At last the glass house in Delta State called DESOPADEC, the engine of officially engineered fraud and ignored corruption by the Government of Delta State has been dissolved, ostensibly to enable a pretentious reorganization to take place. With the new thinking as reflected in the amended law, a career civil servant shall now be appointed as its secretary and the chairmanship of the commission will rotate among the five ethnic nationalities of the state that are oil producing.
At last the glass house in Delta State called DESOPADEC, the engine of officially engineered fraud and ignored corruption by the Government of Delta State has been dissolved, ostensibly to enable a pretentious reorganization to take place. With the new thinking as reflected in the amended law, a career civil servant shall now be appointed as its secretary and the chairmanship of the commission will rotate among the five ethnic nationalities of the state that are oil producing.
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The motivation for the change of the persons and manner of further milking the cash cow of Delta State is anything but patriotic or altruistic. It is to reposition the cash cow for more strategic bleeding by a new set of political buccaneers who will conclude the last lap of the now near maniacal race for re-election of Governor Uduaghan who has taught us by advertorial ingenuity that “one good term in office deserves another” and the corollary, one bad term in office denies another.” This is a befitting introduction to the political usage to which DESOPADEC has been put and a wondrous and ironical demise of its leadership shortly after its chairman has just been crowned with a national honour for alleged meritorious service to this nation; but certainly not to the oil producing communities of Delta state.
When and how did the Governor Uduaghan led government become belatedly tired of the hitherto “very efficient “ DESOPADEC even after the graft and fraud of those managing it was acknowledged by the governor as far back as May 2009. Being lame duck, he chose to look the other way to enable his designated hirelings to complete the looting and pauperisation of DESOPADEC. Apparently now satisfied that enough money has been moved out of DESOPADEC coffers to secured vaults for the business of the next level re-election funding, the governor has now permitted the Delta State House of Assembly to do what ought to be done long ago when he blew the whistle on the mindless fleecing of public money under his watch in DESOPADEC. The dissolution of DESOPADEC after its executive chairman had just been awarded a national honour on the recommendation of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan is a confirmation of the award as a crown of thorns.
The unmistakable signs of distress and profligacy in the management of DESOPADEC were there for all to see, but because Governor Uduaghan was not done yet with permitting his lackeys the primitive accumulation and pilfering of available funds, he did nothing to arrest his own ugly discovery. We chuckled at a directive given last year by Governor Uduaghan to DESOPADEC (as published in This Day of 31st May 2009) to the effect that DESOPADEC should account for the N51bn he had given to DESOPADEC as at that date. In addition, DESOPADEC should forward to him the list of its employees and their job description. Was that a general audit of government agencies and parastatals beginning with the lucrative octopus, the favour spinning and corruption brewing commission DESOPADEC, which was in a hurry to make a difference? Or were the Delta State government and its agency DESOPADEC realizing that they could not play the ostrich indefinitely? We chuckle more now that the governor wants to probe DESOPADEC at the behest of the challenge by his political rivals for government House.
It is soothing that the travails of the present arising from the embarrassing decay in infrastructure coupled with the pressure of an incumbent aspirant in an election year is sending home a message of accountability and prudent management in a state that is backward in all the three points orchestrated on the governor’s agenda. A state where major streets have no gutters and the few that have gutters have no sewage system to drain into making Asaba, Warri, Agbor, Ughelli and other towns, bundles of hazardous environmental habitation. Democracy may not come from the barrel of a gun as Governor Uduaghan sometime in the past correctly observed of chairman Mao’s dictum of power. But the call for accountability and transparency may or has come out of the debris and ashes of the well packaged attempt by some of his challengers for the plum job at Government House Asaba.
According to The Nation Newspapers (on Saturday August 7, 2010 at page 55) one of the aspirants has accused the incumbent Governor Uduaghan of having nothing tangible to show for the over N650 billion so far collected from the federation account. The Newspaper stated thus: “But the governor, has swiftly reacted. He ordered the probe of the Delta State Oil Producing Commission (DESOPADEC). He told newsmen in Asaba on Monday ‘Before I am investigated, I will first of all probe them. But before that I will direct the Commissioner for Finance to make the details of the money available for all to see’…. But a commissioner in the administration of Governor Uduaghan, who pleaded anonymity, told The Nation … that it was all blackmail typical of what to expect from any aspirant …”
This looks like fire on the reelection mountain of Government House and many may be on the run. This is more so soon after the State lost its case against the EFCC at the Federal High Court which had challenged the competence of the anti graft agency to investigate and prosecute the officials of the Delta State Government. Delta government officials who oil the wheels of brazen corruption and who counsel on concealment strategies that the hour of reckoning is nearer than they imagined. But there are simultaneous fires on many mountains of the Delta State Governor and its major opportunity delivering agency, DESOPADEC and many people are on the run. We have always wondered at the wide gulf between theory and practice of DESOPADEC, between statutory intention of the law and the Uduaghan administration interpretation of its mandate, between its inordinate desire to seek expensive television advert on modular refineries, purchase of fleets of cars and its non delivery of development projects to the oil bearing communities of Delta State.
