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New Page 11
Now, the missing ships
ANDY IKE EZEANI
God
bless Nigeria, the land of possibilities and impunities! The profile is getting
reinforced by the day and the present giddy outing called democracy may yet
surpass all the years before it. The marks are clearly there. Eleven days shy of
44 years, the Nigerian state is far from ceasing to astound both its friends and
its foes. In more ways than one, you do not have any other place like this land.
America can hold up its New York City as the city that never sleeps, but it
never can match Nigeria in a related measure. Nigeria remains by far the country
that is most active while asleep. Or is it the other way round? Phrased in a
more poetic form, this land is the ultimate somnambulist state. Or may be the
poor giant is under a spell.
Nigeria has always been a land of
possibilities. It always depends on how you read it. For many within this
system, especially among the ruling elite bands, exploiting the weaknesses or
possibilities of the system to a moderate extent is no longer enough. The daily
challenge and excitement now seem to derive from stretching the license to
sublime levels of abuse. Not unexpectedly, one bout of abuse of the system
begets another. The cumulative effect of the onslaught is the pathetic
circumstances of the present Nigerian state.
Everyday in the life of the Nigerian
society seems designed to yields one anomaly or another, if not outright
tragedy. On the face of it, the Nigerian society appears so resilient and so
fortified to contend with assaults. Many years ago, the late Dele Giwa aptly
noted that Nigerian had become "unshockable".His observation which captured a
personal amazement derived from the absurd drama of the days following the sack
of the Second Republic. The new Military men on the block, moving in a burst of
their supposed cleansing expedition kept unearthing mind boggling figures said
to have been either embezzled or mismanaged by the toppled political leaders.
The figures being released as having been
taken away from the public till were enough to shock any ordinary folks into a
coma, but not Nigerians. Indeed each episode of the then regular show of new
discoveries of embezzled public funds was received with some excitement and
dismissive comments, as if the said public money did not mean anything to the
people. It probably did not.Giwa could not understand the spirit of the people.
Many other societies will burst out in
flames of protest over such massive and consistent abuse of their common wealth.
Well, Nigerians are obviously of a different constitution. That was long before
a research project contended that these indeed, are the happiest people in the
world, their miserable circumstances not withstanding.
The research assertion may have been a
reflection of the perplexity of the research team. Confronted by a human specie
whose surroundings are plastered with imposed wretchedness, but who banter away
their problems and even throw shindigs on top of obvious tragedies, the research
team must have declared that this indeed is the rarest of a rare breed. A people
cannot be found anywhere in this wide world whose disposition to life and
serious issues are by every rational assessment so unnatural and so
incomprehensible. Of course, the government of such a people can only reflect
the pool from whence it sprang.
Every new day in Nigeria throws up new
absurdities of developments. You think you have seen or heard the extreme of
anomalies one day and the next day proves you wrong. Take for instance the now
ordinary matter of missing public funds. First they started missing in petty
amounts, just thousands of naira. Then it reached the million naira mark.
Salaries of an entire staff of a big government agency can and do disappear, as
is also the case with say, a chunk of the military budget or that of any other
arm of the public service. No institution is too big or too sensitive for its
budget to get missing, either in part or as a whole.
The very act of millions of naira that are
in bank vaults disappearing is not only a Nigerian phenomenon, but a clear
evidence of the boundless possibilities within the Nigerian system. In many
instances, the missing salaries are quietly discovered after a reasonable time
lapse. The hapless workers are happy to eventually get their pay, the heads of
the concerned agencies or services are happy that the money is not missing after
all, the government does not hear anything of such matter, and life goes on. Of
course, everybody is happy.
The streak of missing public money was
bound to move on to a higher plane. In due course, foreign currencies, usually
grants and aids earmarked for sundry development programmes started missing. The
funds never get missing on the high sea, mark you. They usually travel safely
from either Washington D.C. or Paris or London or Canadian sources to their
destination in Nigeria. They get safely lodged in an account belonging to a
government agency, and then they develop wings.
If you think the sums involved are a joke,
think about the recent reported revelation by the Minister of Finance, Dr.Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala.The Minister was reported as disclosing that the sum of 30 million
U.S. dollars being part of export expansion grant to Nigeria has been stolen by
a collaboration of some crooks at the Export Promotion Council headquarters in
Abuja and their associates out of the agency. That very agency is said to be
quite notorious for such promotions of fraud.Instructively, its officials who
have been indicted in the past are said to have been retired from service. The
reaction is not restricted to the Export Promotion Council.
The gale propelled by steady, invisible
hands, which ensure the missing of public funds and vital resources was bound to
reach beyond the level of grants and budgets. It was only a matter of time. Now,
ships anchored on Nigerian shores are missing.Ships, oil tankers, mark their
size. But they miss per day, per day (permit the expression).Only in Nigeria!
The disappearance of MT Africa
Pride, caught for illegal oil bunkering and detained by Nigeria’s security
agencies, was in tune with occurrences in the Nigerian setting. Salaries
disappear here. Grants too. Of course, human beings disappear daily without
trace. So what is a ship? It may be massive in size, but so what?
It also follows pattern that the grave
matter of the missing arrested ship will first turn into ‘a case of two
fighting’ between the Nigerian Navy and the Nigeria Police. Such a loud argument
over who had custody of the ship will serve to obfuscate the matter.Subsequently,
the case will simply die. Sooner or later, a probe will be initiated into the
matter by the government. Findings of the probe will be bound in volumes and
possibly submitted to the President before the glare of press cameras. Promises
will be to sanction all those found culpable. The ship and its owners will
continue to do their business. Time would have taken care of everything. And
life will go on.
How the Navy will contend without qualms
that it released a ship anchored on Nigerian waters to the Police is just one of
those remarkable Nigerian stories.But, it may have done so. It could even have
handed the poor MT Africa Pride to the Road Safety Commission. Why
not? NNPC said it extracted the stolen oil in the belly of MT Africa Pride
before it made itself air and disappeared. How did the national oil company do
that? Who gave it access to the ship; the Navy or the Police? Or was the ship
left open for any interested party to go and serve its crude appetite? Where
were the men manning the ship as at the time NNPC was emptying its liquid
content? Where are those men now? Questions and questions. Of course, the ship
could not disappear leaving its men behind. So they are all gone, clean.Talk of
protecting our territorial waters.
Well, if any one thought the disappearance
of MT Africa Pride was an exceptional act, a second ship,MT Jimoh,also
arrested for illegal oil bunkering was declared missing late last week.MT
Jimoh must have found escape far easier than MT Africa Pride. With
the Navy and the Police still entangled in the face off over whose duty it is to
guide over ships at Nigerian shore, escape must have come easy. This country and
its leaders lie so badly to themselves. That is the saddest part of the
nightmare of Nigeria’s corporate existence.
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