To Debo Adeniran, chairman of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL), the ministries, departments, and agencies championing the crusade against corruption are “a bunch of unserious lot”.

All this name-calling, galled as it is, seems to have some rhymes and reasons. Since ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo teed-off the anti-corruption campaign in 2001, 1500 cases have been prosecuted, 12 years after. As at the administration of Farida Waziri, the second chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the arrowhead of the campaign, 400 convictions were recorded, out of the 600 cases concluded. Most of these are petty cases, including advanced-fees frauds and other cyber crimes. The heat was fully on initially, under the commission’s pioneer chairman, Nuhu Ribadu. He actually racked up over 700 of these cases, including those of 19 governors’ in office between 1999 and 2006. By 2010, about $6.5 billion, Waziri said, was recovered while around N1 trillion worth of asset was temporarily forfeited. The total number of high-calibre cases prosecuted stood at 50 by 2011.

But Ribadu had been eased out early on in 2007, about the time the EFCC began to lose steam. And the ousting of Waziri, too, for non-performance, in 2011, brought in Ibrahim Lamorde. Critics, however, believe the fight is icing over faster than ever before. Under Jonathan, corruption has graduated from the stealing of millions to trillions, the Executive Director of the Anti-Corruption Network, Dino Melaye, told a newspaper. Other civil rights leaders are equally spurting out figures, angrily. “In the last two years, an estimated N5 trillion has been stolen by our government officials,” said Joe-Okei Odumakin, president, the Campaign for Democracy. Odumakin's guesstimate would have factored in the N1.2 trillion mismanaged in the oil subsidy scandal, the Malabu oil scam, the pension fund heist, and the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting N2.1 billion misappropriation. There, on the other hand, is a cabinet-load of probe reports gathering dust in Aso Rock. No ass-kicking yet.

As these billions of naira evaporate, the EFCC and its sister commission, the Independent Corrupt Practice and other related offences Commission (ICPC), are just faffing around. Both have admitted their failures. “The fact on the ground is that no case has been concluded,” the EFCC boss told the Senate Committee on Narcotics, Drugs, and Financial Crimes in November. But Lamorde, like his master, wouldn't take responsibility. The non-conclusion of many of the cases, especially of the politically exposed persons', according to the EFCC boss, is inevitable. “These are people who have the resources to drag on these cases indefinitely and perpetually,” he told the committee. Actually, there are cases that have been dangling since 2006. Plus many of the over 200 Larmode has brought to law.

Dragging on the cases, with those pedestrian applications, is effectively the specialty of the corrupt lawyers – the bigwigs among them. So Lamorde will like the Nigeria Bar Association to take the knock, too. As expected in the blame game, the NBA has shot back. “They are their own problem,” said Okey Wali, NBA's president, in December. Besides the investigative incompetency of the anti-graft agencies noted by the NBA, the judiciary too, Wali said, is part of the problem. “What are the judges doing with these frivolous applications brought by the lawyers?” He asked.

The buck has been lying on the bench for long, really. Mike Aondoakaa, a former attorney-general of the federation, stuck out like a sore thumb in the late President Umar Yar' Adua's administration. It was the AG that moved artfully against the prosecution of the 19 governors caught in Ribadu's dragnet then. He particularly wagered his wig on James Ibori, the former governor of Delta. Ibori was already discharged and acquitted of 170 corruption charges in Nigeria before he got convicted and jailed in the UK. In defence of Ibori, Aondoakaa, then, had gone as far as Southwark Court in London.

It, thus, seems the AG office is calculated to miscarry justice. Mohammed Adoke, Nigeria's No. 1 lawyer, for instance, first dealt the anti-corruption fight a crippling blow when he took over: he attempted to scotch the EFCC by stripping off its prosecutorial powers. Had he succeeded, the commission would have had to wait for his wink to dock any suspect.

