Speaking grammar on top of Abacha loot By Taiwo Adisa

I Ve written this before; how not to spend Abacha loot. It was on the heels of a statement credited to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, which indicated that the $322 million (about N100 billion) would be spent on the “poorest of the poor.”
The Vice President had said earlier in the year that in line with the Memorandum of Understanding signed between Nigeria and the Switzerland authorities, the money would be deployed for social investment schemes.

Of course, the government has a social investment scheme in place which encompasses the N-POWER scheme, conditional cash transfer programme, the school feeding programme and some Agric business programmes. In the first budget of this administration in 2016, the sum of N500 billion was voted for that project.

I remember the chairman of Senate Committee on Appropriation calling for a suspension of the programme to enable the government develop measurable instruments to track such a huge investment. But his voice was crowded out by loyalists of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the chamber, who felt that his advice would truncate the programme designed by President Muhammadu Buhari to reach the common man.

But the fact remains that there are no data here. Who determines the poorest of the poor? By what standards are you picking out one poor man and leaving the other? What are the instruments you use in measuring the population? Who determines the location? According to what the statisticians say, Nigeria is a country of some 80 million poor people, who live in the rural settlements.

You cannot cure one corruption with another corruption. That is the conviction of those who oppose the spending of Abacha loot on programmes that are themselves not measured for efficiency.

But the government appears determined to spend the loot, disregarding fears of the possibility of re-looting the loot. Whatever the government does going forward on this matter, history will record the same and accord it the judgment it deserves.

If the officials care to listen, let me tell them however that the advertised social investments schemes are too easy to expose to corruption.  Apart from the fact that the school feeding programmes are restricted, giving rise to complaints that so many states are just sidelined, who determines the quality of food being served? What is the amount set aside for a plate of food? And how are we sure the vendors don’t collude to deny the children the rations. In any case, the only programme in the scheme that appears straightforward is the N-POWER programme where graduates are employed and deployed to different sectors, especially teaching.

Even at that, we hear stories of officials delaying the payment of that stipend, while some are asked to produce driver’s license and other irrelevant items. Guess the Bank Verification Number (BVN) should be enough to ascertain participants. But some are asked to go produce the invisible National Identity card or the Driver’s license.

 Spokespersons of the administration have spoken at different for a in the last two weeks, painting a glorious picture of the spending procedure.  I beg to insist that spending the loot the way they are going about will only waste the resources.  The money can complete the advertised Lagos/Ibadan expressway. If deployed to the Abuja/Lokoja/Benin Expressway, it can equally take it to completion, while the sum can make appreciable impact on the East/West Road, if that’s what catches their fancy. But the government is having none of that.

Methinks that the government should strive to teach the people how to fish not how to beg for fish. If the administration wants to help its citizens, the best way to drive them to productivity is to get them organised into cooperative societies along the lines of their competencies. Then funds are released to them as grants to enable them do one business or the other.  But that they are encouraged to repay the grant and then apply for higher amount.

The Buhari approach being strenuously defended by his officials will only institutionalise the begging culture and help create a beggar population. Worse still, it would encourage a few officials to line their pockets with the recovered loot.

This Ekiti election saga

By the time you are reading this, the governorship election in Ekiti would have been won and lost. That notwithstanding, it is important to mention a few lines on the conduct of security operatives in the build up to the election. The Police stopped Governor Ayo Fayose and his PDP supporters from holding a rally because it would likely “lead to breach of security.”  And that was after the deployment of 30,000 policemen, 15,000 men of the Civil Defence and unspecified number of DSS operatives and Soldiers.

Quite worrisome as well was the discussions in some online forum where it was being alleged that some security operatives were turning themselves to rigging strategists to a section of the contestants. That’s shameful if true. 

It is as well shameful that a Police Officer would justify the blockade of the Government House on account of possible breach of peace, especially after the deployment of huge numbers. If close to 50, 000 armed security men cannot guarantee that the APC and PDP hold peaceful rallies in different parts of Ado-Ekiti, even simultaneously, then we can conclude that the security situation in the country has more than degenerated. If we can have some hoodlums would just simply overrun that number of armed security personnel, then the police would have passed a damning judgement on the security situation under Buhari.