₦airaland Forum

This thread makes me laugh and is so predictable. Few weeks ago I said that because the expectations created by the incoming regime were unrealistic, they would have to find a way of managing expectations which would require claiming that the old regime had "finished all the money".

Anyone with a modicum of sense would realise that Nigeria subsists on a diet of daily, mostly oil, revenue. Unless GEJ is taking the oil wells with him back to Otuoke, the fiscal situation now is no worse than it was in March when we were being promised heaven and earth. Oil prices are higher than they were in March.

It's also important to note that we were fed with a lot of outlandish claims such as $49bn missing in an 18 month period. Even taking into consideration the fall in oil prices, why are we now being led to believe that this otherwise stolen revenue would no longer be generated after May 29?

SeverusSnape:
What's this co.ck and bull story?

Some of you people just love playing the ostritch in your shameless defence of the indefensible.

@OP

I don't know how time resourced you are but you are wasting your time trying to explain how the market works to Nigerians. They love to reduce discussions to an analysis of character/personality, some have already talked about patriotism and integrity as the solutions to making local refineries work.

If it is commercially viable to refine locally, private investors would be doing so already. I understand Dangote is dipping his toe in. More importantly, any suggestion that the Government should revive our refineries is foolhardy because the Government has a clear cut record of being abject failures in managing businesses. It's not about simply having honest leaders, the Government is simply not suited for running things on a commercial basis. Despite 4 decades of abject failures, Nigerians insist on repeating the same failed policies hoping for a different outcome. I despair for Nigerians.

Sahara reporters ran this story a while ago

http://saharareporters.com/2007/09/16/lagos-rep-house-representative-fraud-scandal

The Nigerian lower house is full of shady characters as espoused by a recent revelation by the Supreme Court of Georgia in the US. Saharareporters found out that On February 26 2007 the highest court in the state of Georgia ordered that Femi Gbaja with state bar number 288330 be suspended from the practice of law for 36 months.

 The punishment for Femi Gbaja’s offence would have been outright debarment, however he played dead before a full panel of the Supreme Court of Georgia led by Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears,before the court could rule on the petition from his client, he filed a petition for Voluntary Discipline, filed under bar rule 4-227(b) in which he fully admitted to stealing $25,000 from his client. 

Femi Gbaja as he was known in the case file accepted payment of $25,000 as a personal injury claims and deposited those funds in his attorney trust account in January 2003. He failed to disburse the funds to his client; instead he withdrew the funds, closed his practice and left for Nigeria where he ran for elections to represent Surulere I Federal Constituency in the Federal House of Representative under the banner of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 2003. Upon arrival in Nigeria, curiously, Mr. Femi Gbaja added another name to avoid detection, he is known in Nigeria with a compound name “Femi Gbaja-Biamila”.

ANAMBRA11:
yorubas wont be happy with this list

You that is talking, can Chi Onwura, as an Anambranian, run for office in Enugu? Can someone from Enugu run for office in Imo?

There is also a Nigerian MP in the Polish parliament:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Godson

John Abraham Godson (né Godson Chikama Onyekwere; born 25 November 1970) is a Polish politician, a university teacher and a former Charismatic minister. He is a Polish, PSL Member of Parliament.

They should go back to their villages. None of them would be able to run for elections in a neighbouring state in Nigeria that they are not indigenous to.

Reference:
Government is never the problem. It is always the people. They ultimately decide what is acceptable and their decisions or indecisions will steer the ship of state. Whether fuel subsidy, economic diversification, excess crude/sovereign wealth or even socio-political issues such as constitutional review, Nigerians are largely irrational and are failing themselves.

Of course the new government will borrow. Of course it will rather 'allocate from the centre', of course it will have its own cartels, rent seekers and thieves. These are things government, any government cannot do without. It is onjy the people that can bring about fundamental change on the altar of personal interests in favour of collective, lasting ideals. It is only the people who can agree to liquidate a bankrupt Osun, Imo or Zamfara. It is only the people who will decide if Holy Pilgrimages are an investment or an expense.

