By John Abiola-Bada
These are interesting times for Nigeria. It is a time in which people revel in propaganda and falsehood. As we make steady progress to the election year of 2015, there will be more mudslinging, character assassination and all kinds of propaganda to score cheap political goals or to gain some advantage even if short term.
It is trite to say that the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy is petroleum and that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), being the government agency that manages the nation’ oil resources will constantly be under public scrutiny.
There is nothing wrong in keeping an eye on public agencies. It puts those agencies and public officers on their toes, thus making them to discharge their duties transparently. However, it becomes destructive when someone deliberately engages in tale of lies to pull certain individuals down and run down public institutions. Ever since the former governor of the Central Bank and now Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, made the wild allegation of missing money in NNPC account, some individuals have decided not to let the matter rest, long after it has been established that no money was missing. Timi Frank’s article in Leadership newspaper of Tuesday, September 9 is the latest of such diatribes by paid writers who pose as commentators. He did not offer any fresh insight. Of course there is no fresh insight to offer because the matter has long been resolved by Senate in favour of the NNPC.
Timi Frank wrote: “Nigerians must not forget so soon that the whereabouts of $20billion of the nation’s oil revenue is still shrouded in mystery. The former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and now Emir of Kano, Mallam Muhammadu Sanusi II, had shocked the world with incontrovertible evidence that $49.8billion of crude sales was yet to be remitted into the Federation Account by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Even though the allegation was contained in a confidential letter to President Goodluck Jonathan by Sanusi, no action was taken until the matter became public knowledge through the press, about three months after the president got the letter.
“The nation was appalled. The uproar it generated had sent the relevant machinery of government into over-drive. The Senate waded in and referred the matter to its Committee on Finance for “thorough investigation”. Public and private hearings were conducted. Countless reconciliation meetings were held by the CBN, NNPC, Ministry of Finance (MoF), Ministry of Petroleum Resources (MoPR), Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) and the auditor-general of the federation”. On the above score, Timi Frank had revealed himself as one who engages in cheap blackmail, one who is incapable of intellectual rigour before he puts pen to paper. As recent as September 9, 2014, Timi Frank is still obsessed with N49.8 billion, a figure which even Sanusi felt so embarrassed that he had to change it and kept changing figures in a way that surprised not only the discerning Nigerian public but even the Senate committee that was set up to look into the matter. It is actually shameful that somebody who calls himself a columnist will go this low. How much did his masters pay him that he would not border about his integrity on an issue that is public knowledge? It is necessary to do a flash-back to put the issue in proper context. It was just a couple of months ago, specifically in July that Senate deliberated on the report of its finance committee that investigated the allegation of missing funds against the NNPC by Sanusi. The Senate resolved that no money was missing after painstakingly deliberating on the 73-page report of its finance committee. The committee headed by Senator Ahmed Makarfi did a very thorough job for which it was applauded by the entire Senate.
Sanusi’s allegation was contained in a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan in September last year but the allegation became an issue only when the letter was leaked to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the press two months later. Initially, Sanusi had alleged that the NNPC had failed to remit $49.8 billion to the federation account over a 19-month period. According to him, between January 2012 and July 2013, NNPC lifted $65 billion worth of crude oil and only remitted $15 billion into the federation account. This implied that about $50 billion was missing from the federation account.
