SUBSIDY REPORT: Will Jonathan’s Endorsement Translate To Action?

President Goodluck Jonathan mid last week endorsed the House of Representative’s ad hoc committee report on the management of fuel subsidy. He also declared that no culprit would be spared. UCHENNA AWOM examines speculations that the president may be walking a different rope.

Could this be the finest hour for the beleaguered National Assembly? Systematically, the game seems to be changing and the klieg light is beamed on the federal lawmakers as ardent whistle blowers. It is no longer news that Nigerians are becoming weary of the many probes of government agencies with no concrete evidence to show that positives results are being achieved.

However, the House of Representatives have somehow ignited public passion and the National Assembly by that action has bounced back to reckoning. The report of its probe of the management of fuel subsidy funds was all that was needed to compel the authorities to start contemplating serious action, in sync with opinion.

Consequently, President Jonathan on Wednesday came out forcefully to unequivocally endorse the report of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee that probed the controversial issue of subsidy. It was indeed the needed elixir. As if his open declaration was not enough, he also declared that any proven culprit in the report will never be spared.

The import of the presidential approval was meant to put a lie to insinuations that the federal government was making clandestine moves to scuttle the report because of the mind boggling expose that implicated some high profile government personas.

That notwithstanding, Jonathan assured that there are no moves to scuttle the report of the Adhoc Committee. President Jonathan who spoke through his Special Adviser on National Assembly Matters, Senator Joy Emodi, told a press conference in Abuja that it is a wrong claim in “some quarters of uneasiness in the administration over the recommendations of the House Ad-hoc Committee on the utilization of petroleum subsidies.”

She averred that the President believes the executive and the legislative arms of government are on the same page on the issue and would collaborate towards ensuring that any rot in the oil sector is fully addressed. “The issues that led to the investigation predated President Jonathan’s administration. The president is poised to sanitize the oil sector and give it a new breath of life through enhanced probity, transparent governance and zero corruption

“No, no, no, no. but for the fact that Mr. President ab-initio initiated the move to rid the petroleum industry of the rot because the bane of this society today, the bane of maladministration in the petroleum sector is nothing but corruption. The fact that he appointed a person like Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to head another panel looking into the rot is a clear manifestation that Mr President is determined to cleanse the sector.

“He is not going to spare anybody, if not why would he go and appoint Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the ex-EFCC chairman and his very rival in the last presidential election. I am sure of that, he is not going to spare anybody found wanting and there are no moves…I am the Special adviser to Mr. President on National Assembly Matters. So I am sure that no move is being made and Mr. President to scuttle it. He has zero tolerance for corruption.

“So I bet you nobody is going to interfere with anything but you have to look at the people he selected to look into the rot in the system – men and women of proven integrity. As this one is happening here another investigative panel is also taking place in the executive arm. Mr. President is on the same page with the members of the National Assembly to rid the society especially that oil sector of the rot” she said.

Senator Emodi said such sharp practices in the oil sector were the reasons President Jonathan moved against fuel subsidy in the first place. The president, she added, had during his acting president days directed the then Minister of Finance, Mr. Olusegun Aganga to engage an internationally recognised Audit firm; KPMG to investigate the rot in the sector.

According to her, the President has assured and of course has presidentially sealed the report. That is another thing and now the issue is whether it would not end at that level.

Is the president not walking a different rope other than his declaration? Was the President merely pandering to the public whims? It is easy to do that and win public acclaim and of course that is presently the suspicion unless some examples are set to make the declarations more convincing.

Observers are already asking if the President can muster the necessary will power to go after the high profile elements that were indicted in the report , especially those in his government and political party; Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Recall that personalities like former National Chairman of the PDP, Col. Ahmadu Ali, Diezani Alison-Madueke and some others who wield power in this government were even recommended for prosecution. Col. Ali was the chairman of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) with Reginald Stanley as Executive Secretary.

So it was given that the government will ostensibly look the other way as it did with the recommendations of the Senate Committee report on the commercialization and privatization activities of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).

Ironically, at the time the lawmakers in the House of Representatives were debating and adopting the report, the Director-General of the BPE, Ms Bolanle Onagoruwa was holding court with senators in the Committee on Privatization. Onagoruwa, it could be recalled, was recommended for sack by the Senate committee over her alleged role in the serial profligacy committed in the course of the sale of some blue chip public enterprises.

If Onagoruwa and others who were fingered in the alleged BPE fleece in the sale of Nigeria’s collective commonwealth could be working with so much swagger when they should ordinarily be at home or doing some other things, then there are fears that the Reps’ report could as well end somewhere in the president’s office. This is without prejudice to the president’s assurance that the government will not spare any culprit.

Again, fears are that the report may be weakened by the report being awaited from the Senate. The senate was even the first to commission an ad-hoc committee to carry out a holistic investigation of the management of the subsidy fund.

The probe was going when the federal government on January 1, 2012 removed subsidy on petroleum products, an action that gave birth to the Reps committee, which was a precursor to the raging protest across Nigeria against the subsidy removal.

Unfortunately, the senate report is still being awaited, while the Reps report has become the issue and of course Nigerians will not or accept any other report that is not as detailed and far reaching as the Reps report.

That being the case, will Jonathan’s current stance mean a new dawn for all the avalanche of resolutions turned out by the Senate and the Reps? Does it mean that henceforth the executive will start looking favourably to the resolutions despite the fact that they are merely advisory? Observers have severally argued that had the presidency taken seriously to some of the resolutions, maybe the itchy fingers, which mostly abound in the public service could have retreated?

Thieves in government, they further stated, could have beaten a retreat knowing that there are serious sanctions that will definitely be meted out to culprits. It is unfortunate that government alleged thieves; especially civil servants relish the judicial process and its snail speed approach.

To them the judiciary is a welcome cover; since the mere granting of bail means ‘go home with your loot and sin no more’. In that case there seems to be an orchestrated attack on the National Assembly, ably marshaled by some faceless groups hired to weaken the parliament and by inference to paint its activities as nothing but rags coming from a weak institution.

National Assembly resolutions have variously been subjected to judicial interpretation by even some high level government officials, who often are said to work in concert with the presidency, with the sole aim of evading the call to answer to some questions.

The powers of the National Assembly to expose corruption is provided for in Section 88 of the 1999 Constitution, yet the outcome of these probes become victims of some seeming judicial conspiracy.

Today, the chicken has come home to roost, perhaps Jonathan’s declaration is the needed elixir the National Assembly needs to fire on irrespective of the many suspicious public aversion to its activities.