They served their fatherland at various times and in different capacities until they retired. Since then, not much has been heard about them again; SUNNY IDACHABA writes.
Anthony Ani
Etubom Anthony Ani was first as minister of state for foreign affairs and later as finance minister under the late Gen. Sani Abacha from 1994 to 1998, just before Abacha died. That was the last public service appointment he has held. A native of Mbiabo Ikoneto in Odukpani local government area of Cross River state where he is a clan head, he is also a former chairman of KPMG and former president, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
Not too long ago, Chief Ani detailed how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and commercial banks colluded with Western Union and MoneyGram to kill the naira. He posited that the collusion is a national emergency that demands the urgent action of President Muhammadu Buhari in order to save the local currency from losing its value.
While reacting to an article by a renowned Nigerian economist, Henry Boyo, Ani revealed some of the activities of the CBN and commercial banks that are killing the Naira.
According to him, “When in 1995, we at the Ministry of Finance reviewed the country’s sources of foreign revenues; we found out that nothing was coming in from Nigerians in the Diaspora, whereas India and Jamaica were living on foreign exchange from their citizens abroad. When I enquired why Western Union and MoneyGram could not receive money from Nigerians abroad, I was told that it was due to our tax laws.”
He said further, “In 1996, I had proposed (and it was accepted by the Federal Executive Council) in a new law, regarding Nigerians repatriating remuneration from abroad, Nigerians repatriating dividends, royalties, fees, commissions from foreign countries receipts by authors, sportsmen/women, musicians, play writers, artist, etc.
“Some years ago, on my visit to London, I went to Western Union office at Marble Arch, to test by remitting £500 to my son in Nigeria. I first had to convert the money to dollars and to my surprise; Western Union gave me a quote in naira to be claimed by my son. I refused their naira equivalent and insisted that my son must be paid in dollars.
“It was obvious to me that there was an arrangement between our Nigerian banks and Western Union/MoneyGram, whereby the former pays from their excess naira liquidity while the latter retains the dollars abroad. In other words, the dollar remittance is retained abroad and is laundered by the Nigerian banks. This is definitely against the law which provides that all remittances must be brought into Nigeria in foreign currency via domiciliary accounts.”
This disclosure till now has not jolted the government into action in order to reclaim the falling standard of the nation’s currency. However, many years after this revelation, it’s still business as usual. It’s not clear where this Cross River chief could be at the moment.
Abiye Sekibo
Dr. Abiye Sekibo is the former minister of transportation in the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He was earlier the special assistant to a former Rivers state governor and also served as secretary to the state government between 1999 and 2003 before he was appointed a minister.
As minister in August 2003, Sekibo said the federal government was considering a scheme to support local shipping in the oil and gas industry. In September that year, he spoke out against corruption in the ports, saying the government was committed to stamping out the scourge.
Sekibo said the planned port reform would increase private sector involvement, just as he maintained that the government has no business there other than regulation. According to him, the government was not willing to privatise the ports, but would make private operators responsible for terminal operations, buildings and equipment.
He caused a stir in June 2005 when a train carrying 390,000 litres of gasoline to the north derailed in the Bodija area of Ibadan with three of the tankers emptying their contents. In the process, residents were forced to evacuate. Also as minister, Sekibo allegedly supported the Nigerian Railway Corporation’s claim (NRC) that the people were not entitled to compensation since they had been squatting on railway land, a development that nearly sparked off a serious row between the residents and management of NRC.
In September of the same year, Sekibo said the federal government had approved in principle the setting up of a special authority to manage a 25-year railway development plan which would administer a N396 billion fund to improve the ailing railway system, two-thirds of the fund he said would be provided by the Chinese government as a grant loan to be operated under the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) arrangement.
Probably, it was that initiative that later gave birth to the revitalisation of the sector today. Long after he left the cabinet, he seems to have shunned public office as not much has been heard about him again.
Tim Menakaya
Dr. Tim Menakaya is a foremost trained medical doctor principally based in Onitsha, Anambra state, where he practises medicine. However, he first came to limelight in 1999 when he was appointed into the cabinet by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He, therefore, took up that appointment as the first minister of health when Nigeria returned to democratic governance in 1999. As someone who had carved a niche for himself in the medical field prior to that appointment, he had garnered a lot of awards for himself.
Dr. Menakaya was not popular on the ground of his position as health minister, but on the ground of his constant tango with other private medical doctors like Dr Jeremiah Abalaka and others who were making inroads into the discovery of cure for HIV/AIDS virus which was a serious threat to humanity in the late 90s and early 2000.
The constant harassment and his inability to harness local opportunities that were inherent in the medical field led to people asking questions about his ability to take the country to the desired land in the new millennium. As a result of this, Obasanjo fired him without any major cabinet shake-up and was replaced immediately.
While defending his stewardship in the cabinet a few years later, Menakaya said, “We met a deplorable health sector with unacceptable health indices. We planned interventions together in order to reverse the situation. We took positive actions whose impacts are already being felt by Nigerians and a lot more of those actions will begin to impact the majority of Nigerians in the near future.”
His travails had started long before his sack; for instance, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) in Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital Ile-Ife had called for his removal over what they called his maladministration and sheer incompetence. They went further to accuse him of deceit and inconsistency in the nation’s health policies. Since his sacking from the cabinet in 2000, nothing has been heard about him again despite the political activities all over the country