Drama! Drama!! Drama!!! it is drama. Yes. Drama, more drama, and leakages! For when the highly stressed out populace Nigeria are not being entertained, albeit wrongly, by the fact that a secretary to the Federal Government acted in such a way as to acquire for himself the nickname, grass cutter of the federal republic (mock GCFR).
It would be that a director general of the Department of State Services (DSS) curiously knows something of a house full of money, in different denominations, somewhere in highbrow Osborn neighbourhood of Ikoyi, Lagos state. Ibe Kachikwu Or those men of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will be picking ‘abandoned’ bags of money running into hundreds of millions of Naira in some public places that no other Nigerian could have located. And when also it is not a private memo by a Governor Nasir el-Rufai to President Muhammadu Buhari that was being leaked to the public, it is that of Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum that will be making headlines on both traditional and social media, among many other comic but tragic stories. All of these happening in the midst of abject poverty and hunger in the land, sure do provide temporary comic relief for ordinary folks going through an economic recession.
For instance, el-Rufai in his leaked September 2016 memo, told the president that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party has not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight ‘change’ but has also failed to deliver even mundane matters of governance outside of the successes in fighting Boko Haram insurgency and corruption, among other things. The Roforofo fight between members of the Buhari-led government, most of who are of the same political party, and which obviously derails the wheel of progress, comes in different magnitude and colour, including the DSS-National Assembly-Ibrahim Magu and EFCC chairmanship confirmation brouhaha. And, of course, not forgetting the ongoing ‘elephant’ display of words between members of the NASS and Prof. Itse Sagay, chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption (PACAC), as well as that between the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris and Senator Isah Hamma Misau, among others. And then the latest, revealing a year-long frosty relationship between Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum, and Dr. Maikanti Baru, Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).
Dr. Kachikwu’s letter, which was leaked to the public during the week by only God knows who was drawing the attention of Mr. President to what he described as disrespectful and humiliating conducts of the NNPC GMD that he has had to put up with the past one year. Despite the fact he is the minister of state for petroleum and chairman of the board of NNPC, Kachikwu alleges he was never given opportunity to discuss appointments or announcements of all the reorganizations and re-postings carried out by Dr. Baru in the corporation. Members of the board, just like him, only get to learn of such appointments on social media and press releases of the NNPC, he wrote. This brings to mind recent lopsided appointments at the NNPC, where almost all those that benefited are from one section of the country.
That action was not just the height of nepotism but certainly, could not have been carried out with any sense of professionalism or national interest in mind. Also, that Kachikwu, according to his claim, yet to be denied, of being unable to secure an appointment to see the president, despite very many attempts, is an indication that government is yet to have a handle on what governance is all about, and the more reason it still blames every of its failure, wrong bends and turns on past administrations. From the outside, it would appear that a government that is solely dependent on oil like Nigeria, cannot afford the luxury of keeping its oil minister in the cold, unless the president, who appropriated to himself the post of petroleum minister, he channels all his energy towards that ministry, at the expense of every other national issue.
It’s against these that many easily allege that though this government keeps shouting corruption left, right and centre, accusing and trying every other person but itself of corrupt practices, there isn’t much difference between those it is fighting and what presently obtains. Sadly, the situation is not helped by a people so pauperized and deliberately pitched against each other that they neither see, nor have the political will to generally hold their leaders to account. Kachikwu’s allegations against the NNPC GMD, therefore, should not just be swept under the carpet as usual, but be investigated with necessary actions taken against any side found wanting. Anything short of that only goes to confirm widely held view that Baru is merely acting a script written and handed to him from above.
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