Asalamalekun,

KINDLY take a few minutes of your time to read through this letter which I hope should meet you in peace.Let me plead with you to read the fairly long one as I don’t think I will ever have to write you again for the rest of your tenure as a governor.

The purpose of this letter has to do with some remarks credited to you when you received the Ebora of Owuland and former President  Olusegun Obasanjo in your state some days ago.

You were quoted to have made two fundamental statements while receiving the visiting former president.The first was that  you were sure the Chibok girls would have been rescued if they were abducted under Obasanjo.

The  second was that former President Goodluck Jonathan did not call to commiserate with you in your words “…..after the Chibok abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in April, 2014, it took 19 days for me to receive a call from the Presidency.”

First let us deal with the wizardry you ascribed to Obasanjo in a moment of genuflecting pandering. Thank God we were not all born yesterday as not be able to reconnect with our pertinent recent history.

Governorship  candidate

We recall vividly that Omoluabi Funso Wliilams,the Lagos State governorship candidate of the PDP was gunned down in his house in Lagos in 2006 and Obasanjo whom you said  would have rescued the Chibok girls with the speed of lightening could not apprehend his killers. Ditto for the South-South National Vice-Chairman of the PDP, Marshal Harry.

So frequent were high profile killings under that administration that the Nobel Laureate  said the PDP had a “nest of killers”. That the Otta Farmer tore his PDP card did nothing to our memory card.

The sorest thumb under Obasanjo’s watch was the murder of his Attorney General,Chief Ajibola Ige(SAN) in December 2001. As we gathered to say farewell  to Ige at the Adamasingba Stadium in Ibadan, Prof. Wole Soyinka kept on interlacing his oration to him with “the murderers are in our midst”. Obasanjo sat there and listened to all Soyinka said but for the six years  he stayed in office after the act,his  Justice Minister could not get justice.

Sunday Ehindero,Obasanjo Inspector General of police at a stage declared that the Ige matter was closed only for Obasanjo to declare during his parting presidential media chat that Bola Ige might have been killed by a drug baron but he could not use the wand you claimed he could have used to rescue the Chilbok girls to apprehend him.The statement irked Mrs. Funsho Adegbola, Ige’s daughter such that she  declare that her father’s ghost would haunt Obasanjo.

By some strange coincidence Obasanjo  out of office got friendly with a man he was to later brand a “drug baron” until he left the PDP on the account of not wanting to remain in the same party with a man  allegedly wanted for narcotics.

Enough on Obasanjo and to your self-indictment. If you had turned the matter in your hand properly you should never have mentioned that it took former President Goodluck Jonathan 19 days before he could place a call to you. Did you listen to yourself Mr. Governor?

Please hold my hand and let us review the whole matter again.The narrative is that Chibok school had been under lock and key for a while until you allegedly ordered the school to be re-opened for examination purposes. I am not aware of your explanation, pardon me if you did make one to the effect that the West African Examination Council (WAEC) did not want the school re-opened for the examinations but that you allegedly insisted to the contrary. On the day the over 200 girls were reportedly carted away,it was said that neither the Principal,matron nor security personnel were in the school area.

You were the Chief Security officer of the state in question and after this unfortunate incident all you were doing was counting 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,1 0,11,12,13,14,15,17,17,18,19 days only to look at your phone to see Jonathan calling.You now folded your babanriga, adjusted your cap and with a little frown on your face to answer “hello”. Pray Mr. Governor, if your daughter was among the  over 200 girls abducted would you not have put politics aside to find yourself at the villa that night to give a first- hand account of the tragic event and compare notes on what should be done? If I may ask,who were you then discussing the abduction of the girls with in all those 19 days? Your party secretariat? The invisible government of Nigeria?It is unfortunate that by this little slip you may be giving credence to  the widely held belief that the abduction may have been orchestrated to serve political purpose.

The whole saga became ‘curiouser’ as top military  intelligence (working with the invisible government?) reportedly fed the then President with a false report that the girls had been rescued thereby destabilising his response to the whole situation.

Before anybody could spell Chibok,demonstrators started rolling on the floor in Abuja demanding the head of the president without a placard surfacing in front of your office who allegedly ordered the Chibok school re-opened.

Is it now any surprise that some of the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners and the principal of Chibok school have landed plum political appointments and have long abandoned rolling on the floor at Unity Fountain?

