Ribadu's Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

By

Moses K. Gadol Gimbiya

mosesgadol@hotmail.com

It is widely known that great deal of statistics is not true. Steven Wright said, “47.3 percent of statistics are made up on the spot”. Apart from the source, analysts subject data to scrutiny before accepting them. And indeed when such information comes from politicians or politically aligned sources; such information is best ignored for the reason that often times the information is subjective or biased. But when such data comes from a Nigerian official in a country that has no accurate records on anything including things as ordinary as its population, barrels of oil produced, sold, stolen or number of houses, vehicles or even length of its motorable roads, ignoring the data is the most decent thing, except if one is working in cohorts with these officials, which is commonplace.

It is therefore appalling seeing how the media, both local and international, has latched on to the glut of doubtful figures churned out in recent times by the garrulous chairman of the Economic Crimes Commission in Nigeria, Nuhu Ribadu as if its some form of dictat. In his most recent declaration (Leadership 17th October 2006), Ribadu claimed that the sum of $500bn(£380bn) had been stolen in the country from independence, a period of fourty six years. Ribadu maintained additionally that he had recovered $5bn, since his appointment in 2003. Sadly in spite of its veiled reservations, the Guardian, one of the nation’s respected dailies carried an editorial on the question on Monday the 30th of October 2006, thus conferring this ridiculous assertion some modicum of credibility.

A careful review and analysis of these statistics will show that these claims are entirely hoax and sheer fabrication. Any careful observer can easily discover that, neither the total figures, the arithmetic nor the sources of these funds alleged by Ribadu to have been stolen from the country could stand any scrutiny.

First, there appears no consistency in the data bandied around by the EFCC and Ribadu. His figures keep changing, as different sums are dished out at different times. Even though his latest stolen amount was $500bn, last year the International media, most particularly the London Telegraph quoted him as saying, Nigeria’s stolen money was $400bn. And only on August 14th 2006, the Independent of London reported that Ribadu had vowed to name and shame those who stole Nigeria’s £212bn. In the same fashion, one of Ribadu’s lieutenants, his Chief of Staff Dapo Olorunyomi was reported in the BusinessDay (Monday, 18th September 2006) during an address on behalf of Ribadu at the University of Ilorin Alumni (Lagos chapter) claiming that, the actual amount stolen by Nigerian leaders was $20trillion. He was also quoted as saying the figures were from United Nations Development Programme.

Interestingly, quite apart from the discrepancies in the figures, the sources of Ribadu’s information are also as disparate. While on some occasions, he claims to have got the figures from the United Nations Development Programme, on other occasions he also says the figures are from the Nigerian Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance. This much he told BBC’s Network Africa of Friday 27th October 2006, when he was specifically asked on how he came about these figures he is throwing around, by the programme anchor Komla Dumor. During one of the recent outings in Abuja, Ribadu alleged furthermore that these amounts are the total of the development assistance granted Nigeria over the years by foreign donors. On other occasions, Ribadu declares these amounts are the total of the monies the country has generated from the sale of crude oil since its discovery in Nigeria.

Clearly in all these circumstances, it will be observed that Nuhu Ribadu is not sure of the actual amount he claims stolen or the source of these funds.

Apart from the discrepancies and the doubtful sources of his figures, it is unlikely such amounts of money were ever available to Nigeria in all its chequered history since independence in 1960. All the country had earned from the sale of crude oil, which is the major source of official revenue, could not have reached $500billion since its discovery. During the best of times, the country had on the average earned about $10billion annually, except in the last six years, when the figures have been excessively higher due largely to the high crude oil prices globally.

Even though oil was discovered in Nigeria in 1958 with an initial production of only 5100bpd, significant earnings from oil only started coming after the civil war. This was boosted by Nigeria’s cooption into OPEC in 1971, and the Arab-Israeli war of the early seventies that yielded substantial oil revenues for all OPEC member countries. Even if it were assumed that, Nigeria had earned $10billion dollars for fourty years, this would approximately bring the total figure to $400billion. And that is unquestionably a very generous assumption. Therefore it is hard to understand how Nuhu Ribadu’s came about his figure of $500billion.

