Put Back the Sword: Our Father is Abraham

In the Shakespearean masterpiece, Julius Caesar, the Plebeians, the poor people were used as the door mat of the great power play. When the conspirators led by Brutus and Caius Cassius stabbed Caesar at the capitol and gave the reasons for their actions, accusing Emperor Caesar of inordinate ambitions, the plebeians shouted, good for him and they gave their full support to the conspirators. When Mark Anthony, the true friend of Caesar came to address the plebeians at the permission of the leaders of the coup, in no time he swayed the emotions of the people against the conspirators with his powerful speech of “I have come to bury Caesar not to praise him” fame. 

In the Christian and Jewish world over, this week is considered the holiest of the weeks of the year. This is the week the Jews celebrate their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, this is Passover Week. And since last Sunday 24^th March 2013, Christians started the Holy Week, holy because it is the week of the Lord’s passion and death that gave freedom from slavery to sin and death. During this week, one of the high points of the activities is the capturing of Jesus Christ from Gethsemane by the detachment of the guards, who were fully armed to arrest a defenseless man. Jesus said to them, “Am I a brigand that you come with clubs and swords to arrest me?” (Mark 14:48). It was a violent attack on a defenseless man who meant no harm. His only crime was that the Jewish leaders could not tolerate his form of teaching. Their arguments were simply borne out of fear of losing what they thought was God’s treasure put in their care, the leadership of the people and principles of their father as led down by Moses. They had cogent reasons backed by the laws of their religion. And the verdict was simple, he must die! For the High Priest, Scribes and Pharisees to succeed, they had to win the support of the crowd. Even those who had cheered Jesus on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem just few days back, were bought over with the accusation of the leaders “This man said he will destroy this Temple which took our fathers 46 years to build, he will change the laws of Moses and he claims to be God”. For the ordinary unschooled follower of the Jewish religion, these were weighty accusations, tantamount to blasphemy. So he must die. So the song of “Hosanna to the Son of David changed to Crucify Him”. Crowd manipulation! Yes, crowd manipulation is a dangerous thing. When people leave their will and faith in the hands of dubious people, that nation is in trouble.  

It has become very difficult for the adherents of the two great religions in the world today to relate and live in peace because many unholy things have been brought into the practice of religion. Religion has been taken over by mercantile, political and leadership interests and the followers are manipulated to further these interests in favour of the leader. The violence that has enveloped the greater part of Northern Nigeria today is nothing more than crowd manipulation and control of the mind of man. It is foolhardy for one to think that they are fighting for the cause of God by destroying properties and human lives. Telephone masts, schools, police stations, markets, business places, banks and anything that catches their fancy goes up in flames. This cannot be in the name of God. This made the Catholic Bishops and other religious leaders, both Christians and non Christian to say that this fight can be anything but religious. But imagine that it is religious, which kind of god can tolerate this? It is encouraged that we allow our good religious values to rob on our daily lives including politics but it is wrong to use religion to feather political nests. When you mix religion with politics then you are working against the will of God.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam trace their religions to the root of Abraham. They are called Abrahamic religions. So can we call this a fight between brothers? Brother killing brother? The first account of human killing as contained in the holy books is that of Cain killing Abel and the reaction of God to that act was very disastrous to the perpetrator. Your brother’s blood cries from the ground to me and I have heard his plea. When Jesus was being rough handled by the mob, Peter out of religious duty also pulled the sword, aimed it at the ear of Malchus, a servant of the High Priest and sliced it off in the name of religion. Jesus the master rebuked him, “put back the sword into its scabbard” (Matthew 26: 52). Violence is not a way of religion. God cannot be defended since he can defend himself. Jesus who is also known in Islamic religion as Prophet Isa, rebuking Peter against violence said “Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26: 53). In the same manner Jesus will say to “His Excellency”, Governor Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this kind. If my kingdom was of this kind, my servants would have fought to stop me from being brought before you” (John 18:36). If Jesus Christ, (the Prophet Isa) says that the kingdom of God is not of this kind, which other kingdom are we fighting for? 

Nigeria has lost human beings, houses, valuable properties and resources because of the interest of the few people who manipulate the rest of us. How come suddenly everything in Nigeria is judged by religion? Is it for the interest of religion?  Where is God in all these? I cannot find God in any of these. What is religion without God? The person who practices religion without God is a dangerous person. There are many dangerous persons in Nigeria today because many practice and preach religion without God. All they do is the crowd manipulation. That is the reason everything in Nigeria is interpreted with religious coloration. So we hear sayings like, “a Muslim has been ruling, so it is our turn”. A Christian has been ruling, so we are next.” Same evil men, when the religious sentiment does not fly, they toss the tribal and regional coin. All is with the desire to control and manipulate the people. The Emir of Kano was attacked and he lost his aides and some other persons. Where is the religious dimension of going to a motor park and blow up a bus load of travelers and killing and maiming? What is the religious dimension in blowing up the United Nations’ building in Abuja and killing and maiming both adherents of both religions?

Some Christians and their leaders are agitating that Christians should return fire for fire. For every Christian killed an adherent of Islam should die. Some call for retaliation in the guise of self defense. Recently Madgi Allam, a prominent Italian journalist who converted from Islam to Christianity and was baptized by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in March 2008 left the Catholic Church saying that Catholic leaders have not been strong enough in their opposition to Islam. His anger was that Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council of Interreligious Dialogue in the Vatican said that terrorist violence is a betrayal of the true Islamic faith. For Madgi Allam, Islamic extremism and terrorism are the mature fruit of that religious tradition and Catholicism is not strong enough to counter the “intrinsically violent ideology” of Islam. There are various sets of Islam as there are many denominations of Christianity. Some are moderate and accommodating while others do not tolerate others. The intolerant versions of both religions are the ones that mix other intentions with the practice of religion. Islam is said to be a religion of peace and Christ is the Prince of Peace. There is no teaching of violence in the real ideology of these Abrahamic religions. So where did we get it wrong? While we are searching for the answers, I will only repeat what Jesus said to Peter “Put your sword back into the scabbard for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword” and moreover, Abraham is our father.

