Prof Abubakar Olanrewaju Suleiman was the last Minister of Planning in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Suleiman told the Daily Trust on Sunday that efforts by President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption aren’t objective enough to succeed as the president is not beaming his searchlight on who the former minister alleged are also corrupt elements in the All Progressives Congress. He also spoke on Jonathan, the cabals in the oil sector and the 2016 budget proposal
What would you say unfurling disclosures about the spending pattern in the Goodluck Jonathan administration, which you were part of, portray about that government?
It is quite unfortunate that the disclosures and trials are more sensational and emotive… It is unfortunate because of the dimensions they have taken in terms of the methodology the government is using in its attempt to whip up sentiment to attract sympathy from the public.
There is no doubt corruption is unGodly, unBiblical and unQuranic and there should be no tolerance for corruption. Any government that sets out to fight corruption should be encouraged. But in the course of fighting corruption, there must be justice.
The issue that the revelations so far have to do with arms deal is just a way of setting the people against the suspects and against the Jonathan government. Has anybody said these monies were budgeted for arms and were not used for the purpose, or that the monies fell within the security votes?
Security does not necessarily mean physical tools or instruments of coercion. The word is an elusive concept that can’t be identified where it starts from and where it ends. It is a continuum. In the intelligence gathering part of security, for example, one can never see where money spent on intelligence gathering is revealed.
Another illustration is the money said to have been spent on prayers. I won’t say spending a sum of N4 billion was right. But we would be surprised that in the law court, spending N4 billion on prayers at the time it was spent could be justified. Again, if during an election, security votes are spent in a way that there is no violence, there are no terrorist attacks, there is no crisis, then such spending can be justified.
Government may not win such a case because what goes into security is at the discretion of leaders in government and a few people. In a democracy, only the president and a few cabinet members can determine what constitutes core security issues and the spending pattern.
Security matters are always clothed in secrecy. They are so complex that this is the first time in Nigeria we are venturing into making a public drama of it. We have never heard how security votes were spent in Nigeria since 1960, even under Buhari when he was Head of State from 1983 to 1985. The way we are going about it now, it may never come to an end because we may have to go back to 1960 to probe how such monies were expended. And if we thoroughly probe, some highly-placed Nigerians that you and I respect today will be involved - traditional rulers, ex-heads of government, popular business people, our friends abroad. In security spending, so many waters pass under the bridge.
The way the probe is going, government needs to exercise caution. If there isn’t caution, a lot of innocent people would be roped in. At the end of the day, nobody will be free from dipping his hand into security votes for election purposes. No All Progressives Congress governor can swear on the Bible or Quran that he didn’t dip his hand into his security votes for electioneering, especially during November 2014 and April 2015. And since then, has any state House of Assembly challenged its governor on how he expended his security votes? Has any Attorney-General prosecuted any governor on security votes?
In the Electoral Law, surely there are limits to party financing. But has there been any probe into how the APC’s elections at both the state and federal levels were financed? There were the monies spent on hired jets, on media campaigns, on the elections proper, etc, but why is it that it is only the PDP that is being probed?
What is currently happening is perversion of justice; the government of the day has not been just in the way it has started its fight against corruption.
But doesn’t it give you and other PDP leaders some concern when the disclosures zeroed in on the manner of the sourcing of the security votes were done (the Abacha loot, for example) more worrisome, that the monies were not appropriated and that they were diverted (example, the alleged N2.1bn payment to Chief Raymond Dokpesi from the Office of the National Security Adviser for media campaigns)?
Legally, it is absurd, immoral and antithetical to our national interest to spend security votes in some manners, but I maintain that has been the convention. That has been the practice among Nigeria’s political elites, and till now, governments at all levels are replicating it. For instance, in the 2016 budget proposal, at least, N90bn is allocated to the Office of the National Security Adviser. At the end of the year, that office will not be able to account for how it has spent the money. That has been the convention worldwide.
Nigerians should understand clearly the Abacha loot issue.