Besides, it is also unimaginable that donor agencies would have granted $500billion to Nigeria alone in the last fourty six years. Indeed such massive funds never came to the whole of Africa in the last four decades in form of assistance, let alone Nigeria. Infact records easily available on foreign inflow of funds to sub-Saharan Africa relate mainly to loans. According to the German Magazine Spiegel International (4th July 2005), Africa south of the Sahara received “a total of $298billion as loans between 1970 and 2002, and in the same period of time, they paid back $268billion and accumulated after interest, a mountain of debt amounting to $290billion”. And indeed the proportion of that amount which came to Nigeria is common knowledge. According to records, Nigeria took loans of $5billion initially in the late seventies, paid back $17billion in interest service, and still had accumulated $32billion outstanding as at 2005, which it bought back at $18billion this year.

The sources of Ribadu’s figures are puzzling. Could the Western world be giving Nigeria more in aid than what it was earning from oil and her other revenue sources, including loans from multilateral institutions? It is also preposterous for any sensible man to claim that all the money earned in Nigeria was stolen. That cannot appeal to reason, as it assumes that no development took place in the country. One would ask, as to how all the social infrastructure i.e. the schools, hospitals; the physical infrastructure i.e. the bridges, airports, roads, dams, power stations, refineries were built. One would also ask as to how Nigeria funded the three-year civil war, and is currently funding its massive federal bureaucracy, 36 states, 779 local governments and the new federal capital, Abuja. Certainly if all Nigeria’s earnings were being stolen as alleged by Ribadu, there would not have been a functioning Army, Police, Customs and other institutions of state! Besides all these, the arithmetic of Nigeria expenditure pattern would not support Ribadu’s scandalous contentions. It is a well-known fact that each year, throughout all the three tiers of government, eighty percent of budgeted sums go to recurrent expenditure. Federal budgets have always averaged $6billion, out of which over $4billion goes to payment of salaries and overheads. The federal government’s share from the total national income is about 45%. At the states and local governments levels, the proportion of recurrent expenditure is even higher. How could one support the blind theft as claimed by Ribadu? Since his emergence as chairman of this ubiquitous organisation, after the elections in 2003, Nuhu Ribadu has been noted for his blustering, making unguarded unqualified statements, regarding Nigerian institutions and prominent citizens. Instances where he has made statements that are entirely value judgements that can only be taken as political are legion. They range from the farcical to the ludicrous. For instance, Ribadu has always excoriated the Nigerian judiciary and the police as accessories to crime, even though these two institutions of law and enforcement have been known to be the foremost in Africa. The Nigerian judiciary is the foremost in Africa, having performed creditably in many countries like Malawi, Gambia, and the World Court. The Nigerian police too, has performed well in assignments in many parts of the world such as Lebanon, Serbia, Angola, Congo, and Burundi and excelled over their colleagues from many other parts of the world. How then could entire servicemen in these institutions of state be condemned as corrupt, or complicit in subverting law and order and the very systems they have offered to serve? Even more outrageous are Ribadu’s allegations that all past Nigerian leaders from 1960 have enriched themselves. It had been reported that the first Prime Minister (1960-1966), Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, had only twenty-five pounds in his account at the time of his assassination in 1966 (Daily Trust, quoting Elder Statesman Alhaji Isyaku Ibrahim, 30th May 2006). None of the other legendary leaders of the first republic like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Chief Awolowo had been associated with primitive accumulation of wealth. Subsequent leaders, such as Gen. Yakubu Gowon, Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who are all around today live as pensioners, and have not been known to have big farms, visible huge investments nor children flying around in jets and flashy cars purchased with billions of dollars.

Nuhu Ribadu’s main target of attack has been Gen Ibrahim Babangida. He recently claimed audaciously that, the former head of state introduced 419 (economic crimes such as fraud and scam) in Nigeria (Nigerian Tribune 25th August 2006). This is also a serious allegation of political nature, which has no basis in fact or logic. The economic programmes of the mid eighties under Gen Babangida was mid-wifed by a cream of Nigerian bureaucrats and academics led by the late Prof. Tunji Aboyade, with others like Dr Kalu Idika Kalu, Dr Chu P. Okongwu, Chief Olu Falae and Prof Jubril Aminu etc, all men of great repute. The earnest attempt they made in restructuring the economy to stimulate investment inflow, private enterprise, market economics and efficiency cannot be misinterpreted as deliberate fraud, even though they did not quite succeed in meeting set national objectives.

