It was former President Olusegun Obasanjo who once said that 90 percent of high rise mansions and deluxe houses in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt belong to public servants. My investigations have not only found the statement to be true, but other cities such as Kano, Maiduguri, Owerri, Ibadan, Uyo, Benin City, Umuahia, etc are also beneficiaries of this sleaze. Going by international searchlight on ill- gotten wealth especially from Africa by European nations and the United States, smart Nigerians have resorted to property acquisition as a safe haven for stolen public funds.
Public sector graft remains a major obstacle to the fight against corruption in Nigeria, presumably because of the huge amounts and personalities involved. This type of corruption offences include: diversion of public funds, embezzlement, stealing and abuse of office. The pension and fuel subsidy cases are typical. The figures involved are not only humongous but mind boggling.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, observed recently that corruption and money laundering continue to be driven by weak internal auditing controls, conspiracy, connivance and the unprofessional conduct of those vested with powers of supervision and management. In the pension investigations for instance, civil servants through acts of embezzlement frittered away billions of Naira and invested the proceeds in real estates, stocks and automobiles.
In the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, OHCSF, the Commission discovered that 66 bank accounts were opened by suspects out of which only 13 were officially approved. The Accountant-General of the Federation was not aware of these illegal accounts which contained over N35billion which had since been transferred to the approved accounts of the OHCSF. In yet another case, in the Federal Civil Commission, 3 officials conspired to steal N119million out of a sum of N128million meant for payment of severance benefits. So far, the commission has only recovered N32.275million and $497,000 from the suspects.
In the fuel subsidy scam involving an estimated N1.71trillion, a criminal vicious circle of negligence, connivance, collusion and conspiracy was observed between public officers and the private sector. The trend running through investigations so far revealed the following:
•Public officers signed off on documents certifying delivery of petroleum products when the mother vessel purporting to have conveyed the products were neither at the port of loading nor port of discharging nor have long become dead on the alleged dates of delivery. Worse still, neither was the daughter vessel purported to have discharged the products in Nigeria at any of the ports of discharge or indeed the West African sub-region.
•Public officers who ought to know and did know the capacity of tank farms storing products, certified quantity of products delivered to such farms far above their existing capacity.
•Marketers forged or altered dates of bills of lading to obtain higher plat and in turn higher subsidy.
•Marketers forge surveyors/inspector’s documents/certification to justify transactions not carried out or in some other cases, they forged shore tank certificates or inflated quantities on shore tank certificates to receive higher subsidy.
These are not all. Also observed was an unfortunate trend of continuous resistance and non-cooperation from some states and local governments in the Commission’s investigation activities. Some states issued directives to their senior officials to deny EFCC access to vital documents, while others hid their officials in government houses to prevent arrest and interrogation. This is regrettable, particularly when statistics indicate that 60 percent of corruption cases emanate from these two (2) tiers of government.
It has therefore become imperative to urgently finalize the National Anti-Corruption Strategy presently being worked on by the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and have same adopted by both the Federal Executive Council and the National Economic Council. This will ensure national and stakeholder buy-in and removal of obstacles preventing anti-corruption agencies from effectively performing their constitutional duties.
In another ugly development, oil theft has added a new dimension to economic crime in Nigeria. Along with its sister, pipeline vandalism, we are observing an organized crime involving staff of oil companies, dishonest staff of the NNPC, operators of illegal refineries, shippers, pirates on the high seas; national and international criminal oil cartels, etc. Like public corruption, oil theft is a crime perpetrated by those with sufficient influence and their collaborators.
The modus operandi includes the cutting of pipelines conveying crude oil or the loosening of the manifold tackle (Christmas Tree) holding the pipes in order to facilitate theft of oil. Powerful pumps are then used to transport the stolen crude to vessels and barges, boats and trucks on to the high seas. The loss in oil is estimated between a staggering 100,000-200,000 barrels per day. The loss in the monetary value is a mind-boggling $7billion annually. The dramatis personae include Ghanaians and citizens of Myanmar (Burma); Greece; The Philippines, their Nigerian cohorts and international criminal cartels.
Most of the vessels used are of Greek origin. Since 2011, security agencies including the Navy and Civil Defence Corps, SSS and the JTF have processed 75 cases. Challenges in addressing this crime include the under-reporting of cases and tampering of evidence. There is also a challenge of getting all the relevant stakeholders to work in synergy fighting a crime that has become a worrying shame to Nigeria.
Oil theft poses a real and material threat to national security. It shrinks Nigeria’s main foreign exchange earners; fuels the proliferation of armed conflict and creates distortions in the international oil market. It also threatens to rubbish the gains of the Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta as agitators are empowered by illicit proceeds and re-formed militants are enticed by easy gains from this criminal activity. Oil theft must be treated as a threat to both national and regional security.
To stem the tide, there is need for a concerted national and regional strategy including the dislocation of theatres of illegal bunkering both off-shore and on-shore; and vigorous prosecution and the naming and shaming of all those involved in this shady deal no matter how highly placed. The prosecution by the EFCC of crude oil thieves and pipeline vandals has been largely successful including the forfeiture of vessels, barges and the crude oil conveyed in them. But many Nigerians believe that the real kingpins in this criminal enterprise are yet to be exposed especially as the culprits, just like drug cartels, have refused to disclose their sponsors, local or international.
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