EARSHOT BY SAM NDA

EARSHOT BY SAM NDA-ISAIAH

To the Sen. Ndoma-Egba Committee

They started together with the president, today they are virtual enemies. Only one person needs to check himself...

Abdulsalami Abubakar, Solomon Lar, Sunday Awoniyi, Ibrahim Babangida, Tom Ikimi, Okwesilieze Nwodo, Atiku Abubakar, Barnabas Gemade, Audu Ogbeh, Lawal Kaita, Bello Kirfi, Sani Zangon Daura, JKN Waku, Sule Kumo, T.Y. Danjuma, Segun Osoba, Mahmud Tukur, Bola Tinubu, Adamu Fika, Bisi Akande, the late Bola Ige, Tony Anenih, Orji Uzor Kalu, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Balarabe Musa, Abubakar Rimi, Otunba Johnson Fasawe, Victor Malu, Iyorchia Ayu, the late Chuba Okadigbo, Ango Abdullahi, the late Marshal Harry, Muhammadu Buhari, Ishaya Bamaiyi, Jimmy Carter, Aliyu Gusau, Nelson Mandela, Anyim Pius Anyim, Adolphus Wabara, Rasheed Ladoja, Haroun Adamu, Alex Ekwueme, Roland Owie, the late Sunday Afolabi, Dele Cole, Philip Asiodu, Ghali Umar Na’Abba, and lots and lots more.

In the wake of the interesting shouting march between President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy a few weeks ago -- and after the president had submitted a list of transgressions allegedly committed by the vice president to the Senate -- Ken Nnamani, the Senate president, constituted a 13-member ad-hoc investigative committee headed by Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba. The committee’s mandate, as is to be expected, is to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption within the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF).

It is a welcome move, not necessarily because the senators themselves can be trusted, but because this is an opportunity to commence something badly needed. Without saying it, it is clear that the committee intends to probe both the president and the vice president. And even if that is not the mandate, the nation does not expect less. The committee should thoroughly investigate the PTDF, yes, but the PTDF itself is a parastatal of the NNPC, and if corruption is what is at issue, then there is no institution in the country more deserving of an inside-out inquiry as the NNPC.

The NNPC under President Obasanjo will be investigated some day anyway, and whatever the Senator Ndoma-Egba committee decides to do with its present assignment will also attract scrutiny when that time comes. Therefore, they had better do this job diligently. The president accused Vice President Atiku Abubakar of corruption and quickly went ahead to gazette it so that it could be used against the VP in the future. But the constitution has not granted the president the power to investigate the vice president. Only the National Assembly can probe the vice president just as only the State Houses of Assembly can probe the governors. And this is even a president who himself does not respect gazetted documents. In 1999, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Obasanjo’s predecessor and benefactor, awarded national honours to several Nigerians, including Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida and went ahead to gazette it. But when Obasanjo became president, he decided to cancel every tangible thing General Abdulsalami had done, including the award of the national honours that was gazetted. He then decided to grant his own national honours. So if Obasanjo thinks he can nullify a gazetted document, what makes his own sacrosanct?

It is always difficult to comprehend the essence of President Obasanjo. The man who seized General Abacha’s Durbar Hotel, Kaduna (acquired during the privatisation process), is the same man who has gone ahead to incorporate a company with his friends with which they have used to buy up the Abuja Hilton Hotel and NITEL. And he thinks his own will be different. It’s a funny mindset. But now that the floodgates to probes have been opened, let the probes take place. Let Nigeria benefit from this aperture that has been accidentally opened by no other person than the president himself.

Atiku is said to have abused his office using PTDF funds, but, as far as I can comprehend, the money didn’t get lost. I concur that the vice president did abuse his office and the Senate should decide what to do with him. But what about the same PTDF fund that was ordered to be paid into Hallmark Bank? Did the president or any of his cronies who have been busy receiving stolen goods from the vice president order the PTDF to pay some money into the distressed Hallmark Bank in the same manner that the vice president ordered the NNPC parastatal to pay money into the Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB)? At least, the amount that went into ETB didn’t get lost. The one that entered Hallmark Bank is lost forever as the bank has been stolen dry by their owners and their political associates, and you don’t need to be a pundit to know who these associates are. It will not be hard to know who is the bigger abuser of his office by the time the Hallmark/PTDF mystery is puzzled out.

We appear to have entered Round Two of the shouting march between No. 1 and No. 2. Atiku so far has only been reacting to Obasanjo’s allegations and countering them. His mainspring in Round One has been to prove to the world that whatever Obasanjo accuses him of, the president is by far guiltier than he; and he appears to be succeeding, especially in court of public opinion. In fact, somebody told me last week that if this is all they have against Atiku, in spite of all we know of the president, then Atiku must qualify for sainthood. At least we know who has been in charge of the NNPC for the past seven years and it is not Atiku. Atiku has no access to the excess crude fund that has become the greatest avenue of corruption since Nigeria came into being in 1914. Atiku, of course, does not have stocks in Transcorp. He was smart enough to reject it. Atiku might have abused his office, but he has not allocated oil blocks to a company belonging to a girlfriend, which was incorporated only three months prior to the award, in total breach of the conditions set out for the award of oil blocks.

As we enter Round Two of the bout, those wearing the Atiku jersey are more likely to come up with the most egregious sleaze story ever against the president. The Atiku team is going to have a field day because it appears that the Obasanjo camp has already fired its best shots and is now exhausted. By the time the VP is through, Obasanjo could look worse than a common criminal. The VP has been left with no other choice, as it is now an issue of survival. The only thing that can save him is to strip the president of all moral legitimacy.

I am not holding brief for the VP. Far from that. If it appears so, it is because I know that one of the main causes of conflict between the president and his deputy is the VP’s stand against the third term. I know many third termers who should be cooling off in jail today but they receive presidential protection for their support of the third term. But if the Senate is serious at all, it should start working on impeaching both Obasanjo and Atiku to pave way not only for some decency and propriety in the nation’s presidency, but also to sustain democracy beyond next year. The president might have bribed Ken Nnamani with the national honours of GCON, the second most prestigious, but the Senate president and the speaker of the House of Representatives owe Nigeria and democracy this lifetime duty. And nobody should tell me that it is not possible, as both Ayo Fayose and Mrs Biodun Olujinmi, governor and deputy governor of Ekiti State respectively, have just been served with impeachment notices.

If the National Assembly fails to discharge this national assignment, two things could happen before the end of this year. The president could attempt to use extra-constitutional means to remove the vice president. Already, rumours of a phantom coup allegation against the vice president and some other “enemies of the government” are making the rounds. If the vice president is removed any other way other than through a duly carried out impeachment process (not the Kangaroo type that removed Governors DSP Alams and Rasheed Ladoja), the entire system as is currently known could come down crashing, and with it the National Assembly and everyone associated with it. The National Assembly should therefore act swiftly to save this order in which they are stakeholders before it is too late. And, if Obasanjo ever survives till 2007, he will ensure, as a last revenge, to weed out all the legislators who opposed his third term ambition by mercilessly rigging them out. Ask Speaker Umar Ghali Na’Abba!