We await Vice President Osinbajo’s report with both patience and anxiety
The story began like a fairy tale, but Nigeria is nothing if not one. A whopping $43.4 million, £27,800 and N23.2m in an upscale flat at a time that the majority of the citizens are groaning under a limping economy. First, questions began to pop from everywhere. But because answers came in trickles, if any, mischief filled the blanks.
Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State pelted charges at the Minister of Transport, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, as the owner. The accusation still pulsed the air when the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, erupted with self-righteous indignation and lay the blame on his predecessor without a wink of evidence. He made it even more mordantly comical by asking for prayers to invoke the money from its hiding place in Lagos to Rivers State where it should be.
The most potent of the revelations came from the National Intelligence Agency, (NIA), and many did not want to believe it since humans tend to be inclined towards accepting the sleaze of homo sapiens more than the anonymity of institutions.
But it got juicier, and poisonously so. Charges suddenly became impotent against a former governor, Adamu Muazu, who owned the building before selling out the flats, to another former governor, Peter Obi of Anambra State, and a few marquee names. An apartment became the metaphor not only of the recklessness of government officials but also of the seedy underside of the Jonathan era.
The name Ayo Oke, director-general of the NIA, his wife, and the Jonathan era ripped the scab off an all-too-familiar scandal: the billions of dollars arms scandal of which another security chief, Sambo Dasuki, was front and centre. It all focused on apartment 7b, the tony receptacle of hidden money.
After a few days, some facts crystallised. One, the money belongs to the citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Consequently, it has been repatriated to the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Two, it also reaffirms the footloose style of the security agencies with official money. We saw this in the Dasukigate, and how money ostensibly dedicated to the war against insurgency became a pool where corrupt and greedy fingers twirled.
How come a huge sum of money belonging to every Nigerian is stored with impunity in a home that belongs to the wife of a security chief? This is symptomatic of the domestication of official wealth and the tendency of our people to privatise what is sacredly public.
Some Nigerians are angry, and rightly so. The last time we displayed such public condemnation was during the Shagari regime when the sum of N2.8 billion was stashed away and the president was compelled to make national broadcast to soothe an irritated citizenry. We have not heard a word from our president, not even a statement that echoes the universal alarm at the incident.
The Shagari days were stormed with N2.8 billion alone at the time. Today, it is a flurry of revelations and eruptions of cash hidden away. We have had N4 billion trapped by the moral net of the bank verification number, or BVN. The larcenous owner or owners are not known, and the legitimate owner – probably Nigeria – waits to see the drama unfold. In a market in Lagos, N250 million was found and in highbrow Ikoyi another N499 million tenanted a shop.
It is a great deal that this is happening as a dividend of the whistle-blower policy. It is an irony though that the government has to appeal to our greed to unearth instances of greed. But it seems to be working so far, and so long as stories like the $43.4 million splash into the scandal of the public space, we welcome it.
The Federal Government responded quickly though by suspending Oke and setting up a panel headed by Vice President Osinbajo to investigate this strange cache. Interestingly though, the president made a point about self-introspection and self-scrutiny when it also suspended the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir David Lawal for allegation of abuse of public trust and funds. The Buhari administration has been accused of being lopsided in the war on corruption. With Oke and Lawal, it seems the government is now set, at least, on the surface to engage its partisans in cleansing the system.
We expect the Osinbajo committee to come up with answers that roil the Nigerian mind. What inspired the choice of the apartment? Who are the other participants in this sordid play? Why is the Nigerian security organisation so uncontrolled with Nigerian money? What was the role of the top brass of the previous regime in this absurd tale, including the former President Goodluck Jonathan? Was the $43 million all that was approved or was it part of other tranches of cash that may be hibernating elsewhere? What was the role of our financial institutions in this haul?
We expect the questions to be answered. But that should be the beginning of mollifying a nation where many cannot pay rents and wards stay at school only at the mercy of their proprietors over unpaid fees and many struggle to feed their families.
We wait with patience for less than two weeks when the vice president unveils his findings.
