senior_fyneface@yahoo.com

 

 

When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as a candidate kicked-off his presidential campaign in 1999, he had a slogan that said “The Leader Nigerians can trust” but as he rounds –off his stay in office, the trust engraced on him by Nigerians has completely gone “blind”.

 

Even in the area of self image, the president and the people do not seem to agree any longer on whether he was the messiah expected to deliver his people from the bondage of corruption and fiscal indiscipline to the promise land of frugal use of available resources to better the lives of the citizenry.

 

Unknown to the Nigerian populace is the serious allegation that the nation at the rate it is going is as good as being broke because all the money which was commendably saved by the Obasanjo administration has been committed to the plethora of last minute white elephant long term project contracts being rolled out on daily basis by this government that has just few months to quit.

 

More pathetic is the revelation that the presidency has decided to increase the monthly allocation to be shared between the three tiers of government to over N700 billion representing over 200 percent increase from what they use to receive and this takes effect from August.

 

The question is: Is there a deliberate attempt to empty the federation account? If the amount of money speculated is shared among the three tiers of government, most governments would get between two and three times what they normally receive as monthly allocation and what guarantee do we have that these selfish political office holders would judiciously use the money to better the lives of their people.

 

Why is it now that elections are around the corner that the president ordered the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission to triple what the federal, states and local governments receive monthly?

 

Imagine states particularly those in the Niger Delta region getting about N30 billion as monthly allocations between August and May 2007. The news is not supposed to be a bad one but knowing that the people who currently occupy such offices does not, rather, never had the interest of the masses as their priority..

 

What do you think is going to happen to the money when most local government chairmen and governors know that obviously they would not continue in office having served out their two tenures? And if this spending spree continues for the remaining months that this administration has to stay in office, then by the time they will be handing over to another regime (if they would), the nation’s coffers must have been emptied.

 

This is a very serious matter that is unknown to the “real Nigerians” because it looks as if the present government, as it failed to secure its tenure elongation, is bent on spending everything it made as saving to punish the incoming government. If the new government comes into office without resources to function properly, the situation can create destabilizing influence in the system.

 

It was earlier alleged that President Olusegun Obasanjo and his cronies smartly edged out Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the finance minister because she constituted an impediment to the blowing of whatever money the nation has managed to save both in the foreign reserve and the escrow oil windfall accounts.

 

This fact was an allegation as at the time the former finance minister was removed as the and subsequently dropped as the head of the economic team, but today it has become a glaring truth as confirmed by recent government pronouncements on poorly conceived long-term projects and contract awards by a government that winding-up its stay in office.

 

The Nigerian people need to shout out now if not, from all indications this is just the beginning of the spending spree. The senators had earlier warned of such dangerous development. The clear and well- minded economists both at home and abroad have also warned. Yet the presidency and its team are not deterred in the spending spree they have embarked upon.

 

Look at the proposed tower of Babel- the Abuja Tower project; the railway line construction project; the integrated Power Holding gas turbine project in the six Niger Delta states; and so and so on. How can a government that has just few months to go be initiating development projects that will take three to four years to actualize?

 

This was an administration that spited Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar’s government on the rational behind the award of scores of contracts before the handover in 1999. Now it is doing exactly the same thing even on a far bigger scale in terms of state resources being committed.

 

The annoying aspect of the spending spree is that most of the contracts were not well thought out. Just the other day, the minister of transport could not even provide definite answers to questions from newsmen on the railway project whether the lines would be dual carriage or single lane.

 

Meanwhile, the blindly- trusted Obasanjo’s company, Transcorp, despite the controversies that have trailed it since the deceptive take-over of the state-owned NITEL, has gone ahead with its plans to invest over $33 billion in both existing and utopian sectors of the economy.  

 

This investment plan, though not clearly stating where the money is going to come from, against the background that just few Nigerians in the gang including the blindly -trusted boss obviously intend to use money from the nation’s coffer to pursue this private agenda.

 

Despite the fact that as I write this article, Transcorp has no two kobo coins to rub each other, its bullish business investment plan in the oil and gas sector is valued at $13 billion. The telecom and IT sector takes a second place with investment worth $8 billion, followed by agriculture, which will attract about $7 billion. Trade, occupies the fourth position in Transcorp plan with an investment portfolio of $4.5 billion, while the hospitality sector takes the last position with $500 million.

 

How can a constriction that has battled for over one month to raise the $500 million initial payment for the buy-over of NITEL be pushing ahead an aggressive programme that would entail the spending of over $33 billion?

 

Obviously they plan to borrow money from our savings in the foreign reserve or from the windfall account which has remained in dedicated escrows yielding interests and which nobody has asked any questions about

 

The blindly –trusted Transcorp gang has been ravaging the nation’s coffer. They got two oil blocks without following due process. They did not participate in the open bid organized for the oil blocks. Up till now, no license fee for the oil blocks has been paid but they are going ahead with plans to bring in Chinese oil operators to develop the lucrative acreage.

 

The NITEL sale-purchase agreement controversy is still hanging. The corporation was fingered in the policy twist that excluded the Port Harcourt Refinery from going to Shell, the preferred bidder, simply because they are waiting to acquire the plant. Already, it has bought Nicon Hilton and its waiting to grab the National Clearing and Forwarding Company Limited (NACFA) for itself.

 

From the way the President is carrying on by committing the incoming government to projects that they cannot reverse without incurring financial loose to the nation, his actions will cause havoc a have a destabilizing effect on the system especially now that we are trying to nurture the first handover ever from one democratically elected government to another. #