People and Politics By Mohammed Haruna

 

“Ettehgate”: Fools for Scandal?

kudugana@yahoo.com

 

In its October 1994 edition, the American Harper’s magazine carried a lengthy article by Gene Lyons, a reporter with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The article was a critique of the New York Times coverage of the Whitewater “scandal” that involved President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary. The wife, as is well known, was probably a more accomplished lawyer than her husband and, as U.S. senator for her adopted New York State, is currently the Democrat’s leading candidate for America’s next presidential election.

 

Lyons titled his article “Fool for Scandal: How the New York Times Got Whitewater Wrong”. The article tried to take apart the Times’ charge that in his previous incarnation as the governor of small and rural Arkansas State, Clinton, along with his wife, abused his office by making a killing from a real estate deal with a savings and loans operator called Whitewater which subsequently went belly-up. Worse than making the killing, said the Times, the couple did not disclose their benefits as demanded by law.

 

Two years later, i.e. in 1996, Lyons made his article into a controversial book which he titled more broadly FOOLS FOR SCANDAL: How the media invented Whitewater. This was clearly an indictment not only of the New York Times but also of much of the American media that seemed to have taken their cue from the Times in their coverage of the case.

           

The headline of this article suggests we already have a scandal on our hands involving the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh. Perhaps we do but a more diligent analysis of the story than the media and other pundits have subjected it to suggests a distinct possibility that the Nigerian media have become fools for a scandal of largely their own misrepresentation and sloppy reporting.

 

The alleged scandal is that the speaker and her deputy recently awarded a contract of 628,000,000 Naira for the renovation of their official residences and for the purchase of official vehicles for the House’s principal officers. Predictably this has outraged a nation, the vast majority of whose citizens reportedly live on less than 140 Naira a day.

 

More recently, however, the story seems to have changed, although the media headlines’ focus on the renovation of the House leadership’s residences has stubbornly remained unchanged. The story now, at least according to the Speaker’s own undisputed version is that the House’s tenders board approved “only” 238,852,198.95 Naira to renovate her residence while 90,000,000 Naira was approved for her deputy’s residence. This, she said, was a far cry from the 628,000,000 that the media seems to have bandied around.

 

The speaker provided her own figures when she appeared last Thursday before the House’s ad hoc committee investigating the scandal. At the end of her testimony, she described the allegations against her and her deputy as “tissues of lies, misinformation and blackmail,” and concluded that she was sure she would in the end be vindicated.

 

“I am confident”, she said, “that my testimony this day has cleared the hazy clouds hovering over this matter and that I have succeeded in restoring the integrity of the House and its leadership.”

           

Her confidence, I fear, may yet be shattered if the facts and figures she gave to the committee was all she could muster in her own defense. To begin with, the media never really said the 628 million was for renovation alone even though the headlines tended to suggest so. The stories have said the amount was for renovation, furnishing and purchase of vehicles.

           

In her own testimony, the speaker was conveniently silent on the figures for the purchase of vehicles and for furnishing her residence. Her only reference to the vehicles was to say they have “neither been supplied nor been paid for”. That did not, of course, mean that the contracts to purchase them had not been awarded. In fact they were and for the scandalous sums of N123, 000,000.00 Naira for 10 Toyota jeeps and 49,600,000.00 Naira for two Mercedes cars. These put the cost of each jeep at 12,300,000.00 Naira and of the Mercedes at 24,800,000.00 Naira. My checks with several car dealers reveal that the vehicles can be supplied with a very good margin at about half the contract sums.

           

The Speaker was also silent on the cost of furnishing her own residence. This stood at a princely 71,895,000.00 Naira, compared to the 55,000,000.00 Naira for her deputy, according to a statement by Mr. Monima Daminabo, the Director of Information and Publications of the National Assembly.

            If you do a little arithmetic you will find it hard, if not impossible, not to conclude that the speaker’s testimony was anything but the whole truth. This little arithmetic will come to a total sum of just under 624,000,000.00 Naira for the renovation and furnishing of her own and her deputy’s residences and for the purchases of vehicles for the House’s principal officers.

           

However, even leaving out the cost of furniture and vehicles, it is impossible not to feel scandalized at spending nearly 240 million Naira merely to renovate a house, even one befitting the No. 4 citizen of any country, especially one as impoverished as Nigeria.

           

Second, apart from fiddling with statistics, her attempt to shift the responsibility for accountability in the House’s finances to the management was somewhat disingenuous. First, she did not, she said, initiate the idea of renovation and second, it was not, she added, her “responsibility as Speaker and Chairman of the Body of Principal Officers to process Contract documents.”

           

As she herself said as speaker she is the chief executive of the House and as chief executive, she must know that the buck stops on her table whoever initiates anything or processes any documents. It says a lot about her compassion for the poor voters who elected her that she did not feel outraged at anyone suggesting she should renovate her official residence for well over 230,000,000.00 Naira.

           

Third, there was simply no justification for subjecting the contract to only selective tender, especially for a government which has made so much song and dance about its commitment to due process. To make matters worse, the tender notices were published, not in any of our national newspapers and other media as the regulations demand for contracts over 10,000,000.00 Naira, but on notice boards at the National Assembly! 

           

Now, if as I have tried to show we do indeed have an “Ettehgate” on our hands why do I still think the media’s coverage of it has left much to be desired?

           

The reason is simple; the media seemed to have blamed the speaker alone for the scandal when a simple check with independent experts would have revealed that the management’s claim of innocence was a blatant lie.

           

All the media needed to have done to establish the management’s culpability or otherwise was to have got the expert opinion of architects and quantity surveyors on the bills of quantities that the management worked on to reach the figures they recommended to the House leadership. The management may not have initiated the bills as is the proper practice, but those they were given contained many hand written corrections by the management.

 

My own quick check with friends who are architects and quantity surveyors showed that most of the recommendations on the civil works were reasonable. The same check, however, also showed that most of the material procurements were grossly inflated. This, apparently, was what led to the overall inflation of the contracts.

           

The Speaker did not need to have been an expert to have seen through these inflations. And so when she said at her testimony that “As a member and now as Speaker, I am committed to service (and) I am not in any way driven by extravagance, comfort and personal gain,” most Nigerians, I suspect, are not likely to believe her. On the contrary she was more likely to have provoked cynical laughter.

           

And then as if to make matters worse for her, Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu, he, of the infamous “amala” brand of “you chop I chop” politics and the consecrated “garrison commander” of Oyo State politics, decided to wade into the scandal by declaring that she was the only hope of the entire Yoruba nationality in the Federal Government and any attempt to stigmatize and remove her from office is an attempt to expel the Yoruba from Nigeria!

            

 

“If you try Etteh,” declared Adedibu, “you are trying us. We will not submit. This is the only one we have in the West…The entire Yoruba race are (sic) speaking with one voice…Tell (President Umar) Yar’adua that he should tell his men to stop probing Etteh.”

           

Apart from exposing the man’s total ignorance of the checks and balances of the presidential system - an ignorance which is understandable considering the way his principal patron, President Olusegun Obasanjo, successfully rode rough shod for eight years over those checks and balances - his attempt to camouflage private vice as public virtue and to use tribe as a weapon to grab and retain power for self-aggrandisement must rate as one of the most egregious piece of blackmail by a politician.

           

Needless to say Adedibu was certainly not speaking for the Yoruba nation. Even then his cheap blackmail can only alienate those who may feel inclined to sympathize with the speaker as a victim of those who apparently tried to cash in on her vanity as a not very well educated beautician foisted on the nation by a departing president who valued personal loyalty - of which she displayed a lot to her benefactor - more than competence and integrity.