(http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/thumbnail.php?file=Adoke_390048992.jpg&size=article_medium) •Adoke The last thing the beleaguered government of President Goodluck Jonathan needs now is another round of protest over fuel subsidy scam. If it happens this time, it is likely to be much more severe than January’s carnival-like demonstrations organised and led by respectable middle class professionals to reverse the sudden fuel price hike ordered insensitively on New Year’s Day. The subsidy removal policy – for that was what it was uncharitably called by the government – was apparently implemented without the knowledge of a majority of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) members. [/size] Jonathan has his back to the wall on Boko Haram. Apart from his indecision on how best to fight the dangerous Islamist sect, his National Security Adviser, Gen Owoye Azazi, has muddied the water and provoked furious denunciations from the North. Unable to fight the sect with anything properly described as a strategy, co-ordinated or not, the federal government has seemed to give the terror merchants free rein. Every attack thus brings the country apocalyptically close to the precipice, with no one able to predict when doomsday would occur.[/font][/size]
The chances of the government avoiding another fuel protest showdown are looking increasingly remote. The Boko Haram menace has not only nearly completely undermined restraint and civilisation in the North, to the huge discomfort of the body politic, it has also unleashed a horde of impoverished, bitter and aggrieved young people eager to welcome the apocalypse whispered in viperous, disgruntled tones in every part of the country. When the protests took place in January, it was driven by incomplete information on what actual subsidy payments had been made, the volume of fuel products consumed, and which so-called cabal held the country by the jugular as the government alleged. After the House of Representatives completed its ad hoc probe on subsidy management, it emerged that Nigeria had been made, by the most pernicious form of skulduggery, to endure the worst financial abuse any nation on earth could have ever been subjected to.[/font][/font][/size]
But Jonathan’s government underestimates the feeling of the public on the sordid revelations that have come out of the probe. He has promised tepidly, we concede, that the guilty would not be spared. His Co-ordinating minister for the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has also announced that those indicted would be punished in order to let Nigerians and the world know that impunity would not be rewarded. The president’s official spokesman also added his voice to the affair by telling us the president would take the interest of the country into consideration in his response. But lest we be carried away by the promises, much of which most Nigerians suspect would be implemented half-heartedly, if not altogether in the breach, an inconspicuous officer loyal to Jonathan than to the country or its constitution warned that we were proceeding too hastily on the matter.[/font]
[/size]While we were still grappling with this dampener by an unknown, perhaps the most definitive statement from the Jonathan government came from the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke, to the effect that the situation was much more complex than anyone imagined. His view was both incautious and a bundle of legal sophistries. In the eight-paragraph statement he issued late last week, he managed to say and mean much more than were contained in the guileful press release. Known for his undisguised and unrepentant conservatism, Adoke did not disappoint in carrying out an odious routine generally known to be in fair consonance with his worldview.
[/size]At least four times in the press statement the Justice minister warned us to lower our expectations on the House of Representatives probe report. First, he admitted, the government had a responsibility to do something about the report, but it would be an "onerous" one because it was important the responsibility be undergirded by "the rule of law and due process as required by any democratically elected and responsible government." Were the commission of infractions and the omission of responsible conduct in enunciating and implementing public policies by the Jonathan circumscribed by the rule of law and due process in the first instance? Did he take into consideration that we elected him into office when he railroaded the obnoxious fuel subsidy removal policy through an absentee FEC process? Did Jonathan show his government was responsible when he kick-started the subsidy removal programme on January 1?
[/size]First, Adoke spoke of ‘onerous responsibility.’ Then secondly, he also spoke of the "tedious process of sieving through the report." I always thought the more difficult work is formulating policy, not remedying its problems. We must understand that what Adoke was really saying, without seeming to mean it, is that the Jonathan government had no enthusiasm to undertake the unpleasant and difficult work of scouring through the report to find the pearls worth saving, the offences worth prosecuting, and the cabal worth humiliating. He was also serving notice that if we stampeded the government into going to court, conviction would be jeopardised, as had happened in other high-profile cases in the past. He seems to think we are so dimwitted not to understand that most botched cases in recent times are a result of the government’s deliberate treachery and the connivance of compromised judicial elements.
[/size]Third, Adoke also described the mill through which the government hoped to make the Reps’ report pass as "these difficult and essential processes." Well, now we have it. The Justice minister has told us there are no quick fixes to quick financial shenanigans perpetrated so brutally and so offensively openly by the government he serves. In one election year – a disconcerting fact the Jonathan government hoped would be lost on us – the government overspent by more than a trillion naira the amount it voted for fuel subsidy, an amount quite clearly a marked and overwhelming departure from the preceding years’. In other words it was not difficult to overspent, but it is difficult to find and prosecute the offenders who managed the bureaucratic excesses, especially after the Reps have made their job easy.
[/size]Fourth, Adoke wants the public to understand that doing the right thing requires "allowing the law enforcement agencies to conduct painstaking investigations that will ultimately satisfy the standard of proof required in criminal cases." If we didn’t understand some simple English, we would not appreciate that the Justice minister was attempting to discourage us from being fastidious about the subsidy mismanagement issue or raising our hopes high that those involved in the crime would soon be called to account. He hoped he could appeal to our sense of justice by asking us to appreciate the need for slow and steady work in bringing criminals to book. There are indeed times when a country appreciates the need to be unhurried in seeking retribution; it is doubtful whether this is one of those times, or whether the government itself, in abusing the spending process, has the luxury of the kind of patience it glowingly seeks and talks about.
[/size]Adoke pandered to sentiments when he talked gravely of the oath he took as Attorney General of the federation. Said he with a self-importance that is unjustified by his record: "I swore to uphold the constitution and I am therefore not oblivious of the constitutional responsibility placed on my shoulders to ensure that those who contravene our laws are held accountable through the legal process." For a legal officer who is more famously partisan than unbiased, more beholden to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) than the constitution, and more loyal and committed to his employer than to the country’s laws, he could have fooled us talking about his responsibility as the chief law officer.
[/size]It is obvious Adoke is stonewalling. He and other presidential aides, not to talk of the president himself, will do everything to undermine the Reps report. The reason is simple. The extravagant spending on fuel subsidy happened in a dramatic and extraordinary fashion in an election year. The government of the day cannot be exculpated from blame. And as the National Assembly indicated, there was no supplementary appropriation for the humongous spending. So where is the due process Adoke is promoting? The Justice minister talked about the obligation a democratically elected government had to ensure thorough investigation; but did that same government not have an obligation to ensure the country’s money was not spent without appropriation?
[/size]As the country awaits the report of the Senate probe on the same issue, we must hope that both the legislature and civil society groups have the stamina to keep up the pressure. The government will want to use all the legal sleight of hand it can muster to weaken the people’s resolve; it must not succeed. What the civil society, especially the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), is asking for is not immediate prosecution of offenders but concrete and determined steps by government to show commitment to its vaunted fight against those who have consistently undermined the country. As Adoke has now obviously indicated, it is unlikely the government will be enthusiastic in waging that war. The government recognises that it spent an indefensibly high amount of money purportedly for subsidy, and it knows that that spending was covered in thick and implacable fog, much of it election related. There is no way it can prosecute offenders without sacrificing its sacred cows in the Petroleum ministry and ultimately undermining its own legitimacy. But it is a fate the public must make the Jonathan government meet.
[/font]
TheNation