I wish to warn again about the waste of time and distraction from the 'fundamentals' this anti-corruption ideology is become. I wouldn't go as far as saying that the drum beats of corruption around the outgoing regime coincided with the moves first to reform the oil sector, then reform the country as a whole through 'the Confab'. The truth is I would rather invest in a company with strong fundamentals rather than one that strives not to lose a penny. I am rather worried about how many bridges Julius Berger is building than what the CEO earns or what his CFO steals. Even if every penny this country earns is kept, will it develop this country, no. Can it match our population, no. Will it make us rich, no. Will it build all the infrastructure, no. Especially when oil prices fall. We are a strategically vulnerable country not because of corruption but because Nigerians are not willing to take the risk of communal trust and bear the sacrifices of nationhood.

Watch out. We will gain a few dollars here and there as people steal less but the great cover-up, the great deception will remain for another many years. When OBJ said the elections saved us from the brink, I just smiled. Yes, of course. The brink of the truth.

They do say people get the governments they deserve. Much of Nigerian political discourse dwells on how the "cake" is to be split, not on how to expand the cake - Should the Government subsidise fuel, should it give ASUU wage rises, should it give doctors wage rises ,e.t.c People forget that you can only squeeze out so much from oil revenues which are in any case volatile as prices can easily fall, as we are now witnessing, leaving the country vulnerable.

There is a greath myth that has developed that our problems are solely or largely a corruption problem. That with a "person of integrity" at the helms, we would suddenly possess the means to solve our problems. In many ways, Sanusi's exaggerated $20bn/$49bn claims helped to perpetuate that myth.The reality is a lot more nuanced than that and it would become apparent in the coming years. No doubt many would seek to reconcile their dissapointment in the future by proclaiming that Buhari is actually corrupt or that, as this thread seeks to do, GEJ has stolen all the money. But if there is one benefit of Buhari's incoming administration, it is that it may at last force a genuine reconsideration of what lies at the root of our problems. I remain very pessimistic.

PassingShot:
Really, you're sounding very funny now. Does it mean that not supporting or operating illegal accounts translate to not having savings? Aren't there many other legal ways of saving our excess earnings? Can't a bill be sponsored to operate the SWF and ECA so that they become legal?

It's quite simple, your party's position is, or was until it became recently inconvenient, that the constitution does not allow for savings. It's not a question of merely sponsoring bills, by the way, nothing stopped your legislators from sponsoring one and I would be obliged if you can refer to one they sponsored.

Don't worry at all. Whatever can be recovered will be recover but do not come here to shout witch-hunting or victimization as some of you sympathetic to PDP have already been doing here. Do not complain when the searchlights start to beam.

My position has always been that your party and PDP are both crooks. 2 cheeks of the same bu-tt. If your party is going to recover the money anyway, then there is no need for these hyperbolic claims of economic doom. The reality is that this all smacks of expectations management.

PassingShot:
There are two issues here:

1. The accounts are actually illegal and it is not contestable since it is not backed by the constitution or any bill of the NASS

Precisely. If this is your party's official position, it would entail that we should have no savings in the first place. This renders hypocritical any criticism of the government that it failed to save nor could criticism be sustained on the basis that the government is having to borrow to meet revenue shortfalls arising from an oil price crash.

If NOI insisted that we need to maintain a rainy day fund in the event of a fall in oil price and your party said that we shouldn't save, tell me who has been vindicated?

2. As illegal as they were, these accounts are maintained and are expected to be used for the benefit of the country. But when the custodian of the accounts, hiding behind the illegality of operating the accounts, decided to use the funds for their personal ends with no recourse to joint-owners (the states); no good explanation for what the money has been used for, you cannot blame the governors for asking the money to be shared.

If the funds have been used for personal ends, then your party should be in a position to investigate and recover much of the money from May 29. No be so? Or are you effectively signalling by your defeatist posture the impotence of the incoming government?

PassingShot:
Do not pretend not to know the reason for the governors asking for the savings to be shared. If you sincerely do not know, it's because the reserves got depleted without their knowledge and without good explanation for such depletion. If FG had not stolen from the reserves, those governors would not have insisted on sharing it.

All in all, GEJ/NOI/FG are responsible for this mess we are now.