Adoke's declaration didn't just surprise Nigerians; it made them further believe the judiciary is out to help corruption fester. Many have already given up on the third arm of government. Yet the judiciary, according to John Walker, a US judge that visited Nigeria last year, can't function unless it has public support. Now, the public perception, says Itse Sagay, law professor and constitutional lawyer, is that judgements are purchasable and judges have no integrity.

Court registers across the federation groan with names of such big buyers. These are mainly well-heeled bureaucrats, party heavyweights, and their cronies. They include former governors like Joshua Dariye, Plateau; Boni Haruna, Adamawa; Rasheed Ladoja, Oyo; Attatiru Bafarawa, Sokoto; Abdullah Adamu,  Nassarawa; Orji Uzor Kalu, Abia ; Saminu Turaki, Jigawa ; Chimaroke Nnamani, Enugu; Bukola Sraki, Kwara; Michael Boatmang, Plateau; and many others.

Among the sleaze-balls in the ruling party, Bode George, PDP's south-west chairman and former chairman, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) was the most unfortunate. He bagged two years for the N84 billion he stole from the NPA. Vincent Ogbulafor, another PDP's national chairman, was able to manage the noise of his corruption prosecution. Other big shots in the party charged with graft include Femi Fani-Kayode and Babalola Borishade, both former aviation ministers; Kenny Martins, former co-ordinator of Police Equipment Fund (PEF); Prince Ibrahim Demuje, PEF;and Roland Iyayi, former MD, FAAN.

In corporate Nigeria, there's also batch of mega-rich execs that have escaped justice, after haemorrhaging the banking industry: Cecilia Ibru, former MD, Oceanic Bank; Erastus Akingbola, former MD, Intercontinental Bank PLC; Batholomew Ebong, former MD, Union Bank; Francis Atuche, former MD, Bank PHB; Sebastine Adigwe, former MD, Afribank PLC; and Chief Osa Osunde, chairman, Afribank.

A number of indicted lawmakers also found a solace in the rotten chamber of justice. Senator Nicholas Ugbane, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu and others in the N5.2b Rural Electricity Agency contract case, weaselled their way out of the scam. The former Speaker Dimeji Bankole and his deputy Usman Nafada also got away with a N40 billion scandal. Farouk Lawan, too, has been hibernating in court since he got smeared in the subsidy probe report. One of the big catch of the oil scandal--Femi Otedola, owner of Zenon Group—remains a fixture in Jonathan's itinerary.

In all these screwups, there appears a beaten path to swinging justice: buying time to end up in a plea bargain. For many of the perennial cases, Lamorde explained, the EFCC has gone to Supreme Court twice -- on mere interlocutory applications. “They will file this, the judge will overrule them, they will go to Court of Appeal and lose there, but they will still go to Supreme Court,” he said

At the Supreme Court , the case would then be referred to the trial judge for continuation, then a fresh application will follow suit. “We know how long it takes for a trial to go to Court of Appeal and get listed, then go to the Supreme Court to get it listed and decided upon,” he told the Senate committee.

Well, for those who still don't know the duration: it's usually as long as a piece of string. But the punishments are most likely whittled down in the verdict. It took former Edo Governor Lucky Igbinedion about a year to get convicted for laundering N2.5 billion. By December 2008, Justice A. Abdul Kafarat of the Enugu High court ordered him to refund N500 million, forfeit three houses, and pay N3.5 million--or go to jail for six months. Bode George spent four years on the frivolity before he lost out in 2009. He got a 30-month jail term that ran for just two years. But he kept his booty.

The trial of Yakubu Yusuf, the former head of the Police Pension Board, is the latest skit in the nation’s criminal justice system. Justice Abubakar Talba of the Abuja High Court on January 28 sentenced Yusuf to a two-year jail term for pleading guilty to the embezzlement of N23.3 billion. Yusuf will also forfeit property valued at N325 million. But the pension thief won’t be going to prison. He got an option of a measly N750,000 fine, 0.3 percent of the loot. The verdict was so sickening the EFCC, almost immediately, re-arrested Yusuf – on fresh charges – and clammed in Kuje prison. Melaye’s Network and other groups have flared up in protest of the judgement, demanding Talba should lose his wig.

