BLUEBLOCK: N5.6Billion Contracts To ex-Militants: Jonathan And This Suicide Pact?

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N5.6Billion Contracts To ex-Militants: Jonathan And This Suicide Pact?

Friday, September 07, 2012 | Posted by Blueblock | | Edit Post

For want of a better way to describe the revelation, it was very harrowing hearing from a report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that the NNPC now doles $3.8 million (N599.64million) a year apiece to two former rebel leaders, Gen. Ebikabowei Boyloaf” Victor Ben and Gen. Ateke Tom, to have their men guard oil pipelines they used to attack in the Niger Delta. Another general, Government “Tompolo” Ekpumopolo, maintains a $22.9 million-a-year (N3.614billion) contract to do the same, in another flank of the delta while Mujahhid Dokubo-Asari, earns $9 million (N1.420billion) annually, guarding pipelines of the NNPC and its joint venture partners in his own territory of the same delta.

It is unthinkable and very unfortunate these huge payments go into the pocket of very few privileged- by -deviance people rather than percolate to the ordinary, law-abiding and terribly battered citizens of the Niger-delta region, to improve their well-being. This should actually bother every concerned citizen of the region no matter how they may want to explain this. If all or maybe a tangible part of these payments are channeled to strengthen basic infrastructures in the area, government would have been taken more seriously by the real and ordinary people of the region. What of the nation’s security agencies (navy, marine police, JTF, SSS amongst others)? The biggest foolishness in this arrangement is that even part of this money going to them would have grossly improved their capacity to do better than what we have today. Is it not a shame to this nation that the peace and well-being of the oil areas are tied to the buoyancy of the pockets of a negligible few in the area? How long can we continue like this as a country?

But curiously, how come that it was a US-based newspaper that came out with this report barely few weeks from Jonathan’s meeting in Abuja were he threatened all stakeholders in the nation’s maritime security sector - ex-militants, security and other government agencies, ex-militant contractors amongst other to immediately halt the rising tide of crude oil theft from the nation’s oil facilities or face the full wrath of the government power? Are we not being manipulated by external forces and their Nigerian collaborators to cause unnecessary distractions while they keep stealing our oil? Those who know would agree that the NNPC-militants (now ex-militants) arrangement reported by the Wall Street Journal was not newt except maybe in the figures as nobody actually before could say the exact amount doled out for pipeline safeguard. I don’t know why I should think this way but I don’t equally know why I shouldn’t think that the whole nation is being manipulated to divert our attention from the now entrenched crime of crude oil theft from the Niger Delta. Those charged with our national security should seriously think along this line.

Truth be told, the idea of heavily paying militants of course who are now ex-militants to safeguard oil pipelines is not new at all and was not in any way initiated by President Jonathan. Engaging militants to guard oil pipelines in the Niger Delta was the late Umaru Yar’adua’s idea during the tenure of Engr. Abubakar Yar'Adua as the Acting Group Managing Director of NNPC and Mr. Odein Ajumogobia (SAN) as the Minister of State for Petroleum. It came when former President Yar’adua was the sole administrator of both the NNPC and entire oil sector, a position he copied from Obasanjo his father. And it started way back in 2008 when Jonathan was literally an invalid and a no- body (as treated and disdained) at the State House.

When the idea to contract pipeline security guard jobs to the then militants was introduced by late Yar’adua in 2008, I raised several alarms in my widely published articles: “Niger Delta Militants Company Nigeria Limited: Articles Of Association? (June 11, 2008)”; NNPC- Militants Scandal: Another Joint Venture Cash Call Problem (July 30, 2008); and there was also a thorough report on the issue then by Thisday newspaper which was posted by the Niger Delta Watch on its website: “How NNPC Paid $60m to N/Delta Militants.” So trying to link the pipeline security guard contracts to the current President, who hails from the region, was not only mischievous but evil politics. NNPC management in a press statement (2008) even confirmed a business relationship between the corporation and some militant leaders though it said “the $25 million paid to the militants was for the policing of oil facilities” and that the job was given to a “Grassroots Company” after negotiation with the “Host Community.” All these happened between June and July 2008.

The initiative then, keyed into a priority policy position of President Umaru Yar’Adua to return the refineries (Warri, and Kaduna) to full capacity by December 2007, a deadline that could not be met due to militants’ intrigues. Mr. Abubakar Yar’Adua even declared then that he rejected a proposal from a foreign company, Zachem International to repair the outstanding parts of the Channomi Creek pipeline for $107 million, and preferred to deal directly with “the community” and encouraged them to set a company owned by the indigenes to carry out the job. He disclosed that a company from the community agreed to do the job in four months for $50 million, but he convinced the firm to do it within three months and get a bonus which, according to him, they achieved. Following the success of the repair, Yar’Adua said he was “encouraged to give the “community” the contract of securing the pipelines” and that was how it all started.

Have we forgotten so quickly that the then Acting Group Managing Director of NNPC, Abubakar Yar’Adua on Tuesday July 22 2008, affirmed to the House of Representatives Committee investigating the non remittance of revenues into the Federation Account that “the NNPC paid $6 million monthly ransom to militants which gave them the lee way to repair the damaged Chanomi Crude Oil Pipeline in Delta state.” My expressed worry then (2008) was how NNPC has been accounting for the money paid to the militants: “How has the NNPC been accounting (retiring) for such expenditure. Under what heading would the corporation say it spent such huge sums of money? Obviously-under joint venture cash calls but the difference now is that it is a joint venture partnership with militants/criminal gangs. Is it not very funny?”

This arrangement continued until hard-line officials in the Yar’adua Presidency rose up vehemently against this mode of resolution which they see as blackmail and unsustainable. This group of presidential advisors pressed for a full-scale military solution to root out militancy in the region and they got it. Though what was not clear was whether the security contracts continued as the JTF moved into the region as a new bunch of joint venture partners. But to say that this initiative is new and came from Jonathan is not correct though as expected, bros Jona and his people obviously must have expanded the arrangement or more aptly lavishly improved this Yar’adua legacy.

Unfortunately, most of the public comments on this blurred arrangement were more political than genuine patriotic concerns over the mammoth waste of our highly needed public fund. Why make a heinous financial crime or more aptly massive misapplication of public resources which has been running since 2008 in our oil sector look as if it merely started because Jonathan was installed as President of Nigeria? We should rather clamour and press for the immediate termination of the contracts though at the same time proffering workable alternatives. This, nobody has done and it is vexing. The tragedy of this massive drain of public funds to service warlords is that in all honesty, Jonathan cannot and I repeat cannot even outrightly cancel these contracts because that would be creating more problems rather than solving it. Everybody that should be concerned and actually worry about the shameful state of our maritime security has been grossly compromised- high and low commands of almost all the security agencies, politicians and even some privileged locals and would stand up to undermine whatever government sits in Abuja to proclaim. This is the bitter truth which we need to find a way about. God bless Nigeria!

Source: The Times of Nigeria