My Dear Chief Anenih
The world is expecting me to respond today to the letter you
wrote me, so I will go straight to the point. Your letter to me, sir,
was a little strange because I can’t see what you intend to achieve.
But, as my Esan friend recently told me, there is a saying in your place
that “when a bird suddenly begins dancing on top of the tree, then
there is music under the ground”. As the Iyasele of Esanland, you
must be well familiar with that adage. But even with the music playing
from Aso Rock, you should not have allowed yourself to write that kind
of letter. The letter greatly diminished you, sir, and you must have
already realised that from the kind of comments about you all over the
social media since your letter was released. If the responses in the
social media do not mean anything to you, surely, they will to your
children and grandchildren.
That is the stuff Nigerians have come to expect from Ahmed Gulak,
Doyin Okupe and Reuben Abati, and, honestly, I would not have responded
if any of these three had appended his signature to that letter. But
since it is you that wrote it, I will reply you, and that is why I am
doing this today.
I also want you to know that, in writing this today, I am doing it on
behalf of millions of Nigerians who have no voice. I have taken it as a
responsibility because, in so doing, I would be serving the larger
interests of the Nigerian state. And that’s all that matters to me.
For starters, this type of letter is not within the remit of your job
as chairman of the PDP board of trustees. You are neither Jonathan’s
spokesperson nor, technically speaking, a member of his government. You
are not the spokesman of the NNPC; you are not the spokesman of the
Ministry of Petroleum; you are not the spokesman of the ministry of
finance. At best you are just an onlooker like any of us. Besides, the
chairman of the board of trustees should be calm and measured but, in
that letter, you are anything but calm and measured. Several times in
the past, you had invited me to your home to discuss national issues.
Even though I have never agreed with your views and even a few of the
positions you wanted me to take, I have always respected you
nonetheless. You have always addressed me as “my son”. And the joke in
LEADERSHIP among the directors when discussing any story affecting you
is that “nobody should upset the chairman’s father please”. Just before
you were crowned the chairman of the PDP board of trustees, you invited
me to your home. We discussed Nigeria intensively and extensively. Even
though we didn’t agree on any issue at all, I cherished the fact that
you invited me to your home for discussion.
In your letter, you said NNPC had satisfactorily explained how the
said $10.8 billion (N1.7 trillion) was expended. Satisfactorily to whom?
Satisfactorily to you and your other “son”, President Jonathan? Sir, do
you and President Jonathan think Nigerians are fools? I respect you a
lot sir – both for your age and our relationship – but I love Nigeria
more than I respect you. Sir, to say that the NNPC officials have
satisfactorily explained how they expended a whopping N1.7 trillion on
behalf of Nigerians is the greatest insult to Nigerians. By the way, is
the NNPC supposed to spend money that has not been appropriated for it?
Is it their father’s money (pardon my French)? Does the NNPC have a
first charge over the disbursement of government funds? You have been
around government for too long to know this, but probably because you
have been too used to the wrong way of running government, the wrong
things have become normal to you. Sir, NNPC spending directly from the
revenue it earns for the country without appropriation is theft, pure
and simple, and should be punished if the Jonathan government had been a
serious one. And if the president is aware of it and does nothing,
then, he should be impeached at once to save the country from economic
ruination. All monies made by the NNPC via the sales of the nation’s
resources must be remitted to the nation’s coffers. And, sir, we are
talking about N1.7 trillion here, which if well deployed into any sector
could change that sector forever.
Again, sir, why, at over 80 years, do you want to endorse a lie? You
are the one that should be teaching us not to lie. I feel sad that
someone who addresses me as “my son” would want me to lie. No, sir, I
won’t. I was not brought up that way. NNPC has not satisfactorily
explained anything as you want people to believe. And it is not NNPC
that Nigerians are waiting to hear from. They want to hear from the
minister of petroleum or, better still, the president himself, since, as
we all know, an expenditure of N1.7 trillion is absolutely beyond the
authority of all NNPC staffers put together.
But, sir, why do you want to lie to yourself about the Jonathan
government? This is a government that “expended” N2.6 trillion on fuel
subsidy in a year that only N245 billion was appropriated for same. Has
that one also been satisfactorily explained? What about the N32 billion
police pension fund scam that Jonathan is pretending about? The N5
billion Teidi pension scam? The industrial-scale theft of crude oil
worth about $2 billion monthly? What about the N53 billion NCC spectrum
sale racket or the 24 million barrels of oil worth $1.6 billion stolen
through signature forgery, according to Minister Aganga? Nobody even
talks about bullet-proof Stella Oduah anymore. Sir, you seriously want
us to keep quiet in the face of all these? Is this the type of country
you want to leave behind for your grandchildren? As chairman, PDP board
of trustees, you have a disproportionate responsibility among others to
call President Jonathan to order and not to endorse thefts at the level
we see today. But, like most people are now saying in the social media
in response to your letter to me, if you too have not “satisfactorily”
explained how you expended N300 billion on roads when you were minister
of works with nothing commensurate to show for it, it will be asking too
much to expect you to assess the situation rationally. Even if we agree
with you that only N175 billion was released to you as minister, was
there anything on ground to show that you received that kind of money?
