Never mind the eye-popping pictures you saw in the newspaper yesterday of the houses built in Idah, Kogi State by a man who was in charge of paying this country’s pensioners the widow’s mite that is their monthly pension.
While many of them were dropping dead in the streets due to hunger and the exhausting and endless ‘verification exercises’, he was busy building and acquiring choice properties all over the place with proceeds from the pension funds. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] has made a big show of catching Dr Sani Teidi Shu’aibu and other alleged pension scammers, but here is the good news: nothing will happen to them.
Surprised? You only have to read the stories yesterday about how the alleged culprits of the much celebrated Halliburton bribery case were suddenly let off the hook on Monday by a High Court judge in Abuja. And don’t blame the judge either; he blamed EFCC for lack of diligent prosecution, saying for more than a year now, the accused persons have not seen the inside of the court room.
The accused, two men and four companies, were charged with facilitating the payment of $180 million in bribes to high Nigerian officials in order to secure a $6 billion gas pipeline contract from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company at Bonny, an NNPC subsidiary. The Europeans and Americans who stood accused alongside these Nigerians of the same crimes have been cooling their heels in the countries’ prisons for some time now, while the Nigerians were sitting pretty in their houses; some are even holding high positions in government.
Over the years, EFCC has variously accused the courts of being responsible for the failure to visit this country’s biggest thieves and scammers with exemplary punishment. So much so that EFCC often called for the establishment of special courts just to try corruption and money laundering cases. Well, such courts, if and when established, will lay fallow if the pace and seriousness with which EFCC prosecuted the Halliburton accused persons is any guide.
Before we leave this subject, we expect the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohamed Bello Adoke, to move speedily, re-arraign the suspects and bring their case to a speedy conclusion. Otherwise, the impression will be conveyed to all Nigerians that there is a high-powered conspiracy to frustrate the case because some top level Nigerians obviously received the Halliburton payoffs.
Which brings us to the matter of the accused pension scammers. If the men who shared ‘only’ $180 million in Halliburton money can somehow stalemate their case and get it thrown out of the courts, there is hope indeed for the pension scammers who, at the last count, were said to have made N17 billion to evaporate into thin air from the pension fund coffers. Never mind all the retired old men and women who dropped dead over the years in endless “verification” queues. With a small fraction of their loot, the scammers will spring themselves from the net. Just ask the Halliburton Six.
What is Oga doing in seoul?
I saw very nice pictures on television of Oga Goodluck Jonathan beaming with smiles as he stood shoulder to shoulder with other world leaders at the Summit on Nuclear Security in Seoul, South Korea. Indeed, the Big Oga had to hurriedly depart from his ruling party’s national convention in Abuja last Saturday, hop into his plane and make it to Seoul just in time for the opening of the Big Men’s summit.
But pray, what on earth was he there for? The other presidents who were beaming and smiling with [or perhaps at] our own Oga Jonathan were all men whose countries are bristling with nuclear reactors, nuclear warheads, tactical and intercontinental ballistic missiles, but who will go to any length to prevent anyone else from laying his hands on the same toys.
I thought for a time that some Presidency officials misled Oga Jonathan into thinking that the Seoul summit is about electricity problems, such as how to generate a couple hundred megawatts from an Independent Power Project. For a man whose nation’s combined power output may not be enough even to kick-start a small nuclear reactor, what is he doing pontificating about nuclear security? We wouldn’t recognize a nuclear reactor’s kick starter if we saw one here, not to mention a reactor’s fuel rod from which enriched uranium can be scraped off in order to build a 1,000 megaton thermonuclear bomb.
Oga Jonathan, please leave that summit and head for the South Korean store where they sell second hand transformers that our PHCN chaps are familiar with and can use…
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