The article I linked actually sets out the reason APC wanted to scrap savings, that it is illegal to maintain such savings account. You are implying in your post that savings would have been allowed if it wasn't depleted sans the consent of the governors, but if it is illegal to have the savings, the manner in which this purported illegality is utilised would be immaterial. You cannot have it both ways.

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Nigeria’s main opposition party said it will scrap the country’s sovereign wealth fund and a separate excess crude account if it wins elections in February.“We’re going to put a stop to them,” Lai Mohammed, a spokesman for the All Progressives Congress, or APC, said in an interview in London yesterday. “The sovereign wealth fund and the excess crude account are illegal.”

Chibuhealth:
Guy. Isi adiro gi mma, ibu ezigbo anuofia. Who cares if the news was fake?

Surely the fact that the news was fake is absolutely central to reactions to it. Unless you just like acting like a hyper-sensitive pregnant woman reacting emotionally to fabricated statements.

coputa:
The economy will soon bleed to death from the monumental waste that is perpetrated by okonjo wahala.What of the excess crude accout and the sovereign wealth fund,have they been depleted,this woman has succeded in deceiving Nigerians.

Now that oil prices have fallen, it's hilarious seeing people asking for recourse to the savings. Just a few months ago when oil prices were still high, the short-sighted demands of the opposition was that we should have no such savings.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-30/nigeria-s-opposition-wants-to-scrap-sovereign-oil-funds

Now that our economic illiteracy is bearing fruit, the person who was warning about the need for fiscal prudence and savings is receiving abuse whilst the people who wanted it depleted are seeking to gain political capital from a relative lack of savings. You people are dolts.

I think GEJ was the least bad of 2 crap options. GEJ was a spineless buffoon who aided and abetted corruption but he didn't, unlike Buhari, have an affinity for economically illiterate policies.

Unlike most people, I believe that inept economic policies are a bigger vice than corruption. Buhari's first tenure was an ode to economic ineptitude. Corruption will still carry on regardless, at best to a lesser degree, but the avalanche of daft policies will be his greatest undoing.

XBLadez:
Boko haram has to end because their father will soon be on the seat of power. After all, it's what they've been fighting for.
Boko Haram has been the APC deadliest tool forged to militate against GEJ's government. The Foolanis can now rest and leave innocent citizens in peace

Boko Haram is not a Fulani organisation nor is it a partisan political organisation. I will concede that, at most, there could have been elements who assisted them out of frustration with the GEJ regime but the group itself is an Islamist group with no partisan preferences.

This is not the end of Boko Haram. It will simply morph into what it used to be: a terror group capable of staging bomb attacks but incapable of holding large swathes of territory.

MzJackBaueress:
Jonathan and PDP were sponsors of bokoharam to destabilize the north. there are no longer funds to sponsor the terror group since PDP have lost

So I take it this wild conspiratorial claim will be investigated and the PDP culprits prosecuted by the new regime or are you just typing things you know are false?

dammytosh:
Thanks.

Anytime i doubt the ability of Buhari and his team to deliver the much expected 'LAS VEGAS' Nigeria. I take solace in the fact that it can never be as worse as Jonathan's tenure.

This will be the standard exculpatory refrain in the coming years: GEJ would have been worse.

These are stellar achievers but you should include more people in top rate universities like:

http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/profile/dapo.akande

The expansion of the presidential fleet was a good example of how disconnected GEJ was from everyday Nigerians. It showed him as a vain, obtuse and callous leader who cared more about his own comfort and was insensitive to the people's needs.

I like this logic. If NNPC sells x amount of crude and remits -x amount to the federation account, the difference between x and -x is a "stolen" amount. It would follow from this that from May 29, the federation account would receive a massive boost which is the equivalent of at least a third of yearly FG budgeted expenditure. No more unpaid salaries or even a need to borrow money from May 29. . . can't wait.

[b]The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have warned against any move by the government to remove subsidy from petroleum products.

Nigeria’s National Assembly had passed the 2015 appropriation bill without allocating any money for subsidy payment.

Speaking on Wednesday, Deputy President of the NLC and chairman of the joint May Day celebration of the NLC and TUC, Peter Adeyemi, told journalists that organised Labour believed that government had never subsidised petroleum products.[/b]

Can anyone explain these incongrous statements in bold please. A summary of what is claimed is as follows:

1) Trade unions warn against subsidy removal
2) Trade unions state there has never been subsidy

If 2) is true, 1) cannot be true. Both statements are mutually irreconciliable.