Still targeting past leadership, Ribadu claimed also that late Gen. Sani Abatcha was the foremost African leader in corruption, whose record for looting had appeared in the Guinness Book of Records, ahead of Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire. In actual fact, there has been no evidence yet of conviction or ruling of the former leader, his family or siblings anywhere to corroborate these claims, and clearly no mention of Gen. Abatcha is made in the Guinness Book of Records! The most prominent statement of political nature coming from Nuhu Ribadu is his pre-emptive blanket clearance of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, his master and benefactor. In various fora and interviews in the Nigerian media both electronic and print, Ribadu has been blurting out without any hesitation that Obasanjo is an angel, and that he has investigated and found him clean. But this last position goes against the clear facts known to all Nigerians. Obasanjo has run the most opaque government in the history of Nigerian, doubling his duties as Head of State with that of Oil Minister, with access to and records of oil incomes and expenditure completely concealed. Moreover none of the annual national budgets in the last seven years have been implemented transparently.

It is amusing that Nuhu Ribadu, as a law enforcement officer, has not seen as amounting to corruption or abuse of office the fundraising ceremony for the $50million presidential library organised by the President, to which oil contractors generously contributed and where government officials (governors and board chairmen), drew directly from the treasury to donate. Chief Obasanjo, who according to Nasir Rufai, the Federal Capital Minister had only twenty-five thousand Naira (four hundred dollars) in his account in 1999, the year he was voted into office is now the proud owner of a booming poultry farm that turns in profits of $250,000 monthly, according to Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode. Variously, during his current tenure, Obasanjo established a university in his village called Bells University, set up a venture outfit called Obasanjo Holdings, which bought into Transcorp with hundreds of millions worth of shares. Transcorp is the new company created by Chief Obasanjo and his business associates, which has so far bought over from the government headed by Chief Obasanjo, Nicon Hilton Abuja, Nigeria’s foremost hotel, Nitel, the national telephone conglomerate and four lucrative oil blocks. The acquisitions are still going on. Ribadu says that as a policeman and lawyer, he has investigated all these transactions and feels these activities are honest, angelic and in the interest of the nation.

The Economic Crimes commission was created on the promptings of the International community, in response to Chief Obasanjo’s constant appeals to foreigners’ to take advantage of investment opportunities in Nigeria. One of the requirements for stimulating foreign investment is a strong, speedy and transparent regulatory environment where transactional disputes could easily be settled. With a stigma of dictatorship and arbitrariness, Nigeria needed to take some important steps to convince the world, that its affairs would not be business as usual. Thus, the National Assembly in good faith in the euphoric atmosphere following the 2003 elections approved the act setting up the EFCC. As is usual in Nigeria, this noble initiative was snatched by interest groups afterwards for deployment to partisan and occasionally pecuniary objectives.

Nuhu Ribadu a little known officer in the ranks of the police establishment was sponsored to occupy the position of Chairman by Chief Obasanjo’s business front men, Aliko Dangote and late Waziri Kyari Mohammed who has sadly died in the Bellveiw air crash last year. The relationship between the three is a long one. Nuhu Ribadu had always been Mohammed’s sidekick having graduated together from Ahmadu Bello University in 1983. Mohammed who was well placed strategically in the ruling PDP was Dangote’s brother in law having married Dangote’s sister. When he lived, in addition to many functions, Mohammed had run a quasi-official enforcement organisation, called “Trade Malpractices Committee” whose sole aim was to gain total control over the commodities business in Nigeria. Its membership was drawn from the Customs and the EFCC and included Nasir el-Rufai. The committee had succeeded in harassing, frustrating and deporting commodity traders and seizing many containers of goods giving Aliko Dangote, Obasanjo’s business ally, sole monopoly over the importation and marketing of cement, sugar, salt, spaghetti, and many other essential commodities.

As a consequence, in Nigeria today, the rise or fall in the price of all these major commodities is solely in the hands of this monopoly. Even though Nuhu Ribadu had claimed in several newspaper interviews over the years that Kanu Agabi, the former Justice Minister, sponsored his appointment the public had been aware of those truly behind his meteoric rise to national stardom.

From the onset Nuhu Ribadu had appeared overzealous and overwhelmed by his sudden luck and good fortunes. As an Assistant Police Commissioner, he has been propelled to a board, which had as members, an AIG of the Nigerian Police, a Deputy Governor of the CBN and several other senior officers from the Presidency. As Chairman of the EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu also belonged to the Presidents Economic Management Team. This all-powerful team was responsible for the policies, actions, and sanctions (political and economic) of the Obasanjo government including the botched third term agenda.

