It is our money

If you wrote  a movie script to capture a bit of the story of contemporary Nigeria, you could not better the gripping drama around our – yes, you read right – our billions that a handful of people mostly from the Niger Delta region thought they could, as usual, quietly just pocket away N80bn frittered at a time of great need.

There will still be people today who will argue that the word fritter has no place where billions are spent in the Niger Delta on a few powerful locals and shadowy representatives of communities.

That type of tactic used to work on other Nigerians.

Do you remember those days when Niger Deltans drew huge curtains on the manner billions and billions were allocated and privatised in a region that suffered from a past, and suffered more at the hands of today’s ‘leaders’ who invented the chorus line that only other Nigerians stole?

They themselves merely privatised and indigenised their own resources  that should have built schools and roads and hospitals, creating powerful fixers, community leaders, restless violent youth and politicians who passed for the millions that were the people of Niger Delta.

President Goodluck Jonathan’s famous attempt to distinguish between corruption and theft is unbeatable in terms of the manner it captured the popular mindset of powerful people from a region that has been more fleeced by its own people than by all Nigerians put together.

Those curtains around the manner billions of public funds are spent around the Niger Delta are still in place, but they have suffered some damage since the creation of the federal government’s own Niger Delta Development Commission(NDDC).

You will not hear quarrels over the stupendous amounts allocated to the ten or so states  under multiple headings backed by laws to their state governments.

They are in good company here.

All state governments keep iron lids  over the manner they abuse public funds.

But, if only the published records of statutory allocations and disbursements to the region are tallied, and half of that total amount is used on citizens and communities, the region will be the most developed part of Africa today. It is not.

The youth who fronted for elders and leaders in the agitation for much larger bites of the cake are now either part of the scheme or victims of a racket that grows fatter from the absence of a tradition on spending public funds on the public.

In this region, you still need to threaten violence or deploy violence if you are outside the loop of political circles built on sharing and ‘settlements’, if you are to get anything substantial for yourself.

We knew so much  of NDDC’s endemic  corruption because it is a federal government agency set up  basically as another avenue for the region to tap more resources to itself.

You only hear of its celebrated corruption because Abuja created it, decides who manages it, milks it and stays far away from it once it is settled.

Even then, it takes spectacular bungling of massive, routine  corruption for the nation to pay more than the cursory attention it normally pays to money matters in the Niger Delta.

Just think: we may not have heard much of the  scandal unfolding now if the presidency had acted when ministers and aides were disagreeing over how to deal with allegations of past corruption, much of it involving sitting officials.

We would not know how deeply the National Assembly had become involved in the issue of who is in charge and who should investigate who.

We would not know how a powerful minister assumed huge powers to set aside cleared members of the Commission, set up an Interim Management Committee, install and remove key officials and get Villa to say one thing in the morning and another in the evening.

Thanks to the scale of greed and bungling of the routine flow of large scale corruption, we saw a powerful minister who would be facing corruption trials today if he had not defected to the president’s political party mobilise a large contingent of policemen to arrest a female official of the Commission, and the even more dramatic foray of the state superman  governor who drove to her house, chased away the police contingent  and ferried the damsel out to safety.

Because they could not put a lid on it, we heard of stinking sleaze, dalliance in guest houses and hotels and slapping incidents, histories of tempers and multiple marriages and other things we would wish our children do not hear of.

How could we have witnessed the comical fainting of the Ag MD in the face of questioning, or the revelation by the minister that most contracts of the NDDC went to Abuja legislators?

After all these spectacular incidents around N81bn meant to improve lives of communities in the Niger Delta, you would expect  some equally spectacular action on those found to have stolen funds large enough to build three world-class hospitals or pay secondary school teachers salary for seven years in the whole region from the government.

You will likely be disappointed if you expect President  Buhari to sack Senator Akpabio.

You will be on safer grounds if you expect the National Assembly to cover its mistakenly exposed behind by sending a report to the president recommending reforms that they know he will not act upon.

It will be safe to assume that a few people will be sent to courts for prosecution, but that will merely re-allocate a bit of the spoils to fat-cat lawyers and the judiciary.

The scandal involving NDDC reminds the nation about its losing battles against corruption.

The EFCC is enmeshed in destructive battles that have severely damaged Buhari’s anti-corruption image.

It is possible that there are people with enough clout to mediate this dangerous fight that looks set to confirm that powerful  people in the government of Buhari have been involved in stupendous corruption and are now fighting a civil war that will make everyone a loser.

This will be in everyone’s interest, except the Nigerian citizens’. Magu could be laundered and quietly reassigned.

His traducers will be saved by massive exposures.

President Buhari could be saved further embarrassment over ineffectiveness in dealing with corruption.

There is already a long queue of people waiting to be the next Magu, but they will have to wait a bit while President Buhari allows due process, the fancy word for chronic indecision.

Someone asked why we should even bother. He has a point.

Huge amounts sent to the Niger Delta is Nigerian peoples’ money.

How it is abused and stolen is all our business.

The Magu saga is important to us all.

Yes, chasing corruption in Nigeria gives you hypertension and could seriously shorten your life.

It is wrong to say we should give up. It is our money.

It is the same as being robbed and beaten up by armed robbers, or scammed out of your entire possessions .It is our money.

We must stop it being stolen.