BusinessDay 04 Mar 2018

C002D5556 Sunday 04 March 2018
16BDSUNDAY
Politics
APC in fresh ‘winning’ moves as 2019 beckons
EKENE MUOMA
Less than a year from now,
Nigerians would once again
have the opportunity to
exercise their constitutionally
derived powers to choose and
remove their leaders.
Taking into account the large
turnout recorded across the
country in the ongoing INEC
(Independent National Electoral
Commission) Continuous Voter
Registration exercise, it is clear
that Nigerians are determined
now more than ever to remove
underperformed leaders and
replace them with more credible
and competent individuals.
Politicians and their political
parties, on the other hand, are
not relenting in their efforts to
remain in power as they are doing
everything within their reach to
retain the goodwill and trust of
the people ahead of the coming
elections. The All Progressives
Congress (APC), still wanting to
be the party to beat at the polls
next year, has started making
fresh moves that indicate how
committed it is to that end.
For it to achieve that under
normal circumstances, it would
only have to fulfil the promises
it made to Nigerians earlier by
tackling the issues facing the
country, some of which include
ensuring the peace and stability
of the nation by looking into restructuring,
and also protecting
lives and property by curbing the
excesses of Fulani herdsmen and
John Odigie-Oyegun, APC chairman
Boko Haram insurgents.
Looking back, the APC indeed
had a rough start. Having
been ushered into power with
heightened expectations from
Nigerians, the party was under
pressure to deliver as quickly as
possible. However, things were
not going to be rosy as the APC
government began to complain
as soon as it got into power that
it inherited a faulty government
from the People’s Democratic
Party (PDP). In fact, when the
new government came in, President
Muhammadu Buhari even
declared that Nigeria was broke.
But as a party that promised
change and presented itself in
2015 as one that had brought
hope to Nigerians, it remains a
fact that the APC has not done
much in delivering its campaign
promises, except for the very
little progress made so far in the
fight against corruption, even
though many still perceive the
anti-corruption fight as biased
and lopsided.
In an attempt to portray their
displeasure and disappointment
towards the recent state of things
in the country, many have regarded
this government as a joke.
“What do you say about a situation
where the national budget
got missing as soon as the APC
government took charge, rats
taking over the office of the
president who kept travelling
every now and then, snakes swallowing
money, monkeys stealing
money and dead people being
appointed into top positions in
Federal Government agencies
and parastatals? It all seems to
me like a joke,” observed a concerned
Nigerian.
That the APC enjoyed a great
deal of goodwill from the Nigerian
electorate in 2015 is not in
doubt. Unfortunately, that does
not seem to be the case this time
around as the APC is fast losing
its popularity amongst Nigerians
as a result of what can be seen
as the party’s wrong decisions
in confronting Nigeria’s many
problems, the most crucial being
the incessant calls to revisit Nigeria’s
structure. However, with the
turn of events recently, the party
seems to be realizing its faults
gradually and has obviously gone
back to the drawing board to
strategize and plan ahead.
In a bid to save what is left
of the fast diminishing support
it got from Nigerians, the APC,
having perhaps realised that
being unyielding to the calls for
restructuring would do it more
harm than good, has, ahead of
2019, rescinded its earlier position
on restructuring by coming
out to debunk anti-restructuring
statements credited to party
members.
“The whole idea on restructuring
is anchored on the desire to
have more efficient government
and to bring governance closer to
the people and put people in control
of their lives,” Bolaji Abdullah,
APC national publicity secretary,
was recently quoted as saying.
“These individual positions
don’t reflect the position of the
party. What determines the position
of the party is what is contained
in the party’s manifesto.
The government is produced by
the party; therefore, the party
takes responsibility for everything
the government does,” he said.
Although this move by the
APC might seem to many as opportunistic,
it is also true that it
is coming at a time when positive
change is craved. Ever since the
outpouring of agitators from all
over the country clamouring for
self-determination, top on the
lips of well-meaning Nigerians
has been the call for restructuring.
