|
Swiss “Blackmail” And The Dying NNN Retirees Etc By Ibrahim Ka-Almasih
That African leaders are self-centred and insensitive to the plights of their people is no longer news; at least, now, no African can be taken aback by a reported executive inhumanity to the masses because such callous attitude has since become an “Afritude”.
Nevertheless, when recently I heard the news that the Swiss Government hinged repatriation of Abacha loot on an internationally (specifically World Bank) certified assurance that once repatriated, the loot would not be re-looted but be expended on projects that would have direct positive impact on the increasingly emasculated Nigerian masses, patriotic anger flooded my mind. What a rude indictment of my country’s Government? I reasoned. What the Swiss Government implies is that Nigerian Government officials are not only inconsiderately self-serving, but that even a foreign government such as itself (Swiss) could be more genuinely concerned for the plights of the increasingly deprived Nigerian masses; that the efforts by Nigerian government to get Abacha loot repatriated was not motivated by patriotic concern but by the desire of those in power to loot it once repatriated such that only an international intervention could guarantee Nigerian masses’ benefiting from any repatriated loot. Serious insult indeed! But who gave room for it?
Yes, I was initially very unhappy with this Swiss “blackmail” but when I set aside my blind patriotism and analyzed the matter with an open mind taking into consideration what is happening in Nigeria especially now, I came to the conclusion that the Swiss position might be intended to blackmail and intimidate Nigerian government quite alright but also that Swiss is merely exploiting former’s Achilles’ heel.
This (Nigeria) is a country that, inter-alia, realized so much surplus from the so-called oil wind fall but its medical Doctors, university lecturers etc had to go on long industrial strikes before they were (partially) listened to just because the government officials loot public treasuries to expensively and effectively treat members of their families and send their children school abroad etc. In fact, even Nigerian law enforcement agents had cause to go on strike. Retirement benefits are not paid years after retirement and pensioners are owed many months in arrears and sundry other callous executive deprivations of legitimately earned benefits of law abiding working and retired civil servants who are warned not to steal even leftovers even as Billions of Naira are being stolen by those perceived as governments sacred cows who are exposed and made to face the music only when they part ways with their god-fathers or when vindictively exposed by rival political camp. Indeed, the excruciating deprivations that Nigerian Government unleashes on its innocent citizens are better imagined.
One of the most perplexingly wicked cases is that of the retirees and staff of the (erstwhile?) 100 percent Federal Government owned Kaduna-based New Nigerian News Papers, where hundreds of retirees are in their sixth agonizing years of waiting for their retirement benefits and pensioners are owed 40 months of pension arrears and yet the Federal Government is supposed to be exemplary to the lower levels of governance and private employers of labour.
Perhaps the worst aspect of the New Nigerian crisis is that presently the F.G. has reportedly returned the embattled News Paper Company to its original owners, the Northern states but no one knows who will pay the retirees and other creditors as the FG irresponsibly reneges. Just imagine! Ordinarily it is stupid to ask such question as who will pay the NNN retirees because normally such question does not arise as the answer is obvious for no one is expected to settle retirement benefits but he who (hired and) fired the staff: in this case, the FG. But normality or propriety in Nigeria is no longer a common phenomenon. Things have been turned upside down in this country. Of course, the F.G.’s apologists readily give very ridiculously senseless reasons why the retirees and other creditors have not been paid; they say the NNN was taken over in 1975 with liabilities so it must be returned with liabilities. Their blind sentiment make them ignorant of the fact that while it is normal for a Federal Government to willingly take over a regional company with the liabilities, it amounts to an act of irresponsibility for same to return the company with liabilities especially of 6 years old gratuities and pension arrears owed innocent citizens; and that while contract does not exist between the NNN retirees and the Northern Governors and as such the former can’t sue the later over the unpaid retirement benefits, the former can very easily defeat the FG at any court of law because the contract exists only between the two of them.
