Sambisa forest and forensic (forest) accounting

From virtual obscurity stretching back centuries, Sambisa Forest has become a household name worldwide – for entirely the wrong reasons. It owes its notoriety to the abduction of 276 girls who were roused from slumber in their school dormitories in Chibok and have since been held captive by the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents for over a year. We must, however, record that 51 girls apparently escaped after being subjected to the most awful and grotesque ordeal imaginable.

Breaking news on CNN: ‘Boko Haram: “We’ve just rescued over 200 girls in a daring attack on Boko Haram hideout in Sambisa” – Nigerian Army’.

On Al Jazeera, the governor of Borno State (North East Nigeria), Kashim Shettima, in whose territory Chibok is located, strove valiantly to provide some measure of hope when he told his feisty interviewer Christine Amanpour: “I’m hopeful that the missing Chibok girls will still be rescued.”

However, what has sent shockwaves all over the internet was the revelation by the governor: “Vital hours were lost soon after the attack – hours that may have paid off if the search for the girls was vigorously done within that timeframe. For about three days they were at the bank of a river and some of the commanders were said to have gone into the hinterlands of Sambisa to get directives from their masters. That could have been a golden opportunity for us to recover the girls. But scepticism and sheer indifference really compounded our problems. Some were even formulating theories that it was the Borno State government that abducted the girls and kept them in the Government House. I found it quite amusing; why should we abduct our daughters for whatever political gains and keep them in the Government House? After all, I am surrounded by policemen who are not answerable to me. They are the employees of the federal government. I have security aides who are the DSS that are from the federal government; so how is it conceivable to connive with Kashim Shettima to score some cheap political goals, by abducting those girls and keeping them? But there is no need to cry over spilt milk. It took some time for the federal government to invite us over the issue. Even when I was invited, I was really delighted that at last, some solutions would be proffered as to how to rescue these girls. But it was amazing that the whole crux of the meeting was geared towards scapegoating.”

Regardless, several doubting Thomases have weighed in on the side of cynicism and scepticism. Their response to the twitter handle @BringBackOurGirls is to insist: “We are not sure that the girls are really missing. Their mothers ought to have been out there every day, crying to government to come to their aid.”

Indeed, Doyin Okupe, senior special assistant on public affairs to President Goodluck Jonathan delivered the following verdict on BBC: “Chibok Girls Were Kidnapped To Make Jonathan’s Government Look Incompetent”.

Okupe said in a Facebook post that the #BringBackOurGirls group was formed with the sole aim of smearing the image of Jonathan’s government.

“One of the reasons the Chibok girls were kidnapped was to present Jonathan’s administration as incompetent and hold it to ransom against 2015 elections. One of the reasons the BBOG (Bring Back Our Girls) was formed was to sustain and internationalise the embarrassment. One of the reasons President Jonathan lost the election was a national and international conspiracy predicated on this carefully choreographed and assiduously sustained perception. One of the issues that will be in the handover notes will be the missing girls. What is reasonable and expedient for well-meaning men and women of good conscience is to dialogue with the incoming administration on what best new approach to employ to find and rescue the Chibok girls,” Okupe said.

On his “Daily Show” on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart mischievously announced that all Nigerians should be conferred with the “ASS” award. This immediately unleashed a wave of outrage until he took pains to explain that ASS is the acronym for “Amazing Stories of Survival”! He then proceeded to reel out a long list of Nigerians who somehow managed to survive the hardship and trauma inflicted on them in the last five years – from the collapse of the educational system to health as well as electricity/power without even mentioning corruption and insecurity which took an entirely grotesque dimension when the deadly Boko Haram insurgents virtually held the nation hostage, particularly the North-East region. Even now, while there appears to be some semblance of respite and hope following the election of General Muhammadu Buhari as president, we still have to contend with the lingering bitterness, traumatic distress and paralysis of fear.

I make no claim to the profound observation of ‘The Psychology of Decisions’ which has reminded us: “Your mind does stop on what you don’t know. It just makes the best of what you do know.”

It is in that context that we must recognize that Sambisa Forest stretches over an area of land that is larger than Belgium or Scotland. Regardless, we are obliged to separate the woods from the trees. No easy task!

By the same token, when confronted with the challenge of “forest” or forensic audit, we must accept the limitation imposed on us by the realization that it is one thing to launch rockets to devastate a forest (even at the risk of killing both captives and captors; victims and oppressors), when it comes to forensic audit, it is not rocket science. Indeed, it is a marathon, not a sprint. It is not even enough to sieve the chaffs from the wheat. It requires painstaking application of skill, thoroughness and professionalism. Always, the matrix revolves around what you know versus what you do not know, further compounded by what you should have known. It is not even enough to ask tough questions, you have to insist on the right answer at the right time from the right quarters.

Unfortunately, there is no protection against the dictum of the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Adamu Mu’azu: “Our party (PDP) lost the election when it was overwhelmed by the disaffection and disillusionment of members who had come to the conclusion that the party was afflicted with a severe case of ‘monkey de work, baboons de chop’!”

This is not to be interpreted to mean that forensic auditors are monkeys who will do all the work while the baboons, whoever they may be, cart off the billions of dollars.

The truth of the matter is that Sambisa Forest (and the missing girls) has become a metaphor for forensic audit. The forest challenges us to rescue our beloved missing girls while the forensic audit is about recovering missing billions of naira and dollars. The main task is to heal the wounds, perish impunity and salvage our nation. However, we still have to deal with the subsidiary issue: Will Sambisa Forest ever succumb to forensic accounting?

In the meantime, the unanimous verdict on our nation by the World Bank; the International Monetary Fund (IMF); and the United Nations is the same. It is as if their respective leaders Jim Yong Kim, Christine Lagarde, and Ban Ki-Moon had thoroughly rehearsed their answers: “Nigeria is stable but fragile”. They are committed to doing all they can to support General Muhammadu Buhari who has inherited a huge legacy of anger, frustration and revenge. Yet failure is not an option. Regardless of how devastating or grotesque the legacy may be, we must insist on an irredeemable level of social cohesion. The World Bank and the IMF are willing to lend us not money but resilience and unlimited access to knowledge and information. They genuinely want good things to come to Nigeria but there is no magic wand with which to make an impossible dream come true.

In any case, our new president has rightly signalled that we should not expect any miracles. We must endorse the message he is due to deliver at the meeting of the G7 which is scheduled to hold in Berlin, Germany, from June 7 to 8, 2015: “Nigeria has the potential to become a powerhouse” (but we must sort out Sambisa Forest and forensic audit first).

J.K Randle