10 Dec 2008 |
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Aru Gba Aro, Oburu Omenala! - Who would stand up for Nigerians? Daniel Elombah The Punch of What do these two reports have in common? They are Aru that have been allowed to become Omenala. The annoying aspect of the first report is not just that it took the House of Representatives almost ten years to wake up to the anomaly (good morning), or the fact that their Irish courage only came to the fore after Obasanjo left office, but the two reports detailing the abnormalities that now go for the norm in Nigeria, merely confirmed the Igbo truism stated above which when literally translated means; an abomination becomes the tradition after one year- Aru gba aro, oburu Omenala! Yes, an evil if allowed to take root becomes the norm. The idea that a serving president should also be the Minister of Petroleum took root from the time that corruption became an instrument of state policy in Nigeria. I mean the beginning of a period when the problem with Nigeria is not just that officials are corrupt but corruption is official. Nigerians would readily identify that period as the Babangida era. Yes, the evil genius himself became the first self styled President to corner the lucrative Petroleum ministry for himself. Since then, subsequent Heads of State followed his vile example so much that even the present self styled servant leader (some now say Serpent – Leader), President Umaru Yar’ Adua cornered the Ministry for himself until he had to choose between his health (or death) and wealth; the evil became the norm! Section 138 of the 1999 Constitution states: “The President shall not, during his tenure of office, hold any other executive or paid employment in any capacity whatsoever.” Section 147 (2) states, “Any appointment to the office of Minister of the Government of the Federation shall, if the nomination of any person to such office is confirmed by the Senate, be made by the President.” Obasanjo never submitted himself to the Senate for screening as petroleum minister, let alone being confirmed in any form. Moreover, a Combined reading of Section 1 (3) and Section 2 (1) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Act Chapter 320 Laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1990, that makes a provision for “the appointment of The Chairman of the NNPC, who shall be a Minister in the Government the Federation to be known and styled as the Minister of Petroleum Resources” with the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution as stated above will quickly expose the anomalous position of a Nigerian President also assuming the position of a Petroleum Minister. What has been the result? The complete bastardisation and corruption of the oil block allocating process. From the time of Ibrahim Babangida till now; ‘oil block allocation’ and ‘turn around maintenance’ became a part of our common parlance. These are all words that were very strange to the average Nigerian ear before 1986, but Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdusalami Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua have transformed them into a symbol of oil corruption. A process that was a simple part of the corporate activities of the NNPC became an instrument for squandering the commonwealth and created a situation where aides like Emeka Offor under Sani Abacha, and Andy Ubah under Olusegun Obasanjo, were left to their whims, without supervision, became excessively rich and acquired larger than life powers which they used to dispense political and economic patronage. Compare this abnormality with the second anomaly: During Obasanjo first term, some elected AD and PDP Senators simply decamped from their party and joined the ruling party. Knowledgeable Nigerians pointed out the danger of repeating the cross-carpeting that contributed to the failure of the First Republic of the Sixties, a malfeasance that our presidential constitution expressly set out to legislate against. Now, because the actions was not strongly put down, several wholesale decamping followed, culminating in the mother of all decamping – that of Atiku Abubakar, Bola Tinubu et al to the AC, Orji Uzor Kalu to the PPA among others to contest the 2007 elections while remaining in their political posts won under a different political platform. Now the chickens have come home to roost. The present aggressive wooing of the remaining ANPP governors has resulted in the massive haemorrhage of the only viable opposition party in Nigeria. Nigeria is now to all intents and purposes a one party state, with all the dangers it portends to your freedom and mine. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is very clear on decamping. If you decamp, you lose the seat of the party that brought you to office. The Constitution allows decamping only where there is a faction in the party, but there is no faction in the ANPP, nor was there any serious fragmentation in the previous AD and PDP in the earlier cross-carpeting of 2001 to 2007. The critical question is; why does Nigeria allow such flagrant bastardisation of the clear provisions of the constitution to go unchallenged? Why do we watch helplessly as these charlatans sow the seeds of destruction of the Nigerian State? Why have been so cowed that we have lost our voice, the capacity to protest? What we are witnessing are actually the symptoms of a state in serious meltdown! Who will speak out against these evils, lest they become the norm? To quote the oft repeated phrase of Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." The crisis of our collective existence as a nation is that all the “good men” that used to speak out for us are dead or dying out. One remembers the indefatigable Tai Solarin, Anthony Enahoro, Wole Soyinka, and Gani Fawehinmi. These are all men that struck out their neck and got punished for it. Nigeria is again in dire need of such men. Where are our lawyers, academics, activists and social critics? Where are the ASUU, NLC, NBA, Ohaneze and Afenifere? Where are the men and women that made all the difference under IBB and Abacha? It is our collective failure to stand up to be counted that has made most us aliens in a strange land. Must we condemn our children to the same fate? We have mortgaged our own future; must we also mortgage the future of our children? Does it matter to no one that the Chinese, the Saudis and the Abu Dhabi’s are busy buying up Africa and Europe? Our generation are able to fly to and find our abode in Europe and America, the Chinese and the Arabs might not be so hospitable to our offspring! Now is the time to say; enough is enough! Daniel Elombah
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