My prayer is that God in His infinite mercy would  let us find those girls one day so He can prove that Obasanjo does not have the final say over their lives.When that happens,he would have to eat his words that those innocent girls are gone for good and that anyone saying they would ever be found again is a deceiver!

I am certain that one day we would bring this matter to a final closure and this country can see how far evil can go in the pursuit of temporary power. After all,we have seen a “Pastor” who accused some Pastors of collecting N7b as bribe for the 2015 elections now recanting and apologising to the men concerned. When the final day of reckoning comes on this pathetic episode, Your Excellency, may have to tell this country more than “Obasanjo would have rescued them “.

Give my regards to Hajia.

Yours Inquiringly.

The more things change in Nigeria

THE report below sadly confirms our position that unless we CHANGE the structures of Nigeria,nothing is going to change for the better. Read the report: The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) withheld 12 percent more money in six months under President Muhammadu Buhari than it did with his predecessor from 2013 to 2014.

According  to a report by the National Resource Governance Institute (NGRI), an international non-profit policy institute with focus on oil, gas and minerals, NNPC withheld more in the last six months of 2015 than in the first six. “Under the Buhari government, transfers from NNPC’s convoluted oil sales system to the Federation Account have continued to decline,” the report read.

Oil sale  earnings

“After analyzing NNPC’s own numbers, we estimate that during the last six months of 2015, the corporation transferred $2.1 billion in oil proceeds to the Federation Account from the three types of oil sales we examined: regular export sales, domestic crude sales, and sales of oil from NPDC fields.

“During that same period, however, the value of these sales totaled $6.3 billion. In other words, under the Buhari government, only one third of NNPC’s oil sale revenues found their way into the country’s treasury.  “The figures show that NNPC retained $4.2 billion in the last six months of 2016, 14 percent more than what was withheld in (Goodluck) Jonathan’s last days as president.

NNPC withholdings of selected oil sale revenues

“NNPC reported retaining $4.2 billion—or 66 percent—of the value of the oil sold through these three types of transactions.

“As seen in the figures above, this was 14 percent more than the corporation’s withholdings under Goodluck Jonathan in the first half of 2015, and 12 percent higher than the share withheld in 2013 and 2014.  “Go back a decade, and the numbers nearly flip: in 2005, NNPC sent 68 percent of its oil sale earnings to the Federation Account and kept only 32 percent.” The report, which was compiled based on NEITI financial audit reports, NNPC financial reports, and NRGI’s investigations, revealed that NNPC withheld 52%, 52% and 59% of its revenue in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively.

Where does the money go?

NRGI did not stop its research on how much was retained by the NNPC, but takes the process further to unveil tentative locations where the monies end up. According to the report, some of the monies are used to pay outstanding joint venture debts, refineries, and the rest to NPDC which it referred to as “one of the Nigerian petroleum sector’s great black boxes”. NNPC withholdings of revenues, January-June versus July-December 2015

“The subsidiary (NPDC) produced a sizeable 110,000 barrels of oil per day in the last six months of 2015. But we have seen no evidence that proceeds from NPDC oil sales enter the treasury. “Instead, they are spent in an unknown manner. In one especially questionable case, we found evidence that NNPC has retained all earnings from the offshore Oil Mining Lease (OML) 119, a field owned wholly by NPDC that produces around 30,000 barrels per day of Okono grade crude.”

These revelations have called Buhari’s fiscal responsibility message to question, with NRGI saying “corruption aside, allocating $4.2 billion in six months to NNPC expenses of unknown priority raises serious questions about fiscal responsibility”.

NNPC ACT and Constitution at loggerheads

Recommending probable solutions to the president, NRGI said “clarifying the financial relationship between NNPC and the state may be the single most important component of the Buhari administration’s oil sector reform campaign”.

The report further recommends that a “longstanding misalignment” between the NNPC Act of 1977 and the 1999 constitution “leaves this money in legal limbo”.NRGI seeks that “the government should put in place a clear, legally enforceable rule governing which revenues NNPC can keep”.

NRGI commended Buhari and his team for clearly working towards a cleaner oil sector, stating that much of its focus has been limited to replacing unethical officials and tracking stolen funds.

“The leadership can build on gains made to date by clarifying the financial relationship between NNPC and the state,” it concluded.

Source:The Cable.