Rev. Fr. Ojaje Idoko is Director of Pastoral Affairs Department in the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, Abuja     

N10.8 trillion 2012 revenues: Where is the evidence?

In this exclusive report, Economic Confidential reveals that even as it has become apparent that Nigeria may not meet any of the key points in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Debt Management Office (DMO) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) crowd out the private sector from the debt market, a large chunk of money accruing to the Federation Account is spent without consideration for value.

Despite massive unemployment, high rate of maternal mortality, terrible state of the roads, epileptic power supply and all the other hallmarks of backwardness apparent in the Nigerian polity, a cool sum of N10.8 trillion was shared among the three tiers of the Nigerian government in 2012.

This was despite the yawning loopholes in the revenue sources of government through which knowledgeable sources insist, at least another N4 trillion escaped into private pockets without getting into the federation account.

An extensive and exhaustive research by the Economic Confidential revealed that the N10 trillion was disbursed from the federation account at the monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meetings statutorily chaired by the Minister of State for Finance although the Constitution vested this sharing responsibility in the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC). Part of the allocations was also disbursed extraordinarily by the National Economic Council (NEC) at its quarterly meetings chaired statutorily by the Vice President of he Republic.

Of this amount, N8 trillion came from two sub-heads of statutory allocation and value added tax (VAT). In the first part of the exclusive research published by the Economic Confidential magazine earlier in the month through the on-line edition, it was disclosed that from the N8 trillion, Akwa Ibom State got the highest share of N217bn followed by Rivers which received N177bn and Lagos N168bn in the 12 months of 2012.

On the other end of the table, Ebonyi State, Gombe State and Nassarawa State emerged the poorest states with total allocations of N45bn, N48bn and N49bn respectively.

Additionally, both the Debt Management Office (DMO) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) are regularly in the market deploying both money market and capital market instruments to raise funds. Statistics show that public domestic debts amounted to over N6.153 trillion as at mid December 2012.

In as the fresh table just compiled, other subheads like NNPC refund, foreign excess crude account, naira excess crude account, budget augmentation and others were included thus amounting to a total of N10.8 trillion.

UK Prime Minister, David Cameron recently challenged the Nigerian Government to account for $100 billion oil money that accrued to Nigeria in 2012 from crude oil sales alone.

According to Mr Cameron, “last year Nigerian oil exports were worth almost $100 billion, more than total net aid to the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Put simply, unleashing the natural resources in these countries dwarfs anything aid can achieve – and transparency is critical to that.”

Speaking at G8 Economic Summit in Davos, David Cameron said, “a few years back a transparency initiative exposed a huge black hole in Nigeria’s finances – an $800 million discrepancy between companies’ payments and government’s receipts for oil. This is leading to new regulation of Nigeria’s oil sector – so the richness of the earth can actually enrich the people of that country. And the potential is staggering.

“So we’re going to push for more transparency on who owns companies, on who’s buying up land and for what purpose, on how governments spend their money, on how gas, oil and mining companies operate, on who is hiding stolen assets and how we recover and return them.”

Another report from its Committee on Finance just adopted by the House of Representatives documented how parastatals and agencies illegally withheld N8.06 trillion realised by 60 bodies between 2009 and 2011.

The report revealed that the agencies, the collected N9.3trn as revenues in the period under review but only remitted N174.7bn to the government coffers.

The list include, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC; Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA; Nigerian Port Authority, NPA; Federal Mortgage Bank, FMBN; the Federal Capital Territory, FCT; Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, FAAN; Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC; and Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC.

Others are West African Examination Council, WAEC; National Sports Commission, NSC; Standards Organization of Nigeria, SON; Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC; Federal Housing Authority, FHA; Nigeria Shippers Council, NSC; Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC; Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA; Industrial Training Fund, ITF; Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC; Bank of Industry, BoI; and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB.

Only NNPC and its subsidiaries generated N6.132trn between 2009 and 2011 as internally generated revenue (IGR), and remitted no part of it to the Federal government and this even excluded what was generated from the sales of crude oil and gas.

Another investigation by a national daily, Punch also alleged that over N5 trillion of government funds have been stolen through fraud, embezzlement and theft since President Jonathan assumed office on May 6, 2010.

The amount according to the paper is the summation of government funds said to have been stolen, according to the Nuhu Ribadu-led Petroleum Task Force report; the Minister of Trade and Investment’s report on stolen crude; the House of Representatives fuel subsidy report and investigations into the ecological fund, SIM card registration and frequency band spectrum sale.

The investigation revealed the fraudulent activities carried out on a large scale in some ministries. The Ribadu report on the oil and gas sector for instance, put daily crude oil theft at a high 250,000 barrels daily at a cost of $6.3bn (N1.2trn) a year. This puts the total amount lost through oil theft in the two years of Jonathan’s government at over $12.6bn (N2trn).

Another fraud scheme was discovered in July 2012 when the House of Representatives Committee on Environment discovered a tree seedling fraud worth N2bn awarded by the Ecological Fund office.

Similarly, in the telecommunications sector, the 450MHz frequency, which was valued at over $50m, was allegedly sold for less than $6m (a difference of $44m or N6.9bn) by the Nigeria Communications Commission. In the same sector, the reps, earlier this year, commenced investigations into the N6.1bn SIM card registration project embarked upon by the NCC in 2011.