It may yet play in APC’s favour
that, having clamped down on
such calls in the past, it suddenly
had a change of heart when it
set up a committee to look into it
restructuring. The committee has
since submitted its findings and
resolutions to party leaders. Key
parts of the resolutions made by
the APC’s committee on restructuring
include resource control, state
policing, and state court of appeal.
If implemented, the recommendations
would devolve more
powers to the states which would
then have more sovereignty and
control over their affairs.
This move by the APC in finally
harkening to the calls for restructuring
has been so far greeted
well by Nigerians and is really
commendable, but analysts say
the party only needs to be honest
in its dealings and hurriedly
implement the resolutions of the
committee before the year runs
out. Failure to do this, analysts
say, may portray the party as a
gathering of political desperados
and opportunists who just want
to impress in order to get the support
of the people ahead of the
2019 general elections.
Who is against accountability in Benue?
Moses Olachene
Last Tuesday in Makurdi,
the Benue State capital,
there was a gathering at
the state house of assembly.
It was an inquisition into an issue
that should ordinarily not
throw up any dust.
An exercise had been conducted
by the state government
that threw up a number
of very shocking details
about government payroll and
there was concerted effort to
distract from the facts that
emerged.
Essentially, a committee set
up by the state government
investigated salary payment
details between June 2015
and April 2017 and uncovered
a fraud of N3.7billion. Of the
N3.7billion, dead pensioners
were said to have collected
N619.6 million, N1.4 billion
went to some workers in 60
MDAs illegally while other
forms of payroll misappropriations
made up the balance.
For a state like Benue that
relies considerably on federal
allocation, these numbers and
discoveries were scandalous
and would not have bubbled
to the surface were it not that
the Samuel Ortom led admin-
istration mustered the courage
to set up the committee that
probed the payroll.
An interesting aspect of
the audit was the technology
behind the entire process. A
software, Remita, designed
by an indigenous company
was at the heart of the effort.
As expected, the response of
those that benefitted from the
wanton fraud was to indict the
software for the loss of their
“cash cow.” This hoard of faceless
individuals went to town
with the tale that Remita had
removed names of legitimate
workers from the payroll; a
clear case of falsehood. But the
problem of payroll manipulation
is not purely a Benue problem.
Other states in Nigeria
have faced the same ordeal.
The Bayelsa state government
had to even set up a
special court to address payroll
fraud. In the case of Bayelsa,
fraud valued at N322million
was discovered in local government
payroll in 2016. Some
4,204 workers were implicated.
Other states including Kaduna,
Sokoto, and Kano have
also experienced their fair
share of all sorts of issues with
payroll. In particular, a Kaduna
Samuel Otorm
State Pension Bureau consultant
was indicted for smuggling
names into the pension payroll
and had charted away over
N 38million in undeserved
pension benefits by mid 2017.
Some 9, 768 ghost workers
were removed from the payroll
in the Kaduna state for crimes
committed between 2007 and
2013.
On 25, May 2017, Sokoto
state government under the
leadership of Aminu Tambuwal
said it has expunged 13,415
ghost names from the payroll
of its 23 local councils; a few
months later, the government
of Kano uncovered payroll
fraud valued at N12.7million.
This is a recurring decimal
across Nigeria, especially
where there is no political will
to weed out the perpetuators.
In the case of Benue, the
investigative committee removed
from the payroll employees
that got into the system
through the backdoor, and
demoted those that had been
promoted without requisite
professional and academic
qualifications based on various
illegal service schemes. The
cleaned data, reviewed and approved
by the Commissioner
for Finance, was used for salary
payment in January 2018 and
all hell broke loose.
As the committee sat in
Makurdi, on the morning of
27, February the damaging
falsehood that the operators of
the indigenous software that
helped stop the fraud were
to blame for changes in the
payroll were still making the
rounds. These rumours which
were calculated to distract
from the real issues were sadly
adopted by some individuals.
But the vast majority of Nigerians
know that this is a blatant
lie. They know that is just a case
of corruption making a desperate
effort to perpetuate itself.
Olachene, a public affairs analyst,
wrote from Makurdi, Benue State.