Well, there's no hard evidence yet to confirm the presiding judge traded the judgement here. That, however, doesn't rule out the possibility in Nigeria’s judicial system--even as far as the Supreme Court. For instance, Justice Legbo Kutigi, an ex-chief justice of Nigeria, read a skewed judgement that favoured Yar’ Adua in the 2007 presidential election petition brought to the Supreme Court.  Although the panel was deadlocked in a 3-3 vote, Kutigi declared Yar’ Adua winner. The justice was said to have received a $20 million bribe from Aondoaakaa. Again, Ibori, in 2003, according to a group called the Derivation Front, gave N5 million to each of the apex court judges. To beef up their case, the group further circulated copies of the judgement about to be delivered in favour of the governor. On reading the manuscript, Mohammed Uwais, then chief justice of Nigeria, immediately had a hunch.  “We all agree that this is something from within, and I have the idea of who it is,” he said.   “It is a justice of this court.”  Justices Ayo Salami (Appeal Court president) and Aloysius Katsina-Alu (ex-CJN) also smeared each other with similar allegations before they retired.

And so it goes that tribunal judges, the late Justice Kayode Eso said, are now becoming billionaires in Nigeria. Although there have been some eminent jurists working to buck the trend. Justice Dahiru Musdapher, in his nine-month tenure as CJN, began a series of reforms. He was particularly hard on plea bargaining, ex-parte motions, and endless corruption trials. And legal experts have advised CJN Aloma Mukhtar to perfect what Musdapher started. My Lord Talba’s judgement could have raised the CJN’s hackle, too; she has ordered an investigation of the justice.

Mukhtar, unfortunately, also has 15 months to cleanse the Augean stable. But how much can she do when Jonathan, with all his executive powers, has been going round in circles since 2010?

He could be right, after all, about his sermon on attitude. Just that many Nigerians think their president has to slough off his gel first.

The list is endless, but below is a few of the cons and the eye-popping figures of their loot

Names                                     Class                                                Amount mismanaged

1. Tafa Balogun                     Civil Servant                                         N13 billion

2. Kenny Martins &Co          Civil servant                                             N7.7 billion

3. Iyabo  Obasanjo                Lawmaker                                            N300 million

4. Jolly Nyame                        Governor                                           N1.3 billion

5. Babalola Aborishade       Civil Servant                                             N1 billion

6. Pension offices                  Civil Servant                                        N195 billion

7. Fani Kayode                       Civil Servant                                       N 230 million

8. Ayo Fayoshe                      Governor                                           N 416 million

9. Alao Akala                          Governor                                          N11.5 billion

10. Rasheed  Ladoja                Governor                                          N6 billion

11. Erastus Akingbola             Bank   Exec                                         N47.1 billion

12. Francis Atuchie                Bank   Exec                                          N78 billion

13. Cecilia Ibru                     Bank   Exec                                        N150 billion forfeited

14. Saminu Turaki                 Governor                                               N36 billion

15. Boni haruna                     Governor                                             N245 million

16. Chimaroke Nnamani          Governor                                                N 5.3 billion

17. Michael Botmang             Governor                                                N1.5 billion

 Written by Segun Elijah

Yobe And The Murder Of Korean Doctors - EDITORIAL

In the logic of the monsters that have made life unpleasant in parts of northern Nigeria, good work is now a cardinal crime. That, perhaps, was why gunmen assassinated nine women health workers who were vaccinating children against polio in Kano last Friday. And, in the early hours of this Sunday, the gunmen struck again, killing three Korean doctors in the most gruesome manner in Potiskum, Yobe State.

One can only imagine the calibre of physicians whose lives have been wasted by illiterate hoodlums that are not even fit to be their gatekeepers: Dr Kim Myong Hak, ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist; Dr Jong Myonyzum, acupuncture specialist; and Dr Pak Thee Jong, a consultant gynaecologist. To make good people around the world grieve more, the sadists killed them by slitting their throats; one was beheaded and his head hung on the entrance gate. All this atrocity was committed in the presence of their wives! But what was the offence of these Koreans? Coming to rural Potiskum to save the lives of poor, ignorant, sick and helpless men, women and children.