The money was one government recovered and a school of thought in the Jonathan administration believed part of the money can go for security while the rest go for development. The one for development ostensibly was meant for development; Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had mailed in an explanation on that. The one for security is the one in contention, and I wouldn’t want to go into details on that because the matter is before the law court.
What I maintain here is that, most shocking and monumental as the disclosures are, that the issue of security votes expenditure is complex, and this cuts across parties. Gov Adams Oshiomhole, for example, was alleged to have spent, between November 2012 and December 30, 2012, N911 million from the security votes. As the then Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly challenged Oshiomhole, the money was unaccounted for.
To the masses, spending huge sums on arms may sound astonishing and was enough to whip up sentiments, but to the elites, it was nothing. Even APC leaders and governors are not talking about it. While the fight against corruption must be thoroughly done to serve as a deterrent for those who would still want to do it, the way it is being done is punitive against those perceived to be enemies and political opponents. This way, the fight is being carried out is being rendered inconsequential. But if it is made corrective, it will yield results.
Democracy as it is practised in Nigeria is vulnerable to corruption. Every voter wants to collect money before he votes. I was a minister and, for God’s sake, and, on one occasion, the party said we should give a police commissioner N10m and he told us the N10m was too small for him. Up till now, he doesn’t speak to me again because he believed the money was too small for him. He said that, after all, his colleagues in Lagos were collecting more than that. So the system itself condones corruption.
As much as I appreciate Buhari’s intent to fight corruption, the corruption searchlight is being beamed on the PDP and the Jonathan administration alone. It is largely selective and vindictive. They are turning their back on what happened in Rivers and some other APC states. If a government sees it that way, the legitimacy of such a government will be questioned. The APC government will suffer a legitimacy crisis so long as its fight against corruption is not wholesome. The people’s perception will trail any attempt at wreaking vengeance on some people. The pot should not call the kettle black because of certain reasons.
One of the advantages a president has is access to huge funds. The same thing happens at the state level. No state governor uses his own money for elections.
A major problem in corrupt practices in Nigeria is the impunity with which leaders and public officers steal public funds outright and also spend such funds without appropriation. You said you abhor corruption, but how do you stop impunity drawing lines between punitive, corrective and convention?
Correction could be effected if it is objectively done. Buhari could try Oshiomhole and any other person, too, in a way that shows what they had done was not good, that reveals they had cheated Nigerians. We say some people had committed corrupt practices but we now pick up a few people for punitive measures.
One reason the anti-corruption agencies have not functioned well is because of the manipulative tendencies of the government at any point in time, especially leaders with military background, to use them to punish or witchhunt opposition. As good as Obasanjo would have been in fighting corruption, he turned the EFCC into a tool to intimidate and victimize the opposition. He left his friends alone while his enemies were being pursued. Once he saw you as an enemy, he would pursue you to your grave.
Perhaps, President Buhari should have waited for the Sagay committee which he set up on corruption to submit its report before subjecting people to public trial. We should put in place a system that would be enduring and self-sustaining after Buhari’s exit. The way it is being done, once Buhari leaves, the fight will fizzle out.
The fight against corruption must not be waged on party platform. People in the Peoples Democratic Party have been in power for 16 years but it is not all PDP members who have been there for 16 years, so it would be wrong to label all PDP members as corrupt using the PDP label. So if one spent only one month in the PDP administration, he was a sinner! I was a minister for only 10 months and have been less than two years as a PDP member, so would it be right to say I am corrupt? There are APC members who have spent many years holding public offices. El-Rufai has spent up to 13 years and there are many allegations that still trail his tenure as minister of the FCT but because he is now in the APC, he is a saint. So long as the parameter used in identifying who is corrupt and who is not, for identifying who were the ruiners of the Nigerian economy, is the party platform, Buhari will not get it right. The exercise to fight corruption made by this government will end up a nullity. The major sin you can commit before God is to be unfair and unjust.
Don’t you agree with the position that Buhari has just been seven months in power and his fight against corruption would extend to people who are not PDP members?
