55 Nigerians Stole N1.3trn In 8 Years: When Will The Propaganda Stop?

While Nigerians were still to come to terms with the alleged misappropriation of $2.1billion allegedly appropriated for arms purchase to fight Boko Haram by the former national security adviser (NSA) Col Sambo Dasuki (rtd) for which the governor of Ekiti State, Chief Ayo Fayose has challenged the federal government to show Nigerians where the money was appropriated in the 2015 budget or any other budget for that matter, the government has thrown up another figure, claiming that only 55 Nigerians stole N1.3trn in 8 years.

In releasing this figure yesterday by the minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the government conveniently limited their calculations between 2006 and 2013 apparently not to anger former President Olusegun Obasanjo whose era the Transparency International (TI) rightly pointed out that the Presidency was the most corrupt organ of the federal government. With this new figure, Nigerians have been given another spurious data to distract them from asking pertinent questions of governance after eight months in power of the present administration.

For a government that cannot even give a water tight budget and had to withdraw it and which former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Prof Chukwuma Soludo said was mere clone of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s budget, it is doubtful that it can give stolen figures that can stand integrity test.

 Is it not curious that the same government that admitted making mistakes in its budget, can give us accurate figure of monies stolen between 2006 and 2013? Despite this apparent contradictions gullible Nigerians are already dancing on the streets shouting “Eureka! They must return our money!! Let Buhari get back our N1.3trillion!!!” and calling talk show radio stations raining curses on the imaginary 55 looters.

But why are Nigerians like this even with the increasing number of graduates being churned out by our universities year after year? Why is the average Nigerian incapable of deep thinking and interrogation of information that comes from government or elsewhere? If World Bank or IMF or even Transparency International (TI) were to give any information on Nigeria or any other country for that matter, they would tell how the data was gathered and how it arrived at its conclusions. By the way I have written a yet to be published book on corruption in Nigeria and the figures of stolen monies for the book came from combination of sources; the World Bank, IMF, EFCC and Federal Ministry of Finance.

In this case, however, Nigerian government official would gather journalists in a so-called ‘World Press Conference’ where they reel out spurious figures knowing that it would make cover story the next morning because many journalists are poorly equipped intellectually to ask the right questions.

I can bet my bottom dollar that in the next few weeks all we will be talking about would be N1.3trillion stolen by 55 Nigerians since Nigerians and the newspapers are already getting used to the $2.1billion arms money, even as the real issue of availability of fuel and the exchange rate of the naira visa-vice the dollar and the worst performance of the Nigerian Stock Exchange are not discussed. By the way the Stock Exchange was identified by the Bloomberg as the worst performing in Africa with its value hitting rock bottom.

Add the poor performance of the Stock Exchange to the laying off of thousands of workers by private and public sectors of the economy, you begin to understand why Nigerians don’t need the distraction of brandishing questionable figures instead of our leaders rolling up their sleeves and getting the country productive again. The propaganda ought to be over by now after using it to get the coveted price and move to the next level, which is governance.

Make no mistake about it, I will never defend looters because I am also one of their victims, but my concern is the dangers of diverting attention with it even as the ship of state sinks. Let’s recover the monies, but it should not be used as excuse for poor performance or lack of performance of the task ahead. The convenient excuse is to say they have stolen all the money so government can do nothing. This is unacceptable.