UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE

The most exasperating report I read on Sunday was on the controversy allegedly currently raging in the Presidency over the actual amount former president Olusegun Obasanjo had squandered in his eight-year determined (some say, sadistic) effort to ensure Nigeria was perpetually enveloped in thick, suffocating darkness. Some of the human vestigial remains of the Obasanjo nightmare in Aso Rock are reportedly insisting that President Umar Musa Yar’Adua had boldly lied to the nation when he announced that his predecessor had spent $10 billion on the energy sector without the slightest evidence that a single cent was invested therein from 1999 to 2007 — those horrible years in Nigeria’s recent history when an a army of devouring locusts had swooped on Nigeria with unspeakable greed to prosecute the worst case of grab-and-plunder ever witnessed in these parts.   According to reports, a certain Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Industrial Power Projects, Mr. Folusoke Somolu, had actually written to the Minster of State for Energy, Mrs. Pauline Balarabe Ibrahim, to emphasize that it was only $4 billion that Obasanjo poured down the drain and not $10 billion as declared by Mr. Yar’Adua.

Now, this controversy is not new. Former Director-General of the so-called Due Process Office who also had served as Obasanjo’s Minister of Solid Minerals and Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, had earlier faulted Yar’Adua’s claims, insisting that it was only $4 billion that her former boss had squandered on the phantom attempts to revive the power sector. If then Mr. Somolu was merely making an uncritical rehearsal of Ezekwesili’s claims without any attempt to verify the facts himself, he may have since realized his folly. According to reports on Sunday, after documentary evidence that it was actually $13 billion that Obasanjo spent on the power sector was thrown to his face, he had to hurriedly apologize. But whether that would save his job now reportedly on the line because of his misguided zeal and solidarity with a clearly unpatriotic and callous former ruler, is what he would have to contend with in the next couple of days.

But I still blame President Yar’Adua for the needless controversy. If he had been patriotic enough to follow his announcement of the mindless profligacy with a Judicial Commission of Enquiry to probe the management of affairs in the power sector for those eight dark years, as would have been the case in any civilized country, all those Obasanjo boys and girls now playing silly games with figures on a matter as sensitive as an   outright act of obscene prodigality in the energy sector would have been more concerned with saving their own heads than further provoking Nigerians with inane arguments. But, unfortunately, Yar’Adua appeared to have been hampered by his own moral burdens to go beyond merely saddening Nigerians with the harmful information about how $10 billion had gone down the drain in the clearly insincere and self-serving effort to fix the energy sector. Well, what can anyone possibly expect from a guilt-ridden president heavily weighed down by the countless ethical baggages he had accumulated in the course of his horribly staining journey to the throne? Now, he is still at the Elections Petitions Tribunal seeking a judicial endorsement to enable him continue in office based upon the hideous outcome of last year’s presidential election which he himself can testify was the worst ever witnessed in these parts, and Obasanjo and his likeminded cousin, Prof Maurice Iwu, have a very strategic role to contribute to ensure he overcomes that hurdle. And until the case is over, the Servant-leader would be trusted to ensure he does not unduly upset Baba and his countless acolytes. That is not all. The scandal which broke recently in respect of the infamous Police Equipment Fund (PEF) threw up the sickening revelation that the Yar’Adua Campaign Organization was also a happy beneficiary of the polluted generosity of the managers of the Police Fund who had brazenly diverted the money meant to adequately equip the police to purchase exotic cars for all sorts of characters within and outside Government. There may even be more horrible information carefully hidden in the womb of time, which may crawl out one of these days to further diminish the Presidency, given the kind of unedifying circumstances that collaborated to midwife Yar’Adua’s emergence as President. These, no doubt, are matters that continue to rob sufficient sleep from the President’s eyes, no matter the I-care-less visage he tries to put up.