It is in this light that Nigerians and the International community could understand Ribadu’s actions and utterances. He has been portraying the image of a man solely positioned to promote and sale Chief Obasanjo and his teams actions as noble and unquestionable, and those of all other Nigerians as dubious and worthless. This, Ribadu does regardless of facts, evidences and history. That is why much of Ribadu’s activities appear partisan and propagandist most of the time; at most other times, self-promotional, aimed at convincing the perplexed public on his worthiness and sincerity on the EFCC beat. The public up till now has not stopped questioning Ribadu’s motives, methods and powers, three years into his appointment.

After taking a hard look at the unseemly operations of the Economic Crimes Commission, Ribadu and his actions, Professor C. S. Momoh, Professor of Psychology, former Dean of Arts, University of Lagos and Director of World Association of Religious and Ethnic Tolerance (WARETO) made the following observation: “Well, the EFCC is a personification of the young man who is the chairman. With all due respect to him, I think he is too young in age, he is too inexperienced in life, and he is a small officer in the police hierarchy to have been brought to head such an organisation. He is just an Assistant Commissioner of Police that earns just N40, 000 a month, and you brought him to come and head a multi-billion naira organisation. No! Even his academic qualification, I understand he had a pass in Law. You know how we in academics rate this thing, an LL.B Pass. I mean we should be more serious in this country.

Quite frankly, he looks committed, he looks emotionally committed, and the commitment as far as I'm concerned is too emotional. He doesn't seem to query directives. And psychologically, this may be as a fall-out of his deficiency in his degree. In my own view the thinking may be that, 'even though I didn't do well in my LL.B, I can show the world that I'm super in all these other things'. An ordinary Assistant Commissioner of Police! Please, give us some respect in this country. Yes, give us some respect in this country. Thank God, I have not held any political appointment for him to say, 'Oh! Professor Momoh is talking like this I'm going to nail him” - Guardian 12th March 2006 In real terms, despite all the propaganda on the activities of the Ribadu and his sponsors, the global competitiveness rating of Nigeria has not improved significantly. For instance, according to the World Bank report “Doing Business 2007”, released in September at the World Bank meeting in Singapore, Nigeria is still ranked a lowly 108 out of 175 countries surveyed. Earlier in the same month of September, the World Bank using its Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) rating again listed Nigeria among 26 countries across the world that is threatened with collapse. Around the same time too, the Bretton Woods Institution classified Nigeria as one of the risky nations in which to conduct business in 2007. In addition two influential American organizations, The Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal, in a joint assessment study of the global economic growth and freedom, recently ranked Nigeria's economic performance as 146th out of 147 countries assessed. Yet again, Nigeria recorded a very steep fall in its global competitiveness as it ranked 101, out of 125 countries polled, in the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings for 2006-2007 by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The impact of the Chief Obasanjo and Nuhu Ribadu’s propaganda on a public that is largely ignorant and uncritical is colossal. A lot of innocent citizens believe that Nigeria is rich, but the leaders are denying them access to comfort and enjoyment. Bad blood and raving national hatred is generated, and this is deployed to various ends during a period of high political tempo as we see now. The international community also believes that Nigeria is ruled by a wicked and merciless cabal as in medieval times or comparable today to the dictatorships in Burma or Zimbabwe, stealing, killing and oppressing its citizens.

It was therefore lamentable watching the former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, struggling to disprove these self-inflicted misconceptions about Nigeria on BBC’s Hard Talk programme on Friday, 27th October 2006. The first question asked her, was what happened to the more than $45billion made from oil by Nigeria, in 2005 and yet 75 percent of Nigerians are living in abject poverty. Okonjo-Iweala was angry that sweeping statements are made on Nigeria generally, contending that 99.9 percent of Nigerians are honest and hard working. She tried to convince her listeners unsuccessfully that Nigeria, given her 150million souls, is poor, and that what it generates as income from oil, properly extrapolated amounts to less than a dollar a day per head.

Ngozi-Iweala tried hard to defend Nuhu Ribadu and his grandiose claims of success, while straining to disprove Ribadu’s dubious figures, which the international media and Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank President have been copiously quoting. The irony of this dubious labelling of Nigerians is that, even the President, Chief Obasanjo has stated that Ribadu’s claims are ‘spurious and sensational’. Whether this is also sincerely done remains to be seen.