This is a very simple logic that the Northern Governors too should know. But they seem to be compromising possibly because some of them want OBJ to save them from Ribadu or make them V.P. to Peter Odili come 2007 and so sacrifice the dying NNN retirees etc by warming to take over the NNN with even the 6 years old retirees’ liabilities in pretext of being ignorant of the simple logic and ideal. As a one-time Secretary Nigeria Union of Journalists NNN chapel, I am aware of the three schools of thought about the cause(s) of the NNN crisis: Social/vindictive, political, and corruption/un-profitability causes-one or some, or all, of which were responsible for the callousness suffered by the NNN retirees.
Social/vindictive cause
This school of thought believes that the problem of the NNN is attributable to geo-ethnic conspiracy triggered by its being perceived to have once been used against the interests of the persons and regions of South-west, and the Middle-Belt when it was, in those days, editorially tailored to counter the pro-South-west Nigerian Tribune, and the pro-Middle-Belt Nigerian Standard news papers. Incidentally, among the prominent South-western ‘victims’ of the NNN editorial policy of yore is the current President of Nigeria, the wonderfully unforgiving septuagenarian, Chief Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo, who believed the paper, at least, supported his being hauled into prison among other alleged acts of unfairness of the paper to him for which reason, upon his release from prison, took the paper to court and that since then the old man has continued to be phobic towards the old staff of the paper and any thing that genuinely represents the paper.
That way, the NNN earned geo-ethnic hatred, which, with the emergence of OBJ as the president, graduated into vengeance; and a perceived northern renegade and traitor, or even a Nigerianized Ghanian mercenary, who ‘incidentally’ was associated with the defunct Chief Obasanjo Presidential Campaign Committee, Dr Umar Faruk Ibrahim, was reciprocally recruited in 1999 as the NNN MD to ease the process of the vindictive agenda in return for a loftier (Northern) Nigerian slot at the OPEC. That all he needed to do was to hurriedly write a book on the Emir of Kano, Alh. Ado Bayero, (and claim he conceptualized the idea long ago) to win enough Northern support through the unsuspecting Emir.
While this school of thought may not be (entirely) correct, the suggestive policy of Faruk and how he was preferentially defended by the Government and its other lap-dogs tend to lend credence to it. He, as the MD of NNN, was very unfriendly to the NUJ, NNN chapel, (of which I was then the Secretary) and the staff in general. He recklessly revoked the last staff promotions by his predecessor even though in most cases the promotions were long over due; and he had to be threatened by legal action to rescind another sadism that the staff must forfeit three months out of their salary arrears. In fact under this (OBJ’s) government the NNN staff unprecedentedly worked for 9 months without salaries (i.e. 6 months in addition to 3 months Faruk inherited from his predecessor) and it was under such terrible condition that the MD from hell employed another sadist way when in January 200 he extra-procedurally retired hundreds of staff without retirement benefits on the pretext of preparing the place for privatization only for him to substitute his own loyalists, all with, at least, tacit approval of the powers that be.
To worsen matters, when the long-awaited “respites” came they nevertheless appeared to have been misappropriated. In fact, at an occasion, funds supposedly released for payments of pensions and gratuities bearing the following particulars: AIE No: BD/25/2002; Ref. No: BD/11890/S.57/xi/T; Amount: One Hundred Million Naira (N100,000,000.00) only; Sub-Head No: 05700200326-Parastatal’s Pension; Approval Pages: 125-7; Addressed to NNN Ltd “for retirees and for settlement of pension only”, was nevertheless diverted by Faruk to other self-serving projects, and when the leadership of the retirees discovered the AIE at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Abuja, it confronted Faruk, who brandished a letter purportedly signed by a Director at the Ministry of Finance, authorizing him to ignore the AIE. Irked by the callous swindle, the NNN retirees leadership petitioned all the relevant authorities and was assured that the matter would be investigated immediately but up till the time Faruk left in 2003 for Vienna, Austria for the lofty rewards, OPEC job, no one investigated him.
In fact, the then Minister for Information, Professor Jerry Gana, had in 2002 commissioned a cover-up project by Faruk, The Gaskiya Graphics, when he showered encomium on Faruk to the chagrin of the hungry and aggrieved retirees particularly when he said they at the Ministry were initially not happy with what Faruk did with the money meant originally for the payment of pensions and gratuities but that when he (Gana) was taken to Gaskiya Graphic and also listened to the accompanying explanation from Faruk, he became convinced that Faruk did the right thing. We were all shocked by this satanic legalization, by a supposed man of God, of sadistic and depriving crime even when the deadly effect on the retirees had been made known to him. All the gestures, hocus-pocus and speech of the self-styled man of God at that occasion were geared towards exonerating Faruk of any blame.