An exasperating thing I have noticed about Nigeria is that because corruption is so endemic, any claims about corruption is deemed to be true by a credulous populace even if the claims are patently false and so irrational as to defy common sense.

“So, it is like the more you look, the less you see. For us in Labour, we are not going to support that because it is outside our mandate as leaders. We hope that the incoming government, in a desperate bid to look for money, will not look for money in the wrong place”.

The implication of the $20bn story and the new regime is that we should have an additional $20bn, $10bn given lower prices, if the old corrupt order no longer applies. If you believe that $20bn disappeared in a fiscal year in which the FG paid salaries and debts, it must follow that this money would now be available to be appropriately spent, discounting for lower oil prices of course. There should, therefore, be no question of a "desperate bid to look for money".

Barcanista is discharging his responsibility as a paid propagandist but you have to chuckle at how this thread and the brouhaha over the PWC report illustrate a Nigerian masterclass in faux outrage.

It's difficult to comprehend the logic which informs a stance that the theft in the oil sector is an egregious outrage which neccesitates an investigation, but that nevertheless such investigation should restrict its remit to the period of GEJ's presidency. If corruption is unconsionable, all moral persons would I daresay hold this view, it follows that it ought to be thoroughly tackled without fear or favour. Oby Ezekwesili once came up with a figure of $400bn misappropiated. If such a figure is missing and one professes to be anti-corruption, it would follow that you would want to review this and not restrict yourself to a "mere" $20bn. Why search for $20bn solely and turn the ostrich when it comes to 20 times that figure?

I have always noted that Nairaland political debates are pseudo-debates. The debates are characterised by people expressing opinions which are a subterfuge for other motivations. If this is about tackling corruption and not yet another round of Nigerian political witch-hunts, the type that once informed OBJ's investigation into PTF's finances, having a thorough root and branch investigation which would necessarily span a longer timescale would be a no-brainer. But of course, we all know that selective outrage is by definition a front.

Here are some stories we "need not" investigate even though we all oppose corruption:

$29bn - the amount lost by the treasury in the last decade in an apparent gas price-fixing scam - leaked Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report in Octoberr

$6.8bn - the amount a fuel subsidy scam has cost Nigeria over the last two years - a parliamentary report said in April

$400bn - estimated amount of Nigeria's oil revenue stolen or misspent since independence in 1960 - World Bank's ex-vice-president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili said in August

Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20081268

There are 2 problems with the politics of the $20bn story for me. Because the amount was a fabrication, a good story would need to be spun after May 29 as to why it cannot be recovered.

A second related problem is the false expectations aspect: Nigerians expect that this vast pool of money previously stolen by GEJ and his cronies would become available to meet public needs after May 29.

It will be difficult to explain these 2 problems away as public perception meets the monumental force of reality in the coming months and years.

Obijulius:
The same way GEJ is to blame for Tinubu and Kashamu's criminal records.


See hypocrisy....anyways, just to inform you...she is YORUBA.

Why didn't GEJ investigate and prosecute either of those two? By failing to maintain law and order, he contributed to a climate of lawlessness which influenced this woman.

The constitution requires appointment from all 36 states so the President has no choice in the matter but to appoint Igbos.

coogar:
she's paid it back? how?
i didn't read that in the article.

3rd paragraph from the bottom.

'The fact is within days you were prepared to take advantage. You effectively defrauded others to the tune of £17,000, all of which has been paid back. That money was used to finance your wedding and the subsequent honeymoon.

It would be hilarious if she paid it from proceeds of other undetected fraud she has committed. How the hell do you get hold of a company credit card within 2 days of starting work?

coogar:
£17,000 stolen, 200 hrs unpaid work as punishment.

she's a very smart woman!

She's paid it back. So she's not better off. She can still come back to Nigeria and run for office, preferably in Ogun state a la Kashamu.

This is GEJ's fault. If he had produced a strong viable economy, people will not feel the need to go abroad and steal.

