Jonathan and Amaechi’s singsong

CAN vengeance be pursued further than death?” that is a line from Shakespeare’s famous love and tragedy drama, Romeo and Juliet. Just as the question is rhetorical in that popular play, it wears the same toga even now. And it relates directly to the latest submission by the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi on the economy. Last week, the minister, in a widely circulated interview reminded us that the nation’s economy is in the woods right now because of the failure of the government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to save proceeds of oil sales, particularly the failure to recover the alleged $49 billion oil money from the pause of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Amaechi said in the interview: “As chairman of the Governors Forum, when I started fighting with President Jonathan, I was clear about what the fight was all about. I was the first Nigerian to raise the alarm about the former CBN governor’s letter to President Goodluck Jonathan that $49 billion was missing from the NNPC account and not paid to the federation account. If they had returned it, we would not be in recession. If that $49 billion was there plus other recovered looted funds, perhaps, we would have hit $50 billion. With $50 to $60 billion, you don’t need to look for dollars to buy.”

That comment had already landed him in some back and forth arguments with former Special Assistant to President Jonathan on New Media, Reno Omokri. The tripartite war has also involved Amaechi’s former Press Secretary, David Iyofor.

But the point at issue cannot be confused. Amaechi’s message is that Jonathan’s inactions ruined the economy and are responsible for the recession of today, especially the crash of the Naira. Omokri has responded in kind, reminding us of the activities of the Amaechi-led Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) which dragged the Jonathan government to court for creating the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and attempting to save money in the Excess Crude Account (ECA). He said the pressure on the government then led to the decision to deplete the ECA by over N2 trillion (then about $20bn). Even now, the case by the NGF is still at the Supreme Court. The court had refrained from delivering its ruling by encouraging an out of court settlement.

By telling us the same old story, Amaechi might be telling Nigerians that the government he serves lacks the capacity to re-invent Nigeria. Recall that the same politicians who occupy the centre of power today had made the issue of economy a campaign material ahead of the 2015 election. Indeed, from 2013 when the APC came on board, the issue of alleged looting and economic imbalance had been on their lips. So why take three years to romanticise an identified problem? Where are the solutions?

Omokri had raised one valid point when he said that the unsubstantiated allegations of missing $49 billion has failed to catch the fancy of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, because it does not exist in reality. I want to agree with him, because even the ubiquitous EFCC has failed to make an issue out of the allegation. Even then, the figures remained as shifty as ever. The then CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had taken the figures round the clock. From $49bn it moved to $20bn and then $10bn and then at a time it was $12bn.  A committee set up by the Senate to investigate the allegations came up with the conclusion that some $10.8 billion was yet to be reconciled and asked the CBN, Ministry of Finance and the international auditors to reconcile the figures. It should then beat the imagination that an office holder is still dancing to the tune of a missing $49billion years after.

Undoubtedly, what we should be seeking answers to right now is why the government at the centre has recovered less than a fraction of the figures advertised on the social media and why the Internally Generated Revenue of the government is bleeding profusely. Just last week, we heard of a N1.1 trillion loss in Internally Generated Revenue of Government. We‘ve also been told of the ridiculous: that the government does not have records of its oil and non-oil shipments since June 2015.

Besides that, the National Assembly had been inundated recently with frivolous entries in the 2017 budget to the tune of over N151 billion. Indeed, a Committee of Chairmen of Senate Standing Committees had elected to weed out about N200 billion from the 2017 budget on account of frivolous and wasteful allocations. In 2016, the National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO) uncovered wastes and repetitions amounting to about N500 billion.

And when you see through the budget, you see areas begging for reforms and action. In 2017, 73 per cent of the budget is devoted to recurrent expenditure. In 2016, it was 75 per cent. Capital votes have remained at abysmal levels they have been since the Obasanjo times. While performance of recurrent expenditure is always 100 percent, the argument has always been on low utilisation of capital votes. In 2016, the government is celebrating a release of up to 55 per cent of capital expenditure but there is an extra grammar; released funds are different from actual utilisation.

If anyone thinks we should keep eyes off these immediate issues, he is not out to help this government and the nation. The people in government need to note that the Jonathan fixation and the exposes on the ills of his government can only keep the people transfixed for a while, after which the reality. That moment of transfixion seems to have petered away.