Seven months is not just seven months. I spent only 10 months as minister and I achieved everything I wanted to achieve within that period. For someone who had been contesting to be president for more than 10 years before he won, he must have got a blueprint ready. If he wants to achieve something tangible within four years, we should have known by now.
But, again, there is the argument that repairing an economy that had been destroyed for 16 years can’t be done overnight. Isn’t this argument logical?
Are we saying that for the long period that Buhari had aspired to lead this country, he doesn’t have a roadmap or blueprint?
Are you saying no programme is being followed? And would any blueprint repair, in seven months, so deep a decay that the nation, its economy and its people had suffered for 16 years?
But where is the blueprint in the first place? Let’s talk history. When Gen Aguiyi Ironsi assumed power via a coup in 1966, he constituted a committee to examine the Nigerian federal system. Without waiting for the report of the committee, he proclaimed unitarism. He brought in some of his people from the East. That was a move that led to the end of that regime through a counter-coup.
After Buhari set up a committee to look into corruption, he should have waited for the report of the committee before swinging into what he is doing now. And this is why he is committing these mistakes.
The beauty of democracy is in the existence of the Rule of Law and the autonomy of the judiciary. In a democracy, there is limit to what you can do; the law must take its course. What is even going on currently doesn’t, after all, carry a capital punishment. The worst the law can do is to jail those found guilty of corrupt practices, not kill, so government’s effort should be corrective, orientational and attitudinal.
You are close to former president Jonathan and may know his present mood on these corruption disclosures, which you described as highly immoral, though you pleaded convention. Would you say he is disturbed?
Corruption practices are not peculiar to the Jonathan administration. Under Buhari’s watch, corruption is ongoing, and monumental, too…
In which areas, and who are the perpetrators?
I can’t tell you that; not you. Jonathan is like Shehu Shagari in terms of simplicity and an unassuming character. People do capitalize on such simple nature. When one is too generous, people capitalize on that generosity; when a leader is too democratic, people also capitalize on that one. Democracy itself creates room for corruption.
To Jonathan, some of these disclosures could be a bit shocking. But it would be unfair for anybody to just believe Jonathan himself, as president, created the room or the conduit people, with his authority, to siphon resources.
Did Jonathan know corrupt practices were being perpetrated under him?
In leadership, there will be people who are charged with responsibilities because the eyes of the leader can’t be everywhere. Nigeria is such a complex country that unless you are an angel with supernatural powers, your eyes can’t see everywhere. One Nigerian head of government who didn’t allow impunity and was stingy when it came to spending public funds was Jonathan.
It was under Jonathan, for instance, that it was election time and the president didn’t spend capital votes; there was no presidential approval for release of funds. A month to elections, there was no release of funds. After the election, Jonathan didn’t release overheads. I was a minister in his administration and the practice could have been he would released some capital votes for me so I would have some money to spend for the election. But Jonathan didn’t do that.
But would you say about alleged wild spendings by the president during the election period for groups like traditional rulers, religious leaders, militants like the Odu’a Peoples Congress and even the Nollywood entertainers in his bid to win the election? Where did all that money come from?
If the president is desperate to win an election and he wants money to go to states where they can spend, it is through his ministers and his other top aides. I am speaking as a minister under Jonathan that I saw prudence in his spending. I got capital votes as minister only once. A month, two months to election, I was no longer getting overhead to buy even newspapers to read. And after elections, when we were leaving office, there was no parting gift through releases. Government of today should acknowledge what Jonathan has done well.
I was the chairman of the Transition Committee at handover and Jonathan clearly told us not to go beyond certain limits. He told us a new government was coming in and it must meet something substantial on ground to work with. That was Jonathan for you. But to Nigerians now, if there is a miscarriage, it is Jonathan.
Do you have any fear of all this leading to Jonathan’s arrest and prosecution?
It is not for me to say that. It is for the president who is the chief security officer of Nigeria to know what to do. If the president wants to arrest Jonathan, the former president is not afraid of arrest. They can go ahead. But there is a dialectic dimension to every issue.