989900:
1. There are 2 ways to go if you can't comprehend, up your comprehension skills, or have me break it down for you like 'elementary'.
2. If OBJ could up our reserves from less than $5B in 1999 to $43b (while paying off debts and selling crude at an average of $35/barrel) in 2007, and Yar'Adua left us with $62b, and the present administration depleted that to $30b thereabout while incurring more debt, even though selling oil at an average of $100/barrel thereabout.
How can anyone commend the coordinating/finance minister?
Is the CBN totally autonomous off the finance ministry?
Did the Naira make any appreciable gain against the dollar while we were selling at $110+/barrel?
3. As per the oil subsidy, if you didn't watch the 'town hall' debate, go look for it and watch again, listen to NOI's explanation, and what Sanusi had to say about it then, and find out what he had to say about the sham later.
Going by your 'gloss', then there is no 'oil subsidy scam', just so we can vindicate NOI.

I usually don't engage with the Nairaland naifs due to lack of time but I thought I spare some time today. You have not only spouted idiotic comments, you are now uttering downright falsehoods. NOI has little to do with foreign reserves as this is managed by the CBN. The Finance Minister has little or no operational control over the actions of the CBN governor. But to illustrate how you are symptomatic of the qunitessential Nigerian ignoramus, even using your moronic metric of assessing the Finance Minister's impact by reference to foreign reserves, NOI still passes with flying colours.

NOI was first appointed FM in July 2003, at the time foreign reserves were $7.6bn, and she left office in June 2006 when reserves stood at $36.5bn. An increase of $28.9bn. See source, at page 17: http://www.bmsa.us/admin/uploads/s0mYKb.pdf

She returned in July 2011 when reserves stood at $31.7bn and right now reserves are at $29.7bn, a fall of $2bn. Sources here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201107010445.html & [url]http://www.cenbank.org/IntOps/Reserve.asp?MoveDate=4/3/2015%207:08:27%20AM[/url]

In effect, her 2 tenures in office have seen a net accumulation of $26.9 billion dollars in reserves. So by your own metric, admittedly an economically illiterate one, NOI has been a success as far as Nigeria's reserves position is concerned!

You talked about paying off debt, are you talking about NOI's debt relief under OBJ? If you want to make a political argument that OBJ was better than GEJ, that's entirely different. I prefer OBJ to GEJ myself, but to spout this odious dross that NOI is incompetent beggars belief.

Just another word on reserves, what matters is the rate of change not the absolute price of crude oil. When prices increase significantly, reserves increase as well. The reason why reserves went up significantly between 2003 and 2008 is because of the huge leap in oil prices, OPEC benchmark price went from $28.1 per barrel in 2003 when NOI was appointed to $61 in 2006 when she left, a more than 100% increase. Prices were $107.46 when she was reappointed in 2011 and are now $49.22 - See source here: http://www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/

As for the subsidy brouhaha, I will leave that for another day. What should be noted is that anyone who thinks Nigeria's oil subsidy was only 300bn Naira before she was appointed and suddenly leapt to 1.3 trillion Naira is hopelessly naive. Even more laughably, that 1.3 trillion Naira figure you cite was already news on the 4th of July 2011, NOI became minister on the 11th of July 2011

Fuel subsidy gulps N1.3 trillion in 2010

on July 04, 2011 / in Sweet Crude 10:18 pm / Comments

By Hector IGBIKIOWUBO
FUEL subsidy cost the Nigerian state N1.3 trillion (about $8.38 billion) in the 2010 fiscal year alone, about 25 per cent of the entire budget expenditure for the year under review. Last year, the approved amended and supplementary budget amounted to N5.159 trillion (about $33.2 billion)

- See source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/07/fuel-subsidy-gulps-n1-3-trillion-in-2010/#sthash.edABpqwn.dpuf

Alphonsocapone:
I dont understand why u keep calling NOI a better economist while her policies has almost dwindled nigerias economy.

Can you point to any data source that shows Nigeria's GDP has contracted or stagnated since she assumed office. Just one source.

eCollynzo:
Buhari what point are you trying to prove? That boko haram weren't created to distabilise GEJ's government?
Please you don't need to use people's lives to prove any point.

This idiocy is getting stale. Boko Haram is an Islamist group with a particular extreme interpretation of Islam. It has nothing to do with Buhari or partisan politics.