Steve said so

“His indecision is final” Anon.

Most people who have no familiarity with the inner workings of President Jonathan’s administration may be surprised that Dr Doyin Okupe virtually repeated the passionate denunciation by Steven Oronsaye, of the Report of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force headed by Malam Nuhu Ribadu during its  presentation. Mr Oronsaye who said “so what?” to the President’s demand for the report to be presented right before the same President, had lambasted the timing of the submission, conclusions and recommendations of a Report he had no hand in writing but could have if he had wanted. He did not participate in deliberations of the Report, and did not write a Minority Report if he disagreed with majority views and recommendations. But he had enough muscle to publicly and emphatically discredit a Report put together by highly respected Nigerians on a very sensitive issue. The President, whose demand to receive the Report Steve said need not have been complied with, saw nothing wrong with an obvious attempt by an absentee – member to perform  a hatchet job on the work of many others. Even before he had seen the Report, Steven Oronsaye had told him and the world that the Committee’s work was incomplete and its recommendations suspect. Anyone who knew how much power Steve packs in his punches in this administration would have known from that melodrama that Malam Nuhu Ribadu and his colleagues on the committee have wasted their time.

Now Dr Okupe says it officially: he described the report as “jumbled and fumbled.” He says it has been destroyed by the committee itself when it said in its “obvious disclaimer” that it could not verify some of the data. That statement, says Okupe has rendered it severely defective and unenforceable. The presidential spokesman says the committee has left the most important of its task to the same federal government which set it up to complete. Without further work on the report, Dr Okupe says" it will be impossible to indict or punish anybody.” As for Malam Nuhu Ribadu, Dr Okupe says he has contributed to “public disinformation” around the report.

The Presidency could have chosen to hold back its spoiler in Steven Oronsaye, receive the report, and then go public with its shortcomings, including those its says were forced upon it by lack of time. It could also have received the report, thanked the members, and made the best use of it, in spite of its imperfections. But it did not. Mr Oronsaye wanted to flag off a serious  discrediting mission against the report, which was basically about recoveries of amounts fraudulently paid, withheld or stolen from revenues. Either the presidency could not hold back Mr Oronsaye from his mission, or it wanted him to cast the first and fatal stone. It could also have given the report to Steve after receipt, so that he can say what he wanted done with it. After all, he was member of the committee, although he did not participate in its work; he is on the Board of the NNPC and the Central Bank of Nigeria; he chaired the committee on rationalization of government parastatals and agencies; and he is generally regarded as the one-man-think tank of the administration.

The official statement that a report on recoveries has no reliable data will render the committee's work useless. If government could   “verify” data relating to illegal or irregular payments and deductions, including those involving the NNPC where Steven Oronsaye (and his one fellow dissenter) serve as Board member and Director respectively, why would it have been compelled by public opinion to appoint a committee to do so?

The way things stand, it will be virtually impossible to salvage anything of value from the Nuhu Ribadu report. Alarm bells should also begin to sound around the work of two other committees appointed to look into the structure of the oil industry and operations. This is the kind of conclusion which Dr Okupe complains are put out as “major public disinformation deliberately calculated to overheat the polity and cause opprobrium against the President for doing what is right, what is needful and profitable for the nation.”

Words like these will not stop Nigerians raising questions regarding the sincerity of the administration to plug massive loopholes which allow corruption to drain our resources in the oil and gas sector. If it pains Dr Okupe that President Jonathan is unable to turn the tide of cynicism over his sincerity or capacity to tackle waste and corruption in the sector, he could take a little time to look inwards. He may find answers in the decision of the President to appoint a man to serve on  a committee whose work will intensely scrutinize the NNPC, then appoint the same man to the Board of the same NNPC, without asking him to leave the committee. He could find answers in appointing a man to both the Board of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the NNPC, two organs of government which have represented the biggest sources of friction between the executive and the legislature over budgets. He could find answers in appointing a man into the Boards of the NNPC, CBN, the Nuhu Ribadu Committee, and then as Chairman of a Committee to advise on the fate of hundreds of parastatals and agencies of government. He could find answers in the manner he appoints the same man into the most sensitive positions, many with potentials for conflict of interest, including his own interest. He could find answers in the manner serious issues are being raised in the manner government ministers are feuding over how to handle importers alleged to have diverted huge amounts under a highly fraudulent subsidy regime. He could find answers in the dithering over the P.I.B, or even in the unseemingly-intimitate relationship between extremely wealthy and powerful businessmen and this administration.

It is very likely that many Nigerians will believe that President Goodluck Jonathan is a good man who means well for Nigeria. Many others also sympathize with the fact many of the problems he is having to deal with have their roots in previous administrations. But he will not get sympathy over the type of people he trusts to help him work. The fiasco which he sat calmly and observed involving Mr Steven Oronsaye and one other against other members of a committee he had appointed to do a good job reflected very badly on him. He cannot wash his hands clean of people like Mr Oronsaye, and no damage control strategies can alter the perception that he has very powerful people who continuously muddle his waters.