Political cause
According to this school of thought, the FG had realized that the only way to save the dying Lagos based Daily Times and the Kaduna based NNN was to divest itself of these companies. Thus they were slated for privatization and the machinery was set in motion. However, when the political bloc of OBJ/IBB discovered to their dismay that a pro-Atiku was more disposed towards buying the NNN which could then be used against IBB’s political interest, the bloc plotted the discontinuation of the process of privatizing it, by cashing in on the ignorance and popular Northern sentiments, a scam which enjoyed the backing of a couple of pro-IBB/OBJ Northern Governors who, in turn, tried to lure their unsuspecting colleagues under the sentimental guise of saving Sardauna’s legacy. Thus, the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), which was poised to settle all the liabilities, preparatory for the privatization, had to hold back as the retirees die in pathetic penury.
Some developments lend credence to this school of thought. In his early days in the NNN, Faruk used to constantly drum it to our ears that he was appointed as the NNN MD to preside over the imminent privatization of the company as that was the only way to save the dying paper and that every staff should prepare himself for that. At that time, the over flogged news of the impending privatization of NNN and DTN filled the air and it was heard at every nook and cranny of Nigeria, but no one objected to it. In fact it was widely considered as the best solution. But suddenly Faruk started singing a new song and a cheap blackmail of a rumour started doing the rounds that the Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, was scheming to buy the NNN company at a very ridiculously low amount of One Hundred million Naira, or Three Hundred million Naira, or Five Hundred million Naira etc– you were told, according to how the peddlers of the dubious rumour rated your intelligence. The blackmail was further sentimentalized by Sardaunanisation when, suddenly, the OBJ/IBB lap-dogs started their belated insincere campaign that it was a taboo to sell Sardauna’s legacy such as the NNN. Meanwhile Faruk and the few pro-IBB/OBJ Governors were busy junketing from one unsuspecting Northern Governor to another, from one Northern Emir to another and from one Northern personality to another, religiously preaching the new (dubious) gospel to their unsuspecting fellow Northerners with, of course, the tacit support of the highest authority of the FG. Faruk particularly became suggestively very uncooperative and rude to the VP-chaired BPE with a perplexing impunity: suddenly we started hearing that the Northern Governors were earnestly asking for the return of the NNN to them, when already the BPE had painstakingly completed arrangement to pay all the benefits of the long suffering retirees and other creditors. Then suddenly we heard that the FG, which is well known for resisting even popular Northern pressures or demands, had delisted the NNN from privatization on the pretext of being pressurized by the North.
And of recent, it was reported that the FG has finally returned the NNN Company to its original owners, the Northern Governments, due to the pressures from the “North” without prior settlement of the 6 years old retirement benefits and other liabilities. Our very mean president, we learnt, is capitalizing on the desperation of the Northern sector of the Atikuphobic bloc who might readily persuade the Northern Governors to agree to settle all the NNN liabilities to put to rest the retirees nostalgia for the dubiously stigmatized and aborted PBE option regardless of the blackmail. But the scam may back fire, as it is reportedly proving very difficult to lure some of the Northern Governors like Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State who rightly see the idea of shouldering the FG’s contractual obligation to the NNN retirees as irrational. But the desperate Atikuphobic bloc is selling, through its ‘friends’ among the Northern Governors, the idea of paying NNN retirees very meager amount and yet many of the Northern Governors wonder why all this resort to sycophantically carry the FG’s burden, which must then be reduced, leading to unjust short changing of less privileged fellow citizens instead of asking the FG to properly settle the liabilities. Crazily, the unnecessarily and long deprived NNN retirees are expected to continue with the deadly wait till such a time when the Government from hell decides to end this insensitivity.
Corruption and Un-Profitability
This school of thought opines that the F.G. has over the years invested millions of Naira in the NNN but that the paper failed to be self-sustaining due to corruption and un-profitability of the company. Consequently, the OBJ administration became fed up.
This school of thought also sounds reasonable in view of the epidemic corruption in Nigeria; incidentally the second most corrupt in the World. It is true that corruption and non- profitability was one of the causes of the NNN distress. But who are the actual culprits? The FG, the FG and the FG of course!
It is in fact foolish to think that the Gen. Murtala Administration took over the NNN with a profit-making motive. Shortly before its demise in February 1976, the short-lived Military regime of Gen. Murtala forcefully took over the regionalist NNN in its heyday in 1975 from the Northern Governments for the sake of national unity, but the succeeding OBJ Military regime selfishly refused to complete the proper take over process so that the paper would accordingly be under the Federal Ministry of Information. The regime, instead, turned the Paper into its propagandist, answerable only to the Dodan Barracks, which preferred to fund it from the Security Votes etc for firm control and manipulation. Of course successive regimes to date, for the same selfish reason, borrowed a leaf from General OBJ on the status of the NNN. In fact, the FG had always selfishly appointed its loyalists, regardless of their moral or professional competence, to manage the NNN and, as usual with the payer of the piper, interfered with the editorial policy of the then very authoritative paper to the detriment of professionalism, corporateness and, therefore, profitability – all in the name of security priority.
Thus the FG, owner of the NNN, made it propaganda-oriented rather than profit–oriented and only a fool and mischief-maker can blame the old staff for that.
Similarly, it is senseless and dishonest to blame the old staff for the alleged misappropriation of the funds sent by the successive regimes. Those on power always appointed their cronies, and proven apologists as the NNN MDs etc and as such, the FG, once given the propaganda it desired, would overlook whatever misappropriation perpetuated by its stooges at the NNN who always lorded it over the professional and committed staff. In fact, no administration, OBJ’s inclusive, could have probed the management of the NNN because not only would their puppets at the company be indicted but even some of their lap-dogs in Abuja might be found to have partook in the sharing of the “subvention” supposedly released for the NNN. In other words, the name of the NNN has apparently been used to withdraw money actually meant for enriching the lap-dogs of the FG “Working” in the NNN company or Abuja - part of which is what is row ridiculously and dubiously referred to as the total FG’s investment in the NNN.
Conclusion
From which ever angle you look at it, the propaganda-maniac and nepotism-maniac regimes are responsible for the problems of the NNN and the ordinary retirees, who actually suffered under the likely corrupt FGs’ management appointees, should not, again, be denied their hard-earned benefits under which ever guise – non-profitability, a return to original owners or privatization, as that will be “double wahala for dead body”.
So the Swiss Government is paradoxically right to have implied that Nigerian leaders have the tendency to capitalize on a very flimsy accuse to deny the common man benefits of the country’s wealth or even rob him of his legitimately earned benefits so that there will be plethora of money at the center to squander and loot.
Interestingly, the Swiss Government seems to know that the religiosity of Nigerian leaders is, after all, a dubious sententiousness aimed at winning undeserved confidence of the masses to swindle them when in actual facts they (Nigerian leaders) fear and respect the white man such as them (Swiss) more than God Almighty. Indeed, the pretentiously religious Nigerian leaders fear and respect their “non-religious’ white counterparts more then God Almighty.
It does not, for instance, matter to the very born-againishly “religious” Nigerian leaders that the Almighty God is very much aware of their sadistic escapade at the NNN etc and He is totally unhappy about it; on the other hand, if President George Bush of USA were to come to Nigeria in the next one week and, for whatever reason, scheduled to have interactive sessions with Federal Government retirees in Abuja, Kaduna, Lagos and Anambra, the FG will run helter-skelter to settle, within five days or so, all what it owes the NNN retirees etc (something it has godlessly and insensitively refused to do for the past 6 years), so that the “Oyinbo” will not discover the callous ‘Afritude’ being meted out on innocent Nigerian citizens and be unhappy about it. What a shame!! Thus the situation at the NNN and other places justify the Swiss “blackmail” as in all these cases the retirees and pensioners etc are actually suffering excruciating deprivation unleashed on them ironically by their Federal Government under very flimsy guises.
Ka-Almasih is a Kaduna-based Journalist.
|