By Dele Sobowale
“Presido, RE: PIB. What u said about Mark and Bankole is, as usual, monumental. They can make history & name. Let us watch and see what they do.” Chukwukere, Garki.

Pa Chukwukere was only partly right.
We need to do more than watch and see; we must ensure that the present NASS and the President don’t pass the PIB before they leave because if they do, it will amount to the greatest betrayal of the Nigerian people ever since the slave trade. Because of that, I have sent the letter reproduced below to the President, the Senate President and the Speaker of the House – by Speedpost because I can’t afford DHL or UPS. At any rate, NIPOST is our own.

I plead with all patriotic Nigerians reading this column today to get on the President’s Facebook and ask him to back-off the seriously-flawed PIB. Read on.

“Dear Sirs,
RE: PIB

Forgive me for this joint address to the top three officials of our Federal Republic of Nigeria in the year 2011. Only God knows which, if any of you, will remain in those positions after May 29, 2011. But, one thing is certain; you will all remain Nigerians. So will I.

Therefore, irrespective of our positions, political affiliations, ethnicity and religion, even now, we are at least united in one respect – we are all Nigerians and as such owe our first allegiance to our fatherland. There is no other motive for this letter, which will be made public, than to ensure that the vital interests of our nation are protected – now and forever whenever this bill is eventually passed. Let me also state very clearly that the nation needs a bill to restructure the petroleum sector and to make it more attractive to private investors. But, not the bill; which is now about to be rushed through the National Assembly; as will be demonstrated presently. This bill gives too much to others and too little to Nigeria.

For a start, two weeks ago, I had written an appeal to the NASS urging them to step down this bill until a new NASS which will have four years is elected because it is a complex bill. The original ran into over 800 pages and it is doubtful if up to 10 of our lawmakers read the entire document.

But, I not only obtained a copy of the bill, at great expense to myself, I read it; condensed it and even wrote an Executive Summary not more than 12 pages out of it. Since war is too important to be left only to Generals, I had assumed that a bill which will affect the welfare of Nigerians so profoundly will also be considered too important to be left only to members of the NASS. I was waiting for the NASS to call for a national input into the bill; perhaps to conduct zonal hearings and give the people whose parsimony they will auction off a chance to have a say in their own future. Nothing like that happened.

Instead, the passage of the bill had been treated as a conspiracy between the NASS, the International Oil Companies, IOCs, and, now, the Presidency. The House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill with slight amendments to the original document prepared by patriotic Nigerians. The Senate is getting set to pass its own version with several amendments which favour IOCs more than the Nigerian people.

To demonstrate that this is not an alarm by an “uninformed” person, enclosed are photocopies of the front and 7th pages of the version now under consideration in the Senate. I have spent nothing less than N300,000 of my own money to obtain these documents. The Senate version is so riddled with unpatriotic amendments suggesting that elements in government labouring under conflict of interest and the IOCs have collaborated in the attempt to foist a bill on Nigerians which is not in our interest.

The President’s promise, when on state visit to Turkey, that the PIB will be passed before May 2011 was alarming because it means that Jonathan might have been persuaded to support a bill which is not in our  national interest. Unfortunately, the President is handicapped by his quest for re-election. He probably has not had the time to read what he is being asked to support by his advisers in the Executive branch. The leading advisers to the President are the Minister of Petroleum Resources, the Senior Special Adviser to the President and the Group Managing Director of NNPC.

The minister, a former Executive Director of an OIC also has a Special Assistant who is also a former employee of the same IOC. The GMD-NNPC similarly has at least one assistant recruited from an IOC; and the Senior Special Adviser to Jonathan is also a former senior staff of an IOC but also surrounded by “escapees” from various IOCs. On account of conflict of interest, they not only, deliberately or inadvertently, serve the interest of the IOCs; they also constitute the spy ring which WikiLeaks has exposed. One thing is certain.

Whereas the IOCs pursue their own self-interest 100 per cent, top officials of the Executive branch of government are, at best, lukewarm, and, at worst subversive of the national interest. They probably have collaborated to produce the unpatriotic document which Senators will be asked to pass as PIB. The President of the Senate should for once stand up for the people of Nigeria and step down the bill.

And, if he will not, then the Speaker of the House, Dimeji Bankole, having been betrayed by his political associates, should now serve Nigeria. He can do this two ways. First, since the House and Senate versions differ, he can delay harmonisation process until the end of May. In the alternative, he can insist on the House version which is more in the national interest. He has nothing to lose; more to gain by making his last days in the NASS his finest hours.

As for the President, he is advised to face his campaign instead of rushing to endorse a bill which will haunt him for the rest of his life.

So, gentlemen, the appeal is clear. From now on, the PIB can no longer be a conspiracy by a few against the rest of us. Please, leave the bill alone.

Sincerely yours.
OPADOKUN OWES NBS APOLOGIES
— 1
“The methods being used are the old, archaic methods, which could not stand the test of time.”
Ayo Opadokun, DAILY SUN, February 2, 2011, on the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS.
On February 2, 2011, an interview with Ayo Opadokun was published in the SUN on page 38, entitled, “National Bureau of Statistics is part of the problem.” The rider said: “Their methods are old and archaic – Ayo Opadokun.” I read the piece, with alarm, a day before visiting NBS whose services I have found immeasurably useful.

In fact, it will be extremely difficult to find two more dedicated officers of government in the entire country than Mr Leo Sanni and his boss S.J. Ichedi – both of the National Bureau of Statistics. I went to them for refuge after another agency of government, after extending an invitation to me, wasted my transport and accommodation money, without producing the reports requested for more than two weeks. NBS produced the reports in two minutes!!! I strongly believe Ayo Opadokun got it all wrong….