We make bold to say that except for the statutory instrument that brought it into existence, everything else has been done vainly and consciously wrongly, not out of ignorance but out of greed and political avarice to use the agency as a pipe to drain the resources of Delta State and feather the next of party big wigs, praise singers, cronies and sycophants of the Governor. The agency is indeed in a hurry to make a difference but not on the lives of the people of the oil producing areas but in the pockets and homes of government and corrupt party lackeys who are multiplying by the day in this season of second term anomie, as represented the United Mandate for Uduaghan (UMU), Uduaghan Ladies Vanguard (ULV) and Uduaghan Grassroots Movement (UGM).
From the way Governor Uduaghan has handled DESOPADEC so far, he intended the result that it has produced, a comatose agency, a conduit for empowering his favoured few, in the process, a few communities were lucky to have some projects that were not planned for and not part of any sustainability regime. His belated lamentations are pretentious and inspired by the imminent severe challenge to his second term bid. DESOPADEC was not prepared for a beneficial take off, there was money to be spent and people who can be relied upon to spend it in a predetermined manner. And so DESOPADEC was asked to take off without preparation and professional recruitment of staff who can deliver on its mandate. The fruits are becoming obvious; the unimpressive denial by the DTHA over its squabbles and internecine divisions on how to share the DESOPADEC monthly thieving largess and periodic bribe as reported in the Vanguard of 15th and 16th July 2009 is just a tip of the iceberg but a manifestation of the Governor’s assessment of the Commission as “so far so good.”
Development practice is based on conviction; it is like religion based on faith. Without a conviction and willingness to be austere, transparent and accountable about public resources and the need to make a steady but sustainable difference, one has no business working for an interventionist development agency such as DESOPADEC. The aim of government was obviously to award the boys contracts, build and renovate police stations (which are federal concerns – but not surprising for a governor who has spent billions for the Navy at Oghara and called the president to commission it); sponsor beauty pageants, give car gifts as birthday present to the children of DTHA members with oversight responsibility and drive in convoy of unnecessary luxury cars.
Stakeholders, such as Ministry of Economic Planning, oil companies with relevant experience and the Niger Delta Development Commission that have some reservoir of relevant knowledge which they could have gladly put at the disposal of DESOPADEC were ignored. Regrettably, people who do not believe in a planned and sustainable pattern of developing Delta State have been saddled with running the Commission. Recruitment of staff was at best reckless with little regard for skills and disposition. According to Governor Uduaghan at a Town meeting at Oleh last year, there are people working in DESOPADEC who live more outside Nigeria than they do in Nigeria and come in occasionally to receive accumulated unearned salaries. There are people who hold a DESOPADEC job alongside other full time jobs, who report only on pay days. Majority of people working in DESOPADEC do not have job tasks and targets. With no defined jobs and offices, one gate is manned by tens of gatemen; they roam the office areas with gleeful idleness. This situation has not changed one year after.
The foundation staff of DESOPADEC should have been given some minimum certification training in Development studies, good governance, transparency and accountability. It is not too late, it can still be done. We recall that on the 28th of October 2008 at Wellington Hotel Effurun at a stakeholders workshop for the reintegration of youths in the Niger Delta organized by the United Nations Project Office; we confronted Governor Uduaghan with the virulent rumour that he was under remitting the statutory amount of money due to DESOPADEC while the DESOPADEC leadership was signing for and acknowledging receipt of a higher amount. He was told that a king may come that does not know Joseph and it was necessary to keep the slates clean for posterity. With the recent Federal High Court decision against Delta State, unless the incumbent retains his seat at Governor House that king might well be on his way.
In the presence of the immediate past chairman of DESOPADEC Chief Wellington Okrika, its former secretary Chief Andy Osawota, the ex- civil commissioners and members of the state executive council and the usual baggage on the protocol list, Governor Uduaghan very strenuously denied the allegations of short changing the commission and went into a diatribe which ended with a sanctimonious acquittal of the ex chairman of DESOPADEC as a prudent manager of public finance who to the knowledge of the governor, did not have up to one million Naira in any of his bank accounts! In these days where corruption by public officials is done with impunity and in billions of Naira, that was a good testimonial for the ex chairman of DESOPADEC. Chief W. Okrika on that occasion simultaneously absolved Governor Uduaghan of any purported or alleged under payment of monies due to the commission, based on their joint declaration that there is no underhand business in giving to DESOPADEC what is due to it. It is no wonder that the governor recommended Chief Okrika for the award of a national honour that he received recently.