The claims of major breakthroughs in convictions by Ribadu are at best symbolic, as there are only two major convictions obtained by the commission since its establishment. The first major one was the Brazilian scam case involving the Anajembas, which was already in court, but which in a fit of opportunism was grabbed by Ribadu and rushed through the courts to conclusion. The second was the case involving Tafa Balogun, the former police chief, who was hated by the President for amassing personal loot from the campaign funds of 2003 elections, and also reviled by his colleagues including Ribadu, for failing to share with them the loot from the same discredited elections. In a country where orange and banana thieves are given long jail terms, Balogun was given six months after allegedly surrendering $150million to Ribadu’s commission.

Since the collapse of the tenure elongation campaign in May this year, Nuhu Ribadu has stepped up his malevolent campaign of character assassination and label against the political class, perhaps for one of two reasons, all largely attributable to the sense of paranoia that has hit the President’s camp as a result of the failed third term agenda. First, there is a desperate and sustained effort to revenge and frustrate all those who had opposed the tenure elongation agenda throughout the country. Second there are clear signs also, of attempts by some of the members of the president’s team to distance themselves from Obasanjo by seeking to appeal to Nigerians to enable them find relevance beyond the doomed Obasanjo Presidency. It was in this light that the EFCC’s new programme called “Operation Fix Nigeria”, packaged by Ribadu’s spin-doctor, Ujudud Sheriff of the Daily Trust could be positioned. But the entire campaign is based on unsustainable, dubious, over exaggerated statistics that cannot stand examination. There possibly does not exist records of $500billion of looted Nigerian funds, except in the figment of the misanthropic minds of Ribadu and his bosses.

There is no doubt that there exist cases of abuse of office in Nigeria, as it does in other countries of the world. But this is neither institutionalised nor is it a national past time. Certainly it is not anything more than symptoms of the political and economic problems the country is grappling with. These include weak administrative and political institutions, very weak national currency, poor wages, poor incentives, lack of job tenure, lack of viable economic opportunities etc. For now, Ribadu a young police officer has been allowed to define and insist on corruption as the only problem of Nigeria and that its eradication, a one-off panacea to its economic malaise. No judgment can be more shallow and deceptive. Dispassionately considered, Nigeria, with a population of 150 million and well over three hundred tribes is facing teething problems of a backward, dense, heterogeneous country in process of formation. The persistent political crises since independence has prevented the country from having a stable environment necessary for the implementation of sustainable economic policies. And the country has been paying direly for its political instability, with the military intervention and the civil war as parts of these sore points. The country’s economic fortunes have suffered immensely. Indeed over the years, the quality of life evidence by level of peace, security, happiness, economic well being had successively been falling since independence. More specifically for instance, Professor Anya O. Anya, the former President of the Nigerian Academy of Science and former Director-General of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group opined that, Nigeria’s economy deteriorated from a medium income status with per capita incomes of about $1200 in the early eighties, to a low-income nation as at 2002 with per capita income of only $300. He maintained that the challenge for development before Nigerians is so enormous that, with a population growth of 2.83 percent and GDP growth of 3.5 percent, it will take Nigeria thirty years to become medium income nation again. (Source - “Educating Nigeria for Development and Competition”, Nigeria Academy of Science Annual Lecture, 2002).

While Ribadu and his bosses try to make fools of Nigerians in their dubious crusade against corruption, one would reiterate to Nigerians generally of the observations of President Bill Clinton who said recently at the Leon Sullivan summit in Abuja on 17th July 2006 that, “I think one thing I’ve learned traipsing all over the world is that intelligence, ability and effort are evenly distributed, but investment opportunities and organized effective systems are not. I read all the time – oh there’s too much corruption in the developing world – what there is, is too little capacity; and when you create the absence of capacity, you create a vacuum in which all kinds of bad things happen” The Nigerian elite, made up of its academics, human rights community and the press throughout the country had exploited for diverse objectives the gullibility of its citizens to claim at different times in its history, that the nations problems had been, at one time or the other, colonialism, neo-colonialism, the military cabal, the caliphate, crude oil, N2.8bn, Shagari, Ummaru Dikko, Gen. Babangida, Gen. Abacha and now blanket corruption. It appears that the latest national fixation may well be another phantom war, and the crusade, debatable. It is as usual diversionary, waste of national time, talent, passion and national resources tangible and intangible.

Moses K. Gadol Gimbiya St., Garki, Abuja mosesgadol@hotmail.com