Though such mindless killings in the country have often been attributed to “unknown gunmen”, the government of Yobe State should be held responsible for the killing of the Korean doctors. How could the government have invited foreign doctors to live in Potiskum without providing them any security in these turbulent times? It is instructive that the state police commissioner, Sanusi Rufa’i, said the state government did not take even the most basic step of informing the police of the presence of the expatriates or requesting any special security arrangements for them. For one year or so, Governor Ibrahim Gaidam and his commissioners have abandoned Yobe, paying only occasional daytime visits. Many other wealthy and important people have fled the state out of fear of the criminal gangs that have unleashed hell on that north-east axis. Not even National Youth Service Corps members get posted to Yobe State anymore. Yet the governor invited expatriates to live and work in the same place without obviously giving a damn about their security.

Had the huge security votes embezzled by state governors been used judiciously, maybe the Korean doctors and others martyred in Potiskum would have been saved. It will not be out of place for the public to demand valid explanations from Governor Gaidam and the security forces of Nigeria. For they all have blood on their hands. It is not enough for the state government to condemn the killings and send condolences. Those claiming to be “on top of the situation” or promising to find the murderers before the next daybreak should not be taken seriously. We have heard those words a thousand times, even as they have failed to resurrect over 3, 000 Nigerian residents felled by assassins’ bombs and bullets in the last two years.

It’s doubtful if the marauders are “Boko Haram” members; the sect has since declared a ceasefire. The passion of these daredevil gangsters is simply to do evil. Cowards who operate under the shadow of darkness, they are incapable of confronting government or its officials directly; they could only attack the poor and the innocent. In their crooked thinking shaped by hard drugs like cocaine and marijuana, killing doctors and other health workers would lead to more deaths and their own satisfaction. Indeed, assassins are the basest of beasts.

By destroying local businesses and scaring off foreign investors, the evil men have worsened the unemployment situation and life expectancy in the north. They have attacked schools, churches, mosques, markets and banks. They have killed many innocent people (including the Korean doctors) in their homes. The murder of vaccinators is meant to sentence more children to death or endless suffering as polio victims. And who knows how many patients that have died in Potiskum since after the slaying of these specialist Korean doctors?

Will the state government succeed in bringing more professionals (from other parts of Nigeria and overseas) to Yobe hospitals again? Because of the Sunday killings, many private doctors in Yobe towns and villages are sure to relocate to safer areas and many Yobe residents will continue to die of preventable or curable diseases. Other professionals direly needed in backward states of the north are now likely to stay away from them.

Since Nigeria’s security agents have failed to protect ordinary Nigerians, it is necessary to start a mass movement that could deal with these primitive vampires once and for all. Political philosopher Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” We should not surrender our freedom or live at the mercy of hoodlums whose ultimate goal is to destroy life and property.

Polio Killings: Dr. Ahmed Datti Started It

IYOBOSA UWUGIAREN  Writes

A renowned doctor and leader of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, Dr. Ahmed Datti, started it all in 2003 when he mounted a dangerous campaign that the polio vaccine had been “corrupted and tainted by evildoers from America and their Western allies”. He did not only stop there, he took his wicked campaign to many mosques in the northern parts of the country, telling his huge followers not to have anything to do with polio vaccination. On Friday, last week, Dr. Datti’s campaign claimed nine innocent lives when some gunmen riding on a motor tricycle opened fire in the Hotoro Hayi neighbourhood, killing at least five female health workers, polio vaccinators. Another four people were killed in a second attack in the Unguwa-Uku area. I was told Unguwa-Uku in Kano is a home of Boko Haram, the Islamic fundamentalists that have been terrorising the northern part of the country.

