See it at Premiumtimes
More than N10 trillion of Nigeria’s
oil savings bequeathed by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, to successors,
Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, was “squandered”, former World Bank
executive, and key minister under Mr. Obasanjo’s administration, Oby
Ezekwesili, has said.
Ms. Ezekwesili, a former minister of
education, and a member of Mr. Obasanjo’s administration’s inner circle of
trusted officials, said $45 billion was left as foreign reserves and additional
$22 billion in the Excess Crude Account.
Six years after Mr. Obasanjo left
office, no major investment or infrastructure has been put on ground by Messrs
Yar’Adua and Mr. Jonathan (who served first as Vice president under Mr.
Yar’Adua) to justify the huge sum which is more than twice Nigeria’s entire
budget.
Ms. Ezekwesili spoke at the
42nd convocation of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, her Alma Mata, from
where she graduated in 1985.
“The present cycle of boom of the
2010s is however much more vexing than the other four that happened in the 70s,
80s, 90s and 2000s,” she spoke, of the massive frittering of oil resources that
successive administrations have inflicted on Nigeria.
“It is happening back to back with
the squandering of the significant sum of $45 Billion in foreign reserve
account and another $22Billion in the Excess Crude Account being direct savings
from increased earnings from oil that the Obasanjo administration handed over
to the successor government in 2007.
“One cannot but ask, what exactly does Nigeria seek
to symbolize and convey with this level of brazen misappropriation of public
resources? Where did all that money go? Where is the accountability for the use
of both these resources plus the additional several billions of dollars
realized from oil sale by the two administrations that have governed our nation in the
last six years? How were these resources applied or more appropriately,
misapplied?”
Ms. Ezekwesili led Mr. Obasanjo’s
government’s remarkably successful drive at reforming government contracting
procedure directed from the Due Process office. She was later named the
minister of education in the final years of the administration.
Ms. Ezekwesili, now Senior Economic
Adviser, Africa Economic Policy Development Initiative, said she realized how
severe the nation’s education woes had been while she headed the ministry.
Her efforts at reforms failed to
yield as the government soon left office.
In a lengthy presentation to
graduating students who she urged to lead a new generation of change for the
country, Ms. Ezekwesili painted the well-known sobering picture of Nigeria’s
decades of oil wealth and how each administration since independence has not
been an exception at wasting them through “tragic choices”.
“Neither our thirty four years of
cumulative military governance nor the nineteen cumulative years thus far of
our democratic governance provided us “inclusive and accountable governance,”
she said.
“Instructively, a person or as in our
own case; a nation is counseled to “stop digging when in a hole”. Lamentably,
in our case we have consistently rebuffed the wisdom behind that counsel. We
have instead dug deeper and the more we have dug, the deeper into the hole we
have sunk and all because of political misadventures.”
The Yar’Adua and Jonathan
administrations have been accused in the past of squandering Mr. Obasanjo’s
savings, and Mr. Jonathan has particularly been accused of returning the
country to debt with repeated borrowings.
Mr. Obasanjo’s administration’s saved
funds started getting depleted soon after 2007; yet, no major new roads, rails,
power infrastructures or job creation initiative have been cited as investments
justifying the amount.
Critics have accused the Jonathan
administration of using part of the money to execute the 2011 elections,
allegation Mr. Obasanjo himself, faced during the 2003 and 2007 elections.
A new law has recently
converted the Excess Crude Account to Sovereign Wealth Fund,
potentially limiting access to its value, but governors insist accumulated oil
sales differentials be shared.