WHEN last did you read about Rep. Farouk Lawan, Femi Otedola and the US$ 620,000 thriller? Where is Farouk Lawan? Where is Femi Otedola? Where is the 620,000 dollars bribe money? How did the story end?
What has happened to the Farouk subsidy probe report and the companies first deleted and re-inserted in the list of culpable companies? What has happened to the House Committee of Ethics etc probe into the bribe saga?
Why is the House of Representatives silent on this but rather prickly about the implementation of the budget? Why has the story slipped out of our minds and out of the news pages? So what we have to debate now is what percentage of the budget has been implemented or how much of the budget allocations have been released? Is there a conspiracy of silence?
Honestly, this amnesia was predicted. On 10 July 2012 I wrote here that: “My prediction is that at the end of the day, this case will become another Ibori case. Rep. Farouk Lawan will walk away free and the nation may need to apologise to him!” This pattern of anti-corruption war has been with us. When the government’s back is pushed to the wall, it simply leads us through a charade while it waits for the matter to flip out of our minds. For effect another sizzler is introduced to effectively sedate us.
Meanwhile alleged oil subsidy thieves are being charged to court and granted bail for N20 million! If you can steal N4 billion, why would it be difficult to post bail for N20 million? Just forget the trials. They get their bail, trial stalls for years and we forget and move on to another movie slide.
The list of those charged at least confirms one fact. Nigerians are right that political cronies are holding the oil industry, and by extension Nigerians, to ransom. Nigerians are very much aware of the corruption campaign contributions have created in the oil industry.
A few years ago it was alleged that one of the richest Nigerians raided banks in Lagos for billions to contribute to a presidential election.
Immediately after the election, the individual allegedly got five waivers from the Federal Government as the government slapped a fuel price increase on Nigerians! There can be no doubt that campaign contributions are closely linked with the sleaze in the oil industry.
The United States puts a limit to campaign contributions to avoid inherent corrupting effects. This type of limit is in the INEC laws but is hardly enforced. But I believe that we can, if we put our minds to it. Again, there is always a concern about the influence of lobbyists in US politics and government. For us, the question is how much space we can give oil lobbyists in the management of our economy.
It is a mark of Nigeria’s un-seriousness that the dreaded oil mafia and avaricious monopolists constitute our economic management! With that, it should not surprise anybody that the Farouk/Otedola tango would go the way it has. But such behaviour sets Nigeria on the path of destruction and diminishes our standing in the eyes of the world.
When things happen this way, especially at the highest level of the government, corruption is no longer an isolated disease to be dealt with but a pandemic that requires a concerted mass action to uproot it.
Therefore, if the Federal Government continues to equivocate in taking firm action to rid Nigeria of corruption and instead continues to play on our collective intelligence, it risks unwittingly inviting an unorthodox solution to this national plague! As I wrote this (last week Wednesday morning) I was watching a TV clip of thousands of Nigerian children (ages five to 17) being trafficked into slave labour.
These children are enslaved by poverty, poverty induced by corruption! These children are enslaved because a greedy few among us continue to pocket the billions belonging to all of us! I really do not know for how long this will continue before something monumental gives!
As we continue this fuel subsidy bellyaching, the big question is: why should we be importing what we should be exporting? Nobody seems to have the answer. Nobody sees this anomaly as a national disgrace.
culled from vangaurdng
June 18, 2012, 05:10:31 PM