But, where do all these leave the common man in the face of a clearly ambushed Presidency? Is there any hope that the House of Representatives whose Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, had stated recently that information at his disposal showed that it was $16 billion that was heartlessly sunk into the still lifeless energy sector, instead of ten, can ensure any form of moral restitution to serve as deterrence in the system? Would their proposed probe not end up as mere waste of time and resources like the countless probes and public hearings conducted in that same House in times past? Already, statements of denials have started flying out of the House insisting that at no time did they ever mention they were going to summon the former president to appear before the panel probing the power sector scam. Where does all this noise leave the long-suffering Nigerian masses who are tormented daily by the pitch darkness unleashed on them by NEPA/PHCN with every sadistic fury?

How many industries have closed down in Nigeria and thrown back thousands of its workers into the harsh unemployment market, because of the prohibitive operational costs in Nigeria, caused mainly by the most dismal situation in the energy sector even after somebody had sunk the whopping sum of $16 billion or $10billion or even $4 billion into it? Even if it was only $1billion that was invested in that sector, shouldn’t there be some positive difference in power supply? What are these heartless men hoping to achieve by hawking the oppressive information that it was only $4 billion that was squandered? As if the squandering of $4 billion belonging to a nation should not be enough to keep somebody in jail for the rest of the person’s ungodly life in a decent and lawful country? Pray, when did $4 billion become the equivalent of Nigeria ’s one kobo? Okay, maybe, we should all match down to the multi-billion-naira farm in Ota this day to express our heartfelt gratitude to Obasanjo for being kind enough to spend only the paltry sum of $4 billion to keep the energy sector comatose!

Unfortunately, while this irresponsible and insensitive figure game goes on, the nation is still trapped and writhing under the unbearable torment of a very thick, oppressive and choking darkness. Nigeria has become the unfortunate dumping ground for all sorts of very poorly produced and potentially dangerous toy generators, rechargeable lanterns, stabilizers and all sorts of power machines from China and other Asian countries. The ever-multiplying generators have been generously saturating Nigeria ’s atmosphere with very fatally dangerous fumes, thus turning this place into one vast gas chamber, facing a serious risk of an epidemic. It is now generally believed that the several devastating fire incidents occurring with alarming regularity in the country now are mostly as a result of the proliferation of these generators which compel families and individuals to store fuel in their homes or even at business places. Yet, Nigeria is earning much more money than virtually all those countries in Africa where uninterrupted power supply have since been taken for granted.

At the various settlements in our urban centres, where a high population of our people are jam-packed in very stuffy and poorly ventilated face-me-I-face-you type of accommodation facilities, almost every occupant of a room now has been forced by the ever-worsening energy situation to purchase a toy generator. Every other evening, while serious damage is being inflicted on their sensitive organs by the heavy noise pollution produced by the Chinese terror machines, the lethal fumes that struggle in vain to escape from the poorly ventilated enclosures find their ways into their systems ruin their lives piecemeally. We have read reports of how whole families have been wiped out as a result of the generator fumes they had inhaled, but is anyone in Government moved by the endless tragedies? Sometimes, one wonders if there were no deliberate decision to allow the decimation of the population so that those in government could find sufficient space to enjoy the huge sums of money they are criminally accumulating daily. Again, who bothers to ask how for instance those hapless children whose parents are not able to ensure that generators roar and clatter in their homes everyday are able to read their books and do their homework?  Are they not merely ruining their eyes by reading with very poor light provided by lanterns and candles? Is their future not being sealed by the deliberate action of unfeeling men and women in Government?  Why has Nigeria been cursed with a succession of heartless and thieving rulers who are never touched by whatever horrible states the citizenry find themselves in? Well, in this very trying period of deep pessimism and widespread gloom, Yar’Adua’s abundant talk-talk about how he would tackle the “energy challenge” or his over-repeated threat to declare a state of emergency in the sector are increasingly becoming irritating. Somebody should please tell him to try to, at least, demonstrate this time to Nigerians that he can spell “ideas.”

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