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Obasanjo’s Unending Last-Minute Extravagance By Jide Ayobolu President Olusegun Obasanjo has been behaving true to type with his unending last minute spending spree. Why will a government that will end in a matter of weeks award contracts that run into billions of Naira? At a time when the Obasanjo’s government should be preparing its handover notes, it is busy spending tax-payers money lavishly. The government is behaving as if it is a law unto itself, all the spending are carried out without recourse to the National Assembly. What is it that this government is spending huge sums of money on that has not done in eight years? This is the same government who in 1999 when it assumed the mantle of power cancelled all the contracts awarded by the Abdulsalami Abubakar’s regime and even put in place a probe panel in to the contracts awarded then, so what makes what he is doing now different from what Abubakar did in 1998/99? Is what Obasanjo is doing now in accordance with the due process, rule of law and the 1999 constitution? When will those that lead start to behave like statesmen and indeed honourable people? It is because the people of Nigeria don’t amount to anything in their estimation that they condescend so low as to threat people in this horrendous manner? They don’t care a hoot about what they do with tax-payers money. Why on earth will an out-going administration approve the spending of N21.4billion for capacity building in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, N2.3billion for inclusive education for gifted and physically challenged children, N6.8billion for the Owiwi multi-purpose dam in President Obasanjo’s home state, N480million to buy 60 Peugeot cars for the presidential inauguration, N32billion for Yar’Adua’s inauguration, N40million to buy new uniform for 150 police officers at the ridiculous price of N266,666 each. This means therefore that, it will cost N88billion to get new uniforms for 330,000 police officers and men in the country. Similarly, N20billion was approved to service MDG’S related projects. In fact, N67million was spent by the Plateau state government during Obasanjo’s state visit to the Tin City. In eight years, president Obasanjo borrowed about $3.1billion. These approvals are being made at a time all the members of the FEC ought to have completed their handover notes. So, why all the noise about due process, fight against corruption, economic reforms, prudence in the management of the national economy, democratic norms, business un-usual and all other grand-standing, it means this government has just been paying lip service to all these critical issues. Hence, there is no marked difference between it and other government in the past. In fact, by the time this government will be out of power, and its accounts audit, then the looting carried out by the Abacha’s government will be nothing but a child’s play. It is as a result of this kind of wrong attitude to public expenditure and spending, that a foreign tabloid in one of its commentaries remarked that, “Nigeria’s old problems remain, and have even worsened under Mr. Obasanjo. For a start, much of the macroeconomic success is due to the high price of oil; it has made little visible difference to Nigerians wretched daily lives. Over 70 per cent still live on the equivalent of less than $1 a day; decaying hospitals, schools and roads tell their own stories. Bashir Borodo, the president of Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria, reckons that in the poorer North of the country over 60 per cent of university graduates are unemployed. And with so many people doing causal jobs, under-employment is massive too. Besides all this, the deeply corrupt political system has remained intact and, if anything, entrenched itself under Mr. Obasanjo. In Nigeria, politics is money, and money is politics. With economic activity almost totally dependent on the oil revenues that flow in through the central government coffers (over $50billion in 2006), the surest way to enrichment is through political office-or through contracts from your best mates in those offices. Incumbency has become everything in Nigeria; to lose office is to lose almost the only means of survival, as well as immunity from prosecution. The extra cash flowing through the system from a higher oil price has merely raised the political stakes, making politicians more brazen than ever in their attempts to cling to office. Or, as Mr. Obasanjo said himself, these elections were “do or die” time for his ruling PDP”. Can we say that this government has the plight of the Nigerian people at heart? Is this not what Fela called paddy-paddy government? Another case of suffering and smiling! This is exemplified by the various misanthropic economic policies that have the foisted on the people since 1999. According to Bob Marley, you can deceive some people sometimes, but you can’t deceive all the people all the time. The Obasanjo led government has deceived us enough, but there will surely be a day of reckoning, from the look of things Obasanjo is so reluctant to relinquish power, he so desperately want to hang on to power. At this juncture it is important to note the remarks made by Professor Ben Nwabueze at the 1989 Guardian lecture titled our march to constitutional democracy, he said, society is and should always be of less importance than its members because although formed by man, it is something less than man. It is only a means to enable man attain some human desirable good…….Any society that robs man his dignity as a human being becomes the monster ‘son of Frankenstein’. It would be a contradiction therefore if the pursuit of economic well-being were to override the other. They must be properly balanced, one against the other. That is the central challenge of governance. He went on to argue very trenchantly that, “Our hope is that the Nigerian society would get infused with the right ethic of political behaviour, and that the need for military intervention would thereby be eliminated. But should it ever become necessary for the military to intervene to remove a bad civilian government which is hanging to power through election rigging. Its aim should not be to enable the military to take over and govern for an indefinite time, but simply to get rid of the government and supervise the election of another”. It is in this regard that he quoted a Ghana general Lt. General Ocran, who said that, “Soldiers should leave politics alone. When they try to run a country, in spite of their enthusiasm they run it badly because they are, right from the beginning expected to assume the role of policy-makers in a job for which they had no previous training. If they have to take-over, then they should be prepared to achieve their short-term aims immediately and hand over as early as possible”? It should be very clear to those in government today that, whatsoever they do or fail to do, history and posterity will judge them accordingly. And, those who make peaceful change impossible, makes violent change inevitable. a stitch in time saves all.
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Jide Ayobolu Nigeria. |