But let’s go back to the N1.7 trillion heist, sir. Should we accept
the NNPC’s lame explanation as “fact” when the so-called statement did
not mention the name of a single company that benefited from the
so-called “subsidy” on which it claimed to have squandered $8.49
billion? Or, why should anyone take NNPC seriously over the alleged
expenses of $1.2 billion on pipeline management when the whole job has
been outsourced to Global West Vessel Services Ltd, Tompolo’s company,
for N15 billion? What’s the job of the PPMC anyway? How can you, sir, as
BOT chairman and my adopted father, receive as gospel the writing off
of $750 million as acceptable explanation for “products/crude losses”?
Is that what your party has turned Nigeria to? The problem with you and
President Jonathan, sir, is that either you do not understand the rules
of good governance or you think Nigerians are unintelligent fools. No,
you are wrong, sir! You would be surprised at the details the average
Nigerian in the street now knows.
As chairman of the PDP board of trustees, sir, why don’t you spend
your time constructively, asking President Jonathan, for instance, why
he had to spend a whopping N400 billion on the amnesty programme,
sending Nigerians abroad to learn crafts and other skills without
establishing one single school or vocational centre in the Niger Delta?
Sir, we are talking about the whole of N400 billion here. Do you know
how many vocational centres and schools that would have established,
that would have continued to train and re-train people from the Niger
Delta? That is what you want Nigerians to keep quiet about? No, sir, I
do not respect you to that extent. Or, let’s even go further: what has
happened to the N300 billion that President Umaru Yar’Adua kept for the
Niger Delta before he went into a coma from which he never came around?
Only Jonathan can answer that.
You also veered off the point on a few occasions. You said, “it is
also a fact that, last year, the well-regarded international magazine,
Forbes,
named minister of agriculture, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, African person of
the year…”. What has that got to do with stealing N1.7 trillion
belonging to the people? You might also need to know, sir, that
LEADERSHIP doesn’t need
Forbes to recognise talents in public
service. The Board of Editors of the newspaper (of which I am not a
member) had selected Adesina as the LEADERSHIP Public Officer of the
Year 2013 in November, before
Forbes’ announcement in December. But that’s clearly beside the point.
You obliquely insinuated that I serve sectional interests. Sir, if
you who recently said anyone from the south-south that is against
Jonathan should have his head examined would call me sectional, then,
that should count as the greatest insult anyone has ever hauled on me.
But I forgive you, sir. You call me sectional? Where were you and most
of the people claiming to be close to Jonathan today when a few of us
stood up against the Yar’Adua cabal that did not want then vice
president Jonathan to become president according to the dictates of the
constitution? Sir, I cannot remember you saying anything in those
uncertain times, as you were clearly with the Yar’Adua group. Yes, sir,
you could always be counted upon to support any government in power; if
armed robbers took over Aso Rock tomorrow, they would count on your
support. And you would not disappoint them.
President Jonathan himself knows that I was one of the very few who
stood by the constitution. In fact, I was against the so-called doctrine
of necessity that made Jonathan acting president because it was
unconstitutional. I insisted that Jonathan at that time should be
declared president straightaway because that is what the constitution
provides when a president becomes incapacitated. You were clearly
missing at that time. So, sir, you are not allowed to call me, or anyone
else for that matter, sectional. You cannot call me sectional. I was
against President Obasanjo’s misrule as much as I was against Umaru
Yar’Adua’s misrule, even though one was a southerner and the other a
northerner. If today I am against Jonathan, whose misrule is worse than
Obasanjo’s and Yar’Adua’s put together (unfortunately), nobody should
call me sectional. No, sir, I am a proud Nigerian who would never say
the kind of sectional things you often say.
In another paragraph, you said, “And yet I must let you know that it
is the height of brinkmanship to seek to inflame passions over a
‘missing’ amount of money, which has been proven by the relevant agency
not to be missing at all.” Who decides whether money is missing at the
NNPC? The NNPC? The minister of finance? The minister of petroleum? The
PDP BOT chairman? Or an independent audit? There is no greater act of
brinkmanship than dabbling into a matter clearly outside your brief. I
admit that the current state of your party, the PDP, could leave
traumatic side-effects on its stalwarts, especially on the office of the
BOT. But I frankly don’t understand how I should become the target of
your misfortune because I expressed an opinion on a matter of very
serious public interest.
You also went berserk on the CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. That
is very unbecoming of the office of the PDP BOT chairman. By the way,
the $10.8 billion I spoke about was not Sanusi’s figure. It is Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala’s figure; she has consistently said that corruption is
killing the country and “we are not helpless about it”. The same
Okonjo-Iweala raised the alarm less than a week ago in Davos,
Switzerland, that the Nigerian economy was under threat because, on
Jonathan’s watch, the excess crude account had been depleted from $8.65
billion to $2.5 billion within a year. Our foreign reserves have also
been depleted.
You described the CBN governor as mistake-prone. But he still insists
that $12 billion is missing. It was Okonjo-Iweala’s figure that was
$10.8 billion. But we may just have to be patient for a few more months
before we hear the real story of the stolen $49.8 billion. Sanusi will
complete his term in June and would be free to tell the real story of
the $49.8 billion. For now, I will counsel the
Iyasele to stop gloating and explain in whose hands the $10.8 billion is, since he has now turned himself into Jonathan’s spokesperson.
Sir, as the BOT chairman, you are not allowed to be an attack dog.
You are not allowed to go berserk as you did on Sanusi. It reduced your
stature. You are not even allowed to write that kind of letter to me as
Chief Tony Anenih, the
Iyasele of Esanland, and a father figure
to many of us. You call me your son, and, for that reason, we will not
allow you to dance naked in the market square. We will insist we tie you
with a wrapper to hide your nakedness. Sir, don’t write that kind of
letter again!
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