More often than not, Nigeria and its high profile citizens are in the news for the wrong reasons. The country is adjudged the largest economy in Africa, yet poverty stands like a colossus here, bestriding many homes, emptying their bowels and shrinking already shrivelled flesh.
The reason for this is simple. The commonwealth of the country is plundered by a few in privileged positions, mostly those of the political class who have unfettered access to ‘free’ public money.
Nigerians thought that they had seen the last of treasury looters after Sani Abacha, the country’s maximum ruler who looted the country blind. But they were mistaken because, as Ayi Kwei Armah, the Ghanaian novelist, puts it, ‘The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born’.
The treasury still groans under the heavy weight of mindless looters. James Ibori, the young power broker who ‘served’ Delta State people as governor between 1999 and 2007, is one of them.
Ibori was alleged to have stolen so much from the state’s treasury. Part of his enormous loot, stashed away in UK banks, was returned recently to Nigeria by the British government. And the loot in question is a whooping £4.2million (about N2.2 billion), comprising funds recovered from friends and family members.
The returned loot, like Ibori’s 2012 conviction by a court in the United Kingdom, has elicited mixed reactions from across the country. The Federal Government claims the money belongs to it, with Abubakar Malami, Attorney General of the Federation, saying that the money will be deployed to complete the second Niger Bridge among other projects.
Delta State government thinks differently, insisting that the returned loot belongs to Delta and its citizens. Many prominent lawyers and human rights activists, including Itse Sagay, Femi Falana among others think along this line.
Sagay, who is the chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), noted recently that “the money is Delta State money and must be returned to Delta State. Federal Government cannot appropriate it for any reason whatsoever.”
We share the popular view that this money belongs to Delta State and its people and not the Federal Government. But we have a caveat. We do not support the idea of the money being used to complete any on-going project or being handed over directly to Delta State government.
We believe that if that money was not stolen, it would have been used for the development of the state in various areas of human development. One of such areas, which we consider very critical, is education.
We are, therefore, calling for the returned loot to be used to set up an independent Education Trust Fund to give local and international scholarships to brilliant Delta state students. The fund should be managed by a credible board of trustees.
It should be well managed just for the purpose of the scholarship. We advise that the scholarship board should not, in anyway, be linked or controlled by the Delta State government.
The Federal Government must not be allowed to take that money. We disagree with Malami’s argument that “in consonance with existing framework engaged in the management of previous recoveries, the instant repatriated funds should be deployed towards the completion of the Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kano expressway and the Lagos-Ibadan expressway under the coordination of the Nigeria Social Investment Authority (NSIA).”
If the AGF’s “previous recoveries” refers to Abacha loot, we do not see the basis for the comparison, because the money looted by Abacha belonged to the Federal government. So, it is just normal for the federal government to recover the money and use it without recourse to any entity.
The case is different with the Ibori loot. This is because the stolen money could be any or all of the following: Internally generated revenue by the state government, money allocated to it from the federation account or part of the 13 percent derivation fund for the oil bearing states.
We believe that education, by its very nature, breaks ignorance and liberates the mind. If therefore this money is deployed to educating Delta children, it will, in the long run, produce citizens who will govern the state with open mind, bearing in mind that the state contributed to their training and development.
Any action other than this, taken in respect of that returned loot, will in our view be counter-productive.
The completion of the second Niger Bridge is a good thing to do, but money for that purpose could come from any other source. Delta State money, which is what the returned Ibori loot is, should be used for the development of Delta people who had suffered deprivation as a result of the loot.
