It is no surprise that a few days after the Federal Ministry of Finance published the details of what the Federal and State governments received from the Excess Crude Account over the past four years, Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has launched an attack against the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. His article “Economy: Okonjo-Iweala’s hidden figures” is full of gaping holes, both in facts and logic.
Obviously, for daring to publish how the ECA
was shared and showing that governors who cannot pay salaries have no excuses,
Okonjo-Iweala is being targeted. It is noteworthy that several of their
colleagues have been able to manage their finances reasonably well under these
same difficult circumstances.
The release of the ECA details has also
demonstrated very clearly that there is no substance in the wild allegations
that any money is missing from the account or that finances of the country
under Okonjo-Iweala watch have not been well managed.
Like previous baseless allegations by some
Governors, the motive behind Oshiomhole’s attack is clear: to deflect public
attention away from the manner in which they have run the finances of their
states and make Okonjo-Iweala the scapegoat. If it was meant to intimidate the
Minister, it has failed abysmally.
How can Governor Oshiomhole claim that state
governors were not properly briefed on the status of the ECA when his
commissioner of finance attends all the FAAC meetings where decisions are taken
and communicated to the nation?
This diversionary tactic will not succeed
because Nigerians are too smart to buy into this fiction. Secondly, the Finance
Ministry under Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister who started the practice of
publishing details of allocations from the Federation Account to all the three
tiers of government, has regularly furnished Nigerians with information on the
country’s finances.
Governor Oshiomhole’s statement that
Okonjo-Iweala “must disclose to the nation the full details of subsidy payments
made to oil marketers in the last four years” is therefore astonishing given
the fact that EVERY payment made to the marketers has been published in the
media and widely disseminated through all news channels.
Oshiomhole’s allegation that Okonjo-Iweala
has not been transparent is ridiculous and totally lacking in merit. Apart from
the monthly publication of allocations to the federal, state and local
governments, the Federal Ministry of Finance under Okonjo-Iweala also publishes
SURE-P receipts and distribution to different tiers, details of payments to oil
marketers and other information.
Has Governor Oshiomhole demonstrated the
same level of openness in his management of the affairs of Edo State? Can
Oshiomhole also go public with ALL the information showing what he has received
from various sources and the uses to which he has deployed them?
Equally incomprehensible – for a supposedly
smart Governor - is Oshiomhole’s claim that the CME has “just woken up from her
slumber to realize that oil marketers have been all along falsifying subsidy
claims and defrauding the nation of billions of Naira”. This statement
underscores the extent to which he is willing to go in his desperation to tar
Okonjo-Iweala. When she returned as Finance Minister in 2011, the outstanding
fuel subsidy bill was about N1.3 trillion. It was the work done on subsidy
fraud by the Aig-Imoukhuede Committee which the Minister set up, later elevated
into a presidential panel that determined that over N300 billion of the amount
was fraudulent. This eventually led to the prosecution of some persons for
subsidy fraud and reduction of the annual subsidy budget to N791 billion,
saving the country over a trillion naira in the process. Maybe it is His
Excellency who was snoring while this was going on. Such baseless posturing
only serves to diminish the credibility of Oshiomhole in the minds of objective
Nigerians.
For the record, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has no
apologies for insisting that a claim of N159 billion for forex differentials by
the marketers out of a total bill of N200 billion should go through an additional
verification process. When 80% of a subsidy claim is made up of forex
differentials and not the value of the amount of fuel supplied, the right and
proper thing to do is to take extra steps to ensure that the country is not
being cheated. That is what Okonjo-Iweala did.
Oshiomhole’s allegation that the Minister is
involved in “an unholy alliance” with government agencies and the marketers is
therefore manifestly untrue and totally irresponsible. How can a minister
against whom the oil marketers have conducted a very public campaign of calumny
be in league with them? A decent public official should not make such
scurrilous and unsubstantiated statements.
The most laughable part of Oshiomhole’s
article is the claim that Okonjo-Iweala has been speaking out lately because of
the “fear of Buhari”. Nigerians know this is ridiculous. If there is any
minister whose voice has been strong on the right issues over the past four
years it is Okonjo-Iweala. Okonjo-Iweala combines a stalwart integrity, a mastery
of her mandate and the courage of her convictions. She therefore has no reason
to fear. Those who cannot adequately explain what they did with the resources
of their states and are begging for bailout are those who should to be scared.
Paul C Nwabuikwu
Special
Adviser to the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance
No comments:
Post a Comment