Now that Buhari has delivered on loot recovery

Amidst doubt about president Muhamadu Buhari’s ability to deliver on his cardinal campaign promises to rein in corruption, recover looted funds, restore security of lives and property and stabilize the economy, Nigerians were on Saturday 4th June, 2016 apprised of the amount so far recovered.

According to information and culture minister Lai Mohammed, a whopping sum of money estimated to be nearly $10 billion or about N3.4 trillion has  been recovered between May 29th, 2016 till date.

That amount is over half of the N6.01 2016 budget, which is awesome as it simply implies that we don’t have to go cap in hand begging for international credit to fund our budget deficit of about 1.8 trillion naira as proposed in the 2016 appropriation bill.

Considering that about N3 trillion  had already been scooped from about 17,000 bank accounts operated by ministries, departments and  agencies, MDAs through the Treasury Single Account, TSA, if you add that to the recovered loot of roughly N3.4 trillion, the initial plan to borrow from local or external sources to fund the 2016 appropriation bill would be eliminated.

In retrospect,l suspect that president Buhari and his budget team knew exactly what they were doing when they decided not to base Nigeria’s budget entirely on income from oil/gas.

As it turned out, it was not only president Buhari and his budget team that banked on recovered loot to fund the 2016 budget. I also did.

To prove it, permit me to quote copiously from an article that l wrote and published on both online and main stream media platforms on April 12th this year titled ” Buhari: Balancing The War Against Corruption and Economic Growth”.

In the article , l predicted that recovered loot by president Buhari may soar above three trillion naira and when added to the three trillion polled together via TSA, might just be enough to fund the 2016 appropriation bill of N6.08trillion.

“Following the emergence of the current regime roughly a year ago and the zestful implementation of her zero tolerance for corruption as evidenced by her relentless pursuit of treasury looters, lots of stolen funds have been recovered and leakages have also been plugged. In the light of the foregoing,l won’t be surprised if indeed president Buhari declares another three trillion naira, N3t as recovered loot-including the much talked about General Sani Abacha heist, which some countries, particularly Switzerland, have been returning”.

That was my opinion some three months ago when the budget was going through approval process in the National Assembly, NASS.

While some pundits are riled by the fact that the culprits involved in the looting in excess of N3t were not named and shamed,l personally align with the explanation by Vice President Yemi Osibanjo on the rationale for not publishing their names which is to encourage more people to return more loot. ln my considered opinion,there is no benefit to public disgrace except ‘ the feel good ‘ craving of those who believe in ‘The Rich Also Cry’ syndrome which some Nigerians like to indulge in, but does not add value.

The unprecedented recovery by president Buhari is remarkable because it would go a long way towards shoring up our budget which was predicated on a deficit of N1.8 trillion.

Therefore, the initial plans by monetary authorities to borrow funds locally-N900b and externally-$1b (rough estimate) to make up for the deficit now becomes a nullity.

In which case, human rights activist, Femi Falana who had threatened to sue govt, if she went ahead to borrow to fund 2016 budget would,all things being equal, return his arrows to the quiver as the over N3t recovered loot would be more than enough to make up the balance.

This represents a paradigm shift which must be commended because hitherto, our national budgets were based on projected foreign exchange, fx receipts from the sale of oil/gas.

Perhaps, it is against the backdrop of the fact that unlike in the past, oil income is not highly critical to the sustainability of Nigeria’s current budget, that govt got the impetus and confidence to tackle oil/gas infrastructure vandalism in the Niger delta with heavy hands and without worries that the disruption would jeopardize revenue generation.

Whatever the case maybe,utmost  care must be taken that oil/gas facilities are not damaged beyond what could be resuscitated within a short period after cessation of hostilities.

In defense of the stinking corruption record of his regime, immediate past president GoodLuck Jonathan recently told Reuters in London that corruption has been endemic in Nigeria since the formation of the country 55 years ago. Hear him: ” l can not say the country from the beginning of our independence, that there was no corruption. I did well to curtail corruption”  And justified his claim by contending that the reason for military regime change via coup detat has always been to end corruption. Well,perhaps he is right to some extent, but what he failed to disclose is that each govt tried to flush out corruption from the system through specific measures like probes etc.

Under Jonathan’s watch, there was no significant effort to tackle corruption. Instead, the administration acquiesced with corruption when president Jonathan allegedly stated that petty stealing is not corruption.

Our former president also told Reuters that his unique way of  fighting corruption was to make sure govt officials did not touch money.  “My approach to corruption was , don’t make money available for anyone to touch”.

Whatever he means by that statement beats me hollow.

So from whom and where did anti corruption agencies-EFCC , DSS, ICPC etc recover the colossal sums in excess of three trillion naira looted in the past six, 6 years of his administration? Was the $2.1m defense funds and the $115m NNPC money that were converted to campaign slush funds and dispensed by embattled former NSA, Sambo Dasuki and former petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, like GSM phone recharge units into bank accounts of politicians nationwide, not funds made available to people?

Are the loot now being recovered from ghosts in ghost country or from Nigerians in Nigeria?

It may be recalled that apart from the late military head of state, General  Murtala Mohamed’s probe of civil servants which lead to the recovery of substantial assets such as Eko Court, Roxy Cinema, Palm Royal motel from military governors and  ministers, not many probes thereafter yielded much returns, as the current  Buhari anti corruption war has done.

Beyond clamping culprits in jail, even at more expense to the tax payers as public funds are used to provide prisoners welfare, Nigeria has never recovered so much loot from the public sector, except to some extent,through failed bank tribunals that prosecuted corrupt bankers and their partners in the private sector.

Even the so called General Abacha loot,of which a country like Switzerland has returned significant amounts-which got re looted by govt officials-do not compare to the current Buhari recoveries.

By and large,the current massive recovery of our common wealth from economic thieves by president Buhari is a huge haul comparable to the biblical story about Jesus who directed Peter, the fisherman, who was downcast after toiling all day without catching any fish , to cast his net one more time into the river and he was pleasantly surprised by the amazing  amount of fish caught and which was nearly too heavy for peter’s boat to haul ashore.

Which is why Nigerians are indeed elated that president Buhari has recovered enough to plough back into the economy to reflate it to the extent that the nation’s economy could expand again after contracting badly in the past one year.

Baring the usual political shenanigans of squabbling between the three tiers of govt-FG/States/LGAs over who gets what from the recovered loot,which hopefully Buhari’s govt won’t encounter as the previous regime did with excess crude oil fund when overbearing governors compelled and superintended it’s squander of the $20b that ex president Olusegun Obasanjo’s govt had saved for the rainy day.

Now that president Buhari has delivered on loot recovery , l foresee a supplementary budget being proposed to further stimulate the ailing the economy.

That would serve as a further shot in the arm to energise and pull the economy  back from the brinks of collapse arising from one year of Zero economic activities, besides fighting corruption.

Onyibe, a development strategist, futurologist and former commissioner in Delta state govt is an alumnus of Fletcher school of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts university, Medford Massachusetts, USA.