How we wish that Governor Uduaghan and Chief Okrika can be believed. Chief Okrika in the last months of his tenure was noted for open lamentation in his routine meeting with his staff that DESOPADEC got far less from the governor than he signed for. The chairman and secretary have left office, if they are really serious with their lamentations and have any integrity, let them speak up now and be counted on the side of development, honour and probity. They remain silent on this issue at their own peril because time does not run against a felon.
As good governance advocates, we commend the decision of Governor Uduaghan to probe DESOPADEC before he is himself probed, to give account of their stewardship and description of jobs. We note however that this is not the first time that he would make such a statement. Last year he gave a two week ultimatum for the commission to account to him but it ended as a storm in a tea cup. This call for a probe maybe another gaffe from Governor Uduaghan to jolt his party men into line and invoke loyalty from the anti-Uduaghan PDP men, whom he had advised to resign from his government a few months ago some of whom might have stubbornly refused to do so. We trust the party will handle this feeble probe order from Governor Uduaghan as a family affair.
Our worry is that there has been no check and regulation on retirement of expenses made by DESOPADEC to the governor or the supervisory commissioner. Why does the governor have to wait until now to ask his commissioner for finance for account? Are we to believe that before this probe order, there has been no requirement of accountability for DESOPADEC and other government ministries, departments and agencies? There ought to be a higher level of supervisory responsibility if the governor is serious with the probe order, it is shameful that we run a system that encourages lack of transparency and accountability. It is ironic that this is a state with cities such as Warri, Effurun, Ughelli, Sapele and Oleh where gutters and drainage systems are not cleaned except on the pretentious monthly sanitation days and an organisation like DESOPADEC exists with a large army of employees seventy percent of who do not know why they are employed except on pay days.
As earlier noted, everybody knows, except Governor Uduaghan and his incurable sycophants that except for the very principal officials who churn out and administer contracts, DESOPADEC is an organisation where government approved Deltans go to collect good pay packets without working. The salaries are scaled outside the pay structure of the Delta State Public Service; no other set of employees of Delta state Government officially earn the kind of salaries paid to employees of DESOPADEC majority of who have no offices or work stations. This cannot be news to the governor unless he intentionally for political opportunism kept himself ignorant, which is curious for an auspicious time as this. The governor should have the courage to complete the contemplated probe, if he does not, we will be right to assert that the DESOPADEC we have is the DESOPADEC of Governor Uduaghan’s dream.
It was Governor Uduaghan himself who sold DESOPADEC to some hawks in his party in his infamous mathematical equation released early last year that: DESOPADEC is an agency of the State Government, the State Government is for the PDP and therefore DESOPADEC is for the PDP. In that declaration that is not statesmanlike but a ridiculously partisan calculus, Governor Uduaghan authorised the DESOPADEC to privatise the agency for the ruling PDP and their cronies in government. Will the PDP and those who hold the governor hostage allow him to probe DESOPADEC and expose the under belly of the tiger? Only time will tell.
The signs of distress and misdirection for DESOPADEC started showing with the expectedly miraculous two day free health campaign where certain communities were exposed to two days of so called free health care in a most unsustainable manner. As a Doctor the governor knows that there is no disease or ailment that is effectively curable in two days, one of which must have been used for arrival and departure of the medical and paramedical staff. No follow up visits were ever made to those lucky two day patients and so went millions, nay billions of Naira in a most orchestrated but un-audited sleaze in public expenditure. We were rewarded with a commander of the Niger, with a crown of thorns.
The beneficiaries of the misadventure of DESOPADEC are not necessarily the bad guys in our society. They are the averagely good persons, church going Christ advocating Christians and Moslems and mainly politicians. They all take DESOPADEC money in any guise as legitimately belonging to them and should not be earned or worked for. We can only wish his Excellency well in his recent decision to probe DESOPADEC and hold it accountable and transparent and hope that he is not playing to the gallery occasioned by the earth shaking challenge to his reelection bid. If he does not pursue his intention so publicly given as it appears he will not do and he reclines or buckles from doing the right thing, we shall not be surprised, because in that event he would as expected turned out be truly spineless and loyal to the faction of his political party that put him in power which is not known to be worried by transparency and accountability. He would have said it loud and clear that the people who he claimed voted him into power do not matter after all.
M. Ahweyevu Mukoro Esq.
Legal Practitioner and President
Development Challenge Initiative
Nigeria. (08037034464, 07057204043)
[email protected]
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