The slaughtering of these nine innocent female health workers who were carrying out health services for children against polio is devilish before man and Almighty God. As UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) put it, such attacks are a double tragedy for the health workers and their families and for the children and vulnerable populations who are robbed of basic life-saving health interventions. As has been expressed globally, these attacks are intolerable and condemnable under any condition. Sadly for our country, these brutal killings have also drawn relationship with a series of incidents in troubled countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan where female polio vaccinators have also been killed by Islamist militants. The impression being planted in the minds of civilized nations is that we share common evil things with Pakistan and a crisis-ridden country like Afghanistan. We are fast being dragged to the perilous club of terrorists who fight religious war.

What’s more? We are sending signals of a new wave of violent attacks against immunisation scheme in our country by acts of some devil incarnates parading themselves as Islamic clerics who have consistently claimed that the polio vaccines were part of a western plot to sterilise little girls in the north and reduce the Muslim population. Too bad! The promoters of this ungodly act should hold their heads in shame. I am sure the hottest place will be reserved for them in hellfire.

While this campaign against polio vaccination is being promoted in the northern part of the country by renowned medical experts like Dr. Datti and, lately, one Professor Kaita of Ahmed Bello University, Zaria, our country remains one of the most deep-rooted reservoirs of wild polio virus in the world. According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Nigeria is the only country with ongoing transmission of all three serotypes: Wild Poliovirus Type 1, Wild Poliovirus Type 3, and Circulating Vaccine-derived Poliovirus Type 2. Records have also shown that states in the north of the country are the main source of polio infections elsewhere in Nigeria and in neighbouring countries. Even though there have been improvement in the operation in the northern states, which has led to a decline in cases of Wild Poliovirus type 1 and, in overall cases, this current attempt by those opposed to it to copy tactics being used by militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, who had accused health workers of spying for the US, will not help the current huge efforts by the federal government to fight this virus that is crippling children in the north.

It is very painful when one remembers that one of the promoters of “No to Polio Vaccination”, Dr. Datti, is one of the first-class doctors from the northern part of the country. He ought to know that the global polio eradication initiative was formed in 1988 by well-meaning people who care for children, with the sole aim of reducing infection with poliomyelitis virus; and, several years later, thousands of children have contracted acute flaccid paralysis caused by poliovirus infection. This finding represented a huge increase over the number of cases and resulted in the re-emergence of polio as one of the world’s deadliest infections. In 2009, polio was found endemic to four countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and, in 2008, cases were also detected in 14 other countries. And there is no reason whatsoever why religion opposition by Muslim fundamentalists should be a major factor in the failure of immunisation programmes against polio in Nigeria. O yes! There is no reason at all. We have been repeatedly told that Islam is a progressive religion, and therefore religious leaders should be asked to support polio eradication programmes. All the Imams and other Islamic leaders must make efforts to stop this mess created by Dr. Datti and step up the campaign for polio vaccination in order to highlight the plight of children with polio.

As the inspector-general of police had ordered, vaccinators and other health workers operating in conflict zones should be provided protection so that they are better able to perform their duties to the needy children. The recent ugly incident that happened in Kano should not discourage the vaccinators. The evil men that carried out the disaster must be defeated. The only way to defeat them is not to succumb to their ungodly acts. The overall purpose is to make the children in those areas safer and make sure the virus is not exported to areas where wild polio transmission has been interrupted by vaccination. The like of Dr. Datti should spearhead the campaign this time round. Along with that, the federal government should continue with the interruption of endemic transmission of poliovirus, which has been pursued through a combination of routine immunisation, supplementary immunisation campaigns and surveillance of possible outbreaks. The federal government should also make available more basic health infrastructure that will increase vaccine distribution and delivery.

In all this, the efforts of the Sultan of Sokoto in the war against polio must be commended. Like a true soldier, he has been soldiering across the northern states of the country telling his subjects that , unlike the evil message of Dr. Datti, polio vaccination was not a Western plot to sterilise little girls in the north and reduce the Muslim population. That is what a true, honest and sincere leader should do in times of crisis and doubt. His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto has proved his exemplary leadership qualities. Na gode, Maigida.