What would you say of Prof Sagay’s statement that Jonathan so elevated corruption and reduced governance in Nigeria to a culture of “u don obtain”, meaning anybody could just walk into the PDP and Jonathan’s administration and walk out with large public funds?
I am disappointed that Prof Sagay, an intellectual, could make such a statement that is not scientific and unacademic. That two people, a minute, insignificant number of people, have been identified as suspects does not suggest that Jonathan’s government was Father Christmas. It does not suggest that a bazaar went on under Jonathan. If a layman could hold such an opinion, he could be forgiven. But for an academic and a legal luminary of Sagay’s standing to say that, it is unfortunate. A learned person will wait before generalizing.
Sagay has been saddled with a responsibility; he is heading a committee that Buhari is relying on to fight corruption. To the best of my knowledge, that committee has not submitted its report. Sagay should have waited for the committee to put together its report; the committee’s chairman shouldn’t be talking now. It is the committee’s document that should be talking after it has been put together, then Sagay can comment on it after that. Our learned people should restrict themselves to the ethics of their profession, which is noble, rather than joining in the slogans of politicians. With due respect to him, maybe Sagay’s comment was a mistake of the tongue.
Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, also said, on fuel scarcity, that Nigerians are suffering from the sins of the Jonathan administration. How do you respond to this?
Everything that happens now is Jonathan. Everything that will happen up till 2019 will be caused by Jonathan. My brothers in the APC are not prepared for governance; they are just masters of opposition politics. They are good when it comes to opposition, and that is what they will keep doing till 2019. When it comes to governance, forget about it.
The PDP was in government for 16 years. Why was the party unable to fix the fuel supply dislocations?
Who are the PDP you are talking about? Many of the people you are talking about are in the APC now.
…But during the election campaigns, PDP leaders were always talking about the PDP achieving this and that, and giving Nigerians so much. They weren’t talking about individuals. So what now separates the PDP’s achievements from its failures?
I am an academic and I am mindful not to generalize. Again, there are certain sectors I don’t like venturing into and one of them is the oil sector. I am bothered about the wastages attendant on fixing the refineries over the years. I am bothered about the mismanagement of the oil policy. It is not about Jonathan, it is not about Obasanjo because Jonathan knows nothing about the oil policy as Obasanjo didn’t.
There are the technocrats charged with formulating and implementing clear-cut policies. From my experience in government, if there is a failure in governance, yes, the leadership accepts responsibility. But if we are to go into the nitty-gritty of the failure, there are many people who are the saboteurs. If they want you to succeed, you will succeed.
Obasanjo came with the zeal to work and he did set to work, but when some people didn’t want him to succeed, especially in the oil sector and power supply, he couldn’t achieve much.
Jonathan, too, was a patriot, but, again, people took advantage of his simplicity to do certain things. At a stage, he almost caved in.
In identifying the fuel problem, while mentioning the role of the leadership, the technocrats are to be blamed more. The fuel sector is like the drug business; it is full of cabals and cartels. The forces in the fuel sector are more powerful than even the government itself. They can bring down a government. The saboteurs are there everywhere.
The 2016 budget appears a remarkable departure from the budgets of the Jonathan’s years, especially on capital votes where Buhari has allocated 30 per cent of the budget to capital expenditure despite oil price crash. Why were votes for infrastructural development so low during the Jonathan years despite high oil revenues?
The budget should be appreciated within the context that the Buhari government wants to impress Nigerians. They want Nigerians to believe they want to live up to their campaign promises. What the PDP is saying now is that “yes, you want to live up to your campaign promises, but on what premise?”
What the APC is trying to do is to mount debts for future generations of Nigerians because the budget is unachievable.
In the budget, the oil benchmark, for example, is $38 per barrel. But already the price on the international market is below $38 and the projection is that it would go below $30.
The budget is not realistic and automatically, it will have to ride on credits, debts, loans which would be transferred to another generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment