The moment expectedly clutched the headlines. It was a Bombardier 6000 jet, a sleek luxury airplane from the stable of Canada’s Bombardier Aerospace. Tastefully furbished and sitting 17 passengers, the aircraft is the type regular people encounter in their dreams. The value was put at $57 million.
With the tail number M-MYNA and a glittering green and white livery, the airliner reportedly took off from Dubai, UAE, made a stopover at Shannon Airport in Ireland, and eventually landed at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport in Canada.
Shortly after touchdown, the aircraft was impounded by the Canadian authorities following a Quebec court order, which was triggered by a request from Nigeria.
The account of the seizure made the news cycles in the Nigerian media. There was however no news on who piloted the plane or who its passengers were if any. One report claimed that the aircraft was on its way for maintenance prior to being sold, having been parked in Dubai for quite a long while.
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The other party linked to the aircraft, the very target for impounding it, was a former Minister of Petroleum, Mr. Dan Etete. He was said to own the jet and allegedly purchased it with proceeds of corruption.
Since he left office almost two decades ago, Etete, though elusive, has remained a person of interest to editors. Mainly for its sensational value, having Etete on the cover page guarantees bountiful sales. It could be on a day when there are no exclusives or rampage by Boko Haram or bandits. No editor would reject such a tantalizing USP when Etete’s story is tied to Nigeria’s opaque oil inflows.
As it were, Etete allegedly diverted money from the commonwealth to purchase the jet and to fund his larger-than-life lifestyle. He apparently siphoned such amounts beyond what other interest groups are willing to overlook. The most common allegation was that he deployed his clout as Petroleum Minister to award the prospecting rights of the oil-rich OPL 245 block to Malabu Oil and Gas Limited, a company he reportedly owned and remotely controlled.
However, following the sudden death in 1998 of General Sani Abacha, under whom he was serving as Petroleum Minister, Etete “retained the rights to OPL 245 as a private citizen until he offloaded them to oil giants Shell and Eni in 2011, who paid a combined $1.3 billion to the Nigerian government,” one report said. Etete, according to the allegations, pocketed a hefty $336 million as his cut from the deal.
As it stands, the transaction remains a matter of litigation in Nigeria and Italy. Indeed, the Nigerian anti-graft watchdog, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Wednesday, July 1, 2020, arraigned Malabu Oil and Gas Limited and other entities and individuals for money laundering offences linked to the OPL 245 deal.
For as long as anyone can remember, at least in the last three decades, there was hardly any former Petroleum Minister that wasn’t associated with one controversy or another, in which corruption was a common denominator. Perhaps, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu was the exception. Being largely a technocrat and intellectual, he focused more on applying the rulebooks and developing a transparent industry, while his subordinates, operating mainly from the state oil behemoth, NNPC, his former portfolio, pulled the strings. Apart from his futile bid to compel the powers at NNPC to follow due process, his tenure was uncontroversial or associated with sleaze, at least not in the public space.
Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke cannot be forgotten in a hurry. She was in April 2010 appointed Minister of Petroleum Resources during the tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan. Prior to this, she was Minister of Transportation and later Minister of Mines and Steel Development. No controversy trailed her stints in those two ministries until she got to the Petroleum Ministry.
The accusations against her are numerous but all tied to dubious contract awards, bribery, extravagant lifestyle and diversion of funds while superintending over the Petroleum Ministry. Subsequently, the EFCC charged her in absentia for money laundering, while some assets purportedly traced to her were either confiscated or forfeited on court orders.
Despite the efforts of EFCC to extradite her back to Nigeria and reports of being arrested and detained abroad, nobody has put Madueke on trial anywhere. Even the EFCC, clearly frustrated, has resigned itself to fate, since, as the suspended acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu, said in January, “some foreign countries were sabotaging the efforts of the Commission in its fight against corruption in Nigeria,” quoting Premium Times.
A report in Pulse, citing a document reportedly obtained from EFCC, claimed that “Diezani, who is still on trial for corruption back home in Nigeria, lobbied to become Trade and Investment Commissioner of the Dominican Republic and bagged a diplomatic passport from the island government to boot. With the diplomatic passport, she is immune to arrest by any law enforcement agency, including the Interpol, one EFCC operative who asked not to be named in this story, tells Pulse.” So, another investigation goes cold.
Like Etete, Madueke presents a ready headline whenever the oil industry is in the news. Her name is a ready mantra whenever the anti-graft agency needs to assert its efficiency and hard work, even as her file keeps picking dust in their office. Madueke has on a number of occasions dared Nigeria to extradite her to face the allegations against her. Whether just grandstanding or there are other conspiracy theories involved is a matter of conjecture.
We still remember Dr Rilwan Lukman, Nigeria’s longest-serving Petroleum Minister. He was once dubbed “Mr Fuel Scarcity”. He became Minister late 2008 following a cabinet shakeup by late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Despite having become a Methuselah in public service, he was still castigated for being unable to tackle the perennial fuel shortages then. Corruption in the industry, according to his traducers, remained rampant.
Chief Don Etiebet hardly escaped similar scrutiny. Even President Muhammadu Buhari was a former Petroleum Minister and currently the substantive Minister. Though it appears as if the office is presently frozen and everyone is fearful of persecution, allegations of corruption will definitely surface when he eventually leaves office.
Some happenings follow a logical or natural trajectory, even when improprieties are involved. The Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, with NNPC as its epicentre, is Nigeria’s cash vault. Given the culture of corruption, induced and sustained by greed, underdevelopment and parochialism, some call it leadership failure, the temptation to pilfer public funds seems inevitable. The NNPC, whether by design or omission, controls enormous cash, and operates a template, whereby its managers, without necessary checks and balances, have access to the till. Part of the money, most often in hard currency and very huge amounts, just vanish.
For a country in perpetual stagnation and with no signs of change or improvement, despite the abundance of natural resources, survival comes down to warehousing lots of money by any means, not just by public officials, but anyone who has access to the public till. Being educated or a professional no longer guarantees success or provides sufficient income to live a decent life. So, just everyone needs some sort of ‘insurance cover,’ and corruption, ranking after leadership failure, my view, provides a ready solution.
For President Buhari, the challenge is not the lack of desire to have wealth. Everything points to his longing for a comfortable life. His quest for public office cannot be completely delinked from the hunger for a good life. His challenge was and remains the failure to grasp the ‘technicalities’ for looting public funds, according to one account. Even the brazen approach, the sort applied to a devastating effect by Abacha, will stain his reputation of incorruptibility. So, he will likely remain a Nigerian leader unassociated with stupendous wealth. However, we have also seen clear cases of outsourcing sleaze to third parties, possibly family and close confidants. Nonetheless, for Buhari, having reached an age where the lust for money and material acquisitions seem unimportant, he may not engage in corrupt practices for himself.
Chief Timipre Marlin Sylva, the incumbent Petroleum Resources Minister, is stuck between the rock and the deep blue sea. As a professional politician and still active, he needs considerable resources to prosecute future battles. Even after serving as governor and minister, other public offices still beckon. Those require funding to actualize. His tenure as governor for five years was turbulent and may not have given him enough room to pillage the treasury. This is an assumption.
Leveraging on the power of incumbency, which he currently enjoys, Sylva can still pull some strings to amass wealth. Consequential questions will only arise after he has left office. But if he still retains considerable clout within the ‘right’ power circles, then nothing will happen, apart from the usual media trial. Come to think of it, previous allegations of malfeasance against him have either stalled, collapsed or been acquitted. Also, his predecessors in office, even while on the run, are still free and may even bounce back. This is Nigeria.
Assuming Sylva decides to quit public life, he still needs a lot of money to maintain a respectable standard of living. So, the ball is in his court: shun corruption and retire with some dignity to a low profile life in Bayelsa or grab as much as you can; corruption is now ingrained in the Nigerian culture.
So, the Honourable Minister, weigh your options carefully and make your choice. Now is the time.
Nwachukwu is a Lagos-based communications consultant. [email protected]
