Nigeria And The Termites Of Tergiversation -By Kene Obiezu

In a country where anything barely works, everything has become possible with each new day springing up surprises, and seemingly conjuring oddities out of nowhere.

To describe the average Nigerian in average terms would be to miss the point. Years of failed leadership and economic hardship have combined to reduce the country to rubble. But from that rubble has come many rubies which would be many everyday Nigerians who are making their marks locally and internationally.

Inventive, innovate, ingenious and indominable, the average Nigerian is a force to contend with. Even in a country where the basics walk on crutches, people scratch, scramble and scrape, just to get by.

In a country where the gulf between a thieving elite and a traumatized citizenry continues to widen by the day, people do not just roll over. Confronted by impossible conditions, they roll up their sleeves and give life a nasty fight. The everyday Nigerian is indeed a monument to fortitude.

NSITFs nest of termites

It would appear that corruption has come to stay in Nigeria. This bug that has burrowed deep into the bowels of the country continues to show itself insatiable as long as the banquet is of blood. When roads and bridges are conspicuous by their absence or swept away with minimum fuss by the forces of nature, a shoddy job done is always blameworthy as the fact that money was allocated, disbursed, but frittered away to line private pockets in the process.

The white elephant projects that litter the country, many of them uncompleted, bear a coruscating testimony to corruption.

A peak into many government agencies, say the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), would yield aural senses pummeled by putrefaction. The swarm of locusts who would rip the public purse apart buzz in tribute to corruption which has made their lives easier.

So the Senate is probing how the sum of N17.128b was expended by the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund(NSIFT). In a most frightening revelation, the Senate Public Accounts Committee(SPAC) which is conducting the probe has revealed that that the funds management has failed to produce relevant documents to justify the alleged spending of N17.158 billion in 2013.Some of the documents were said to have been eaten up by termites.

In a country where truth is stranger than fiction, it beggars belief that such a humongous amount of money cannot be shown to have been properly spent, and missing sensitive documents are put down to the activities of termites.

It would again go down as yet another grave failure of accountability in Nigeria. If Nigerians are still unsure that those who steal from them also mock them, then the kind of hilarious excuses that prop up to explain missing funds should confirm that.

While the current management of the NSITF has come out to say that the probe has nothing to do with it,there is no doubt that the Senate Committee must dig deeper, not just into the expenditure of the NSITF but those of similar government agencies as well.

Every document in every Nigerian MDA especially the documents that bear financial records especially of expenditure must be protected at all costs from every element. This has become much easier especially in these days when Nigeria is digitalizing operations.

It has also become obvious that there are syndicates in a many MDAs whose specialty is in siphoning public funds and serving up spurious claims to deflect investigations. Our overcrowded prisons must call to people like these if our judiciary can sit up and serve them their just deserts.

It appears we are surely back to the days when mysterious rats chewed up critical public documents and snakes swallowed huge sums of money. As long as it is in Nigeria, the only certainty is that anything is possible.

Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com