abdulraheem
In the lead to the 2003 elections, the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) came out with a report that over N300 billion was missing from the revenue that the nation expected from the NNPC. At DAILY TRUST, we kept the story on the front burner for days on end, but it did not seem to matter much to most of the other national newspapers: Obasanjo was their man, and what was important was for him to return to power. He did so on the basis of a very fraudulent election in 2003, which some people seemed to tolerate, but which emboldened the despot to treat Nigerians with utmost contempt over the next four years as he went on a kleptocratic bingel; not made to account for the fraud of 2003, he would then impose on us the mother of all riggings in April 2007! In the last week, the RMAFC has updated its statistics, showing that the NNPC fleeced Nigeria up to a total sum of N500 billion between December 2004 and April 2007. The commission’s report came on the heel of another one which said that top officials of the NNPC had stolen N502 billion through various frauds, including producing crude oil far in excess of assigned OPEC quota and converting the proceeds to political electioneering and selfish ends. Two billion dollars were also said to have been diverted between united Kingdom and Bermuda in shady deals involving Nigerian officials. It is instructive to note that the United States Treasury Department recently claimed that
the US oil services company, Wilbros, bribed officials of the NNPC, the PDP and the Obasanjo government millions of dollars to be able to secure the $387 million Eastern Gas Gathering System project. It is veryclear that these fraudulent acts were perpetrated under Obasanjo’s watch as he was Minister of Petroleum Resources during most of the period. He held the card of petroleum close to his chest, using Andy Uba to call Funso Kupolokun back and forth between Aso Villa and the NNPC building. It is interesting to see if Umar yar’Adua will find the courage to open the Pandora’s Box of the oil industry for the Nigerian people to actually see what has been going on there in the past eight years.And whether Malam Yar’Adua likes it or not, he would have to check Obasanjo’s record of the husbandry of the oil sector one
day or the other. This will include Nuhu Ribadu and the EFCC too. On May 29, 2006, Nuhu was in the studios of AIT to face a panel of interviewers from different media houses. When the issue of Obasanjo came up, he defended the man vigorously and I remember him turning on his seat and answering with finality, “The man is a Saint”! We shall soon see what amount of sainthood there is in ‘Saint” Mathew Aremu Obasanjo. My greatest pleasure is to see Nuhu Ribadu eventually getting the marching order to take in his “Saint”. Nigerians are waiting, andwe know that will happen, willy-nilly; it’s just a matter of time.
