OPINION: Edu, Sadiya, Halima, Bello, et al

HE ruling elites have us by the balls. Our collective capacity for short memory is like none anywhere else in the world. So it’s usually easy for our rulers to make egregious appointments into critical public positions or to proclaim vexatious policy and then sit back. We, Nigerians, will huff and puff and threaten fire and brimstone if the appointment or policy was not reviewed or reversed. Our rulers will conveniently keep quiet knowing that ‘nothing mega’ or nothing will happen. After a few days, maximum one week, we will move on and the hitherto concerning appointment and/or policy will disappear from the news media headlines.
Almost every federal administration since 1999 has used this strategy to wear out the people and overcome citizens’ inconveniences. But the extant regime of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party has elevated this practice to an art form. Whenever it backpedals from chosen options it was usually to create the impression that it was a listening government. No, it’s not. It has never been since 2015 when its candidate and the affliction of Nigeria, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, assumed office as president. That utter failure who approximated what a ruler should not be in a country desperate for rescue from political and economic morass and paralysis regarded the presidency as a trophy and not a call to service. When Buhari failed in his three consecutive quests to be elected Nigeria’s president, he publicly bemoaned his fate but later claimed that Nigeria and Nigerians would be the ultimate losers. He had told us that he was offering himself for the presidency because he was the Messiah Nigeria was waiting for. Some shallow Nigerians including pseudo intellectuals believed him and his coterie of choristers that if given a chance at the topmost office he would turn the country around. Buhari got the chance in 2015 and actually succeeded in turning the country around – for the worse. Through incompetence and ‘non-governance’ he took Nigeria back by 30 years or one generation.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong under Buhari. Politics was bastardised. Merit was whimsically discarded in appointments to sensitive and non -sensitive offices. His tribesmen seized virtually every level of governance. Religion became a vital consideration for recruitment so much so that for almost eight years of his ruinous reign, national security meetings could conveniently be conducted in Hausa language and the attendees would be at home. Buhari reserved the greater carnage for the economy. He so borrowed funds from offshore financial institutions that an impression was created that borrowing was fast going out of fashion and that international funds were about to dry up. Buhari’s Nigeria scrambled for foreign loans in a manner that resembled European powers’ scramble and partition of Africa in Germany in 1885. Yet that regime was not satisfied with the quantum of the foreign loans it saddled Nigeria with. It turned inward and started borrowing from the domestic money market through the issuing of treasury bills and other debt instruments. It was still not satisfied. Then it resorted to printing Naira that was backed by nothing until it accumulated a staggering N30 trillion through the Ways and Means of the central bank. You will be grossly mistaken if you think it ended there. No. That calamity called Buhari then proceeded to auction millions of barrels of Nigeria’s crude oil whilst they were yet to be extracted from under the ground. He collected the payments upfront and squandered them. As these were happening the national leader of the APC and now Buhari’s successor, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu cheered him on, saying Buhari was the next best thing to happen to Nigeria after sliced bread.
Buhari introduced or at least aggravated rulers not feeling obligated to explain anything to Nigerians. As president he once spent 103 days abroad on medical tourism without telling Nigerians what he suffered from nor how much was taken from the treasury to offset his medical bills. It has to be acknowledged that the impunity started with Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, our sick president who eventually died in office in 2010.
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Here in this column last week we said that Tinubu is contemptuous of Nigerians. He is not alone. Agencies of the government under Tinubu are fast learning how not to take Nigerians seriously. They are learning that an issue, no matter how serious, can go away if you just ignore it long enough. And there are quite a handful of such matters that are being forced to fade from our memories. One of such serious issues of alleged sleaze is the case of Betta Chimaobim Edu, the suspended minister of humanitarian affairs. When Minister Edu was suspended from office last January, a presidential spokesman said it was in line with Tinubu’s commitment to upholding the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability in the management of the commonwealth of Nigerians. Of course, Nigerians knew that the Presidency was lying. All the same she was referred to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Edu reported to the anti-graft agency which quizzed her and released her on bail before the sunset same day. The bail terms were not disclosed then. They have still not been published. The EFCC is still investigating her alleged sleaze the least of which had to do with paying government money running into hundreds of millions of Naira into a private individual’s personal bank account contrary to regulations. It’s now six months and counting and the Edu saga is receding from our memories.
Ms Halima Shehu is the national coordinator and chief executive officer of the National Social Investment Programme Agency, a parastatal of the corruption -prone humanitarian affairs ministry. Ms Shehu whose agency oversees the government’s conditional cash transfer programme had a few days earlier had herself suspended by Minister Edu on allegation of tampering with billions of Naira of public funds. The last that was heard of Ms Shehu’s case was six months ago when the EFCC said it was still investigating her alleged sleaze. Edu and Shehu are walking freely and probably travelling in and out of Nigeria. So much for the zero tolerance for corruption by the Tinubu regime. Still ‘nothing mega’.
But before Edu there was Sadiya Umar-Farouk, also a humanitarian affairs minister under Buhari. Indeed the pioneer minister of that slush money ministry. She’s being probed by this regime over allegations that N37.1 billion was laundered through her ministry. The status of the case is, like everything else, uncertain. By the way, it will be recalled that it was the same notorious ministry that allegedly expended N500,000,000 million to feed school pupils who were locked down at home in 2020 during COVID -19.
Finally, there’s the N82billion fraud allegation against Alhaji Yahaya Bello, governor of Kogi state for eight years until last January. It has been a ding dong affair. He was once cornered like a rat when the EFCC operatives laid siege to his house in Abuja. But his successor allegedly used the cover of his immunity to spring him out of the trap. Bello has remained underground since then from where he has been negotiating the terms of his appearance in court to answer to the allegations levelled against him. That’s the state of our country where suspects dictate the terms and place for their interrogation and arraignment in court. The same EFCC that is begging and appeasing Bello will readily invade students hostels and bachelors’ eve parties to arrest youngsters for alleged Internet fraud while their military and police counterparts smash doors and windows to arrest harmless journalists and traumatize their families. The crime of the journalists is that they are doing the work of holding government accountable to the people. State security agents are increasingly becoming freelance tormentors of hapless and helpless Nigerians. This fumbling and failing regime has effectively resurrected the Draconian Decree 4 of the Buhari military era with its implementation of the Cyber Security Act. Fortunately, history has it that in Nigeria tyranny has a short lifespan.
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