Minister sacked for dreaming of making $1m off govt must have wished she served in Nigeria
The sacked Ghanaian deputy Minister of Communications, Victoria Hammah, must be wishing that she was a minister in Nigeria, working for President Goodluck Jonathan. If she had been, she would still be sitting comfortably on her desk. In our country, it is highly inconceivable that a minister in the present government could be sacked, for a mere taped conversation, that, she would not leave politics until she has made a million dollars. As if mocking the Stella Oduah’s corruption scandal, the sacked deputy minister, like Ms Oduah, also worked to elect John Mahama as president, and as such was considered a confidant of the president.
Yet, in the interest of Ghana, and to send a clear message that his presidency would not condone corrupt tendencies, President Mahama, despite affiliations, sacked the deputy minister, for her mere inclination to corruption. Conversely in Nigeria, President Jonathan, despite overwhelming indictment of his Minister of Aviation, Ms Oduah, over the purchase of unbudgeted two bullet-proof cars for a staggering N255 million, still considers the minister indispensible to his government, and has retained her services, in spite of a national outcry for her removal. Instructively, therefore, while in Ghana a minister is sacked for contemplating corruption, in Nigeria, another is retained despite a clear indictment over corruption practices.
This is a clear message that while Ghana takes the fight against corruption seriously, in Nigeria, under President Jonathan, corruption is allowed to fester. And the circumstances of the sacked minister and Oduah are so intriguingly similar. Like Hammah of Ghana, Oduah worked hard to elect her country’s president. Indeed, it is common knowledge that Oduah’s campaign machinery, known as ‘Neighbour to Neighbour’ was very helpful towards the election of President Jonathan in 2011; and she consequently became one of the closest persons to the president. For that reason, many had even before the current scandal, considered her an untouchable. Thus, when the current scandal broke, many had predicted that she was likely going to get a mere slap on the wrist, current events seem to be confirming those fears.
As we have noted on this page many times, the Jonathan presidency has shown serious accommodation to corruption, and this could spell great tragedy for our country. Early last year, following a nationwide protest over increase in the prices of petroleum products, Nigerians were regaled with unprecedented cases of fleecing of the nation’s treasury under the guise of petroleum subsidy claims. As the investigation by the National Assembly subsequently revealed, the subsidy claims were a mere criminal connivance between some government officials and private companies to apply and get paid humongous amounts as subsidy refunds, when in reality most of them never imported any product.
As we write, nobody has been punished for stealing the billions of naira from our national treasury, in the name of the phantom oil subsidy. Again, as in the aviation sector, the Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, is considered another untouchable in the Jonathan presidency. To confirm that, the president has successfully ignored Nigerians, despite the demand that the supervising minister under whose watch the petroleum subsidy scam happened should be sacked. In fact, as events subsequently showed, most of those indicted for the subsidy scam are the children and associates of the major big-wigs in the ruling party, and the half-hearted criminal trials have been turned to a circus.
Similar tales of corruption have been established in the pension management, which operates under the presidency. As between the National Assembly and a presidential task force on pension, led by one Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina, what has been established is that billions of naira has been stolen, but there is dispute as to the guilty party. There again, there is no concrete effort, by relevant authorities, to recover our stolen wealth, under the nose of the presidency. As in other cases, the nation is again taken for a ride, as the chief culprit was at a time alleged to be shielded by the presidency with police protection, while the senate was issuing orders that the Inspector-General of police should arrest and bring him to the senate chambers. At the end of the hullaballoo, the task force chairman was neither apprehended nor the allegedly stolen money recovered.
In our view, President Jonathan must learn necessary lessons from the way his Ghanaian counterpart handled the fate of the sacked deputy minister, Hammah. To do otherwise is to clearly make Ghana, the preferred destination for direct foreign investment in the region. Indeed, few Nigerians will still remember that President Jonathan anchored his presidency on transparency and transformation. For many, it is like his administration is more at home with institutionalising corruption than fighting it. To prove cynics wrong, President Jonathan should borrow a leaf from his colleague in Ghana.