Time is fast running out - Editorial

Those in charge of affairs are still carrying on as if everything is alright. The headlines of the newspapers indicate this. A quick sample reveals the thought process of Nigeria’s ruling elite. They include-‘FCT budget: senators query N4bn allocation to first ladies Secretariat  and how about ‘Audit report indict NNPC for unremitted N2.66 trn’. A compilation of absurd headlines from this year’s newspapers alone will fill an entire tome. And we are still only in February.

In spite of the pretence to the contrary, however the good times are slowly coming to an end. Unfortunately those at the helm of affairs do not appear to be very keen to accept the changing realities. They have to be given a wake-up call. For even though they can’t change time, time will change them. Slowly but surely the terms of trade are already changing against us. If we continue in the present way, two or three more generations will subsist in terrible circumstances.

There are already warning signals. We ignore them at great peril. For example, recently Ecobank, a financial services giant predicted that the Nigerian oil and gas industry could face a difficult 2013 as Shale Oil in the United States of America (US) takes an increasing share of the North American market. Ecobank’s estimate is that Nigerian crude oil export to the US could fall by over a quarter this year, from 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2012 to as low as 580,000 bpd in 2013.

In a sane polity, this would have triggered off alarm bells. That we are still talking about the renovation of the Vice-President’s guest house and sending ‘high powered’ delegations to the football fiesta in the Republic of South Africa, portrays an utter lack of a sense of reality. The reality is in the opposite direction. For according to the Ecobank report, crude oil shipments from Nigeria have declined from 75 cargoes in January to a scheduled 59 in March and there is an overhang of 21 – out of 65 February cargoes.

Unite honestly; you do not, as the American bard Bob Dylan famously observed, “need a weatherman to tell you in which way the wind is blowing”. The terms of trade, we must repeat for emphasis is perhaps irreversibly turning against us. It is an unusual as well as a perturbing situation in view of the fact that the aforementioned overhang cargoes contain Nigerian’s premium grades of sweet and light crude which are usually very much in demand.

To unravel the puzzle, let us look at the analyses of the Head Of Research at Ecobank, Rolake Akinkugbe. Akinkugbe explains that refiners in Asia are increasingly becoming capable of handling larger volumes of sour crude oil grades, while Europeans refiners are facing pressure on their margins and seeking lower-priced margins. The two factors involved oil grades, priced as they are at a substantial premium to the sour grades from the Middle East.

According to Akinkugbe, ‘’Nigeria and other oil produces in West Africa had a window of opportunity during the Libya crisis when the country’s (Libya’s) supply was taken off the market.”

The US is still Nigeria’s biggest oil export destination, but the relationship can no longer be taken for granted.

In recent years, she said, producers in West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea have exported around 2mbpd of oil to North America, but this has fallen to around 1mbpd, with the slump in Nigerian export to the US being particularly severe due to the steeper price of its crude.  Having accounted for 12 per cent of US crude import in 2011, Nigerian’s share fell to 6 per cent in 2012.

Nigeria’s oil export to the US,  Ecobank  said, have already slumped to 700,000bpd from the 2012 average of 800,000 bpd, and that could fall as far as 580,000bpd in 2013 as US domestic oil producers add an expected 8000,000bpd of new capacity.

It is incomprehensible why our ruling political elite across the divide are carrying on as if they are impervious to which way the wind is blowing. The bell as it is, is tolling vigorously against our age of indulgence and self-destructiveness. The political elite must take a turn in the right direction.

What has to be done now is obvious. There must be draconian cuts in the crass wastage involved in the machinery of government.  We cannot wait forever for the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye report. In the first place, there was no need to wait for Oronsaye to act in accordance with fiscal rectitude and common sense. This must go hand-in-glove with an overall re-direction of capital.

If we are to survive, the overall thrust of government spending must be redirected from consumption to production. An institution such as the Bank of Industry for example should be properly recapitalised and repositioned to an infrastructure financing bank. Furthermore, there must be a return to combatively competitive fiscal federalism in order to make the Nigerian economy competitive. And of course the monopoly of the central bank over the forex market has to be broken.