Jerry Uwah
Diezani Alison-Madueke is used to being the prosecutor and judge in her own case. In 2012 when her subordinates doled out the colossal sum of N2 trillion as subsidy on spurious fuel imports, Mrs. Alison-Madueke as minister of petroleum resources calmly set up committees to probe her own sins of commission or omission. Everyone in Aso Rock pretended as if the minister who presided over such monumental fraud had no case to answer.
The goddess of President Goodluck Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet is therefore surprised that the House of Representatives is probing allegations that she spent N10 billion hiring private jets.
The minister is on solid ground. During last Sunday’s boring presidential chat, Jonathan rose to a spirited defence of his minister of petroleum resources. He argued rather derisively that his ministers were spending too much time on parliamentary probes, and that Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s job involves a lot of travelling. The president was implicitly justifying the spurious expenditure on private jets. He insisted that he was not aware that the minister has gone to court to stop the parliament from carrying out its constitutional function of probing Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s profligacy.
Jonathan was either being economical with the truth, or he is light years behind what is happening in his cabinet. The judge who handles the case has admitted that the minster has filed for an injunction which the court would rule on after hearing from the respondents.
The minister’s stampeded litigation suggests that she has something to hide. The search for an injunction to halt the parliamentary probe is a signpost of the corruption-friendly administration run by Jonathan.
It is doubtful if any of her predecessors had ever presided over the magnitude of scams that Mrs. Alison-Madueke now waltzes around.
She deceived the National Assembly that if she was given the sum of $1.6 billion, she would fix the country’s four refineries and make them churn out refined petroleum products at 70 per cent of their installed capacities. The law makers bowed to her slippery tongue and approved the payment. Today the refineries are still lumbering at 18 per cent of their installed capacities.
Ironically the woman who presided over the fuel subsidy and refinery scams is still calling the shots in a ministry that accounts for 70 per cent of Nigeria’s budget and 90 per cent of its foreign reserves.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which Mrs. Alison-Madueke superintends, is yet to explain why the colossal sum of $20 billion was not remitted to the federation account. The president claims that no money was missing. But he has ordered a forensic audit into the allegation. Jonathan himself entertains doubts over what he was telling the nation.
From Last Sunday’s presidential chat where Jonathan gratuitously defended his soft stance on corruption, it is clear that the minister of petroleum has every reason to deride the House of Representatives for daring to probe her.
However, the veracity in the alleged spending of N10 billion on private jets could be attested to by the minister’s panicky litigation seeking to halt the probe. In fact the NNPC is reported to be collating the amount the speaker of the House of Representatives, AminuTambuwal, spent hiring private jets since he fell out with Aso Rock, just to prove that Mrs. Alison-Madueke was not alone in the private jet hiring scam.
The minister of petroleum resources is the by-product of a culture of impunity institutionalised by the Jonathan administration. The administration’s 98 per cent tolerance for corruption has eventually hamstrung it.
It is willing to accommodate all forms of incompetence and abuse of office. With Mrs. Alison-Madueke sitting on a mountain of allegation of corrupt practices from NNPC to the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), no one in Aso Rock could lift a finger in protest against Abba Moro, who as minister of the interior, sidelined the board of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), awarded a recruitment contract to an infantile firm owned by his mentors and presided over a deadly recruitment drive that claimed the lives of 20 Nigerians.
Like Mrs. Alison-Madueke, Moro is the prosecutor and judge in his own case. The two ministers are convinced that with their godfathers solidly behind them, nothing would happen. And it has turned out to be so.
Those who lost their loved ones in the avoidable tragedy of March 16 are silently nursing their wounds in their homes. No one remembers that Abba Moro, the man whose selfish interest culminated in the calamity is still enjoying the luxury of his office and the loot from the fleecing of one million jobless Nigerians.
The N2 trillion stolen in the fuel subsidy scam under the watch of Mrs. Alison-Madueke has paled into insignificance. No one remembers that the woman who presided over such colossal looting of public treasury is still calling the shots at the gold mine.
Abba Moro and Mrs. Alison-Madueke must have mistaken Nigerians for Stone Age people who see their rulers as infallible superhuman. Unfortunately, the culture of impunity that is sustaining their stay in office, is inadvertently stoking the flames of Nigeria’s Arab Spring.
