By Chidiebere Nwobodo

WHEN Federal Executive Council (FEC) sat and approved humongous amount for the construction of Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) permanent site, I nearly cried for the brazen corruption and unprecedented level of looting going on in a government that hypocritically glamorizes the fight against graft. Imagine N1.4 billion naira for design of the building? And N36 billion naira for the actual construction of the 12-floor complex?

That this executive corruption was approved by FEC under the supervision of  a “saintly” President Buhari, is the height of insufferably hypocrisy cum grand deception of this administration. This is nothing but official and presidentially certified corruption. It is an insult on our collective intelligence as Nigerians, and a dent on the so-called anti-corruption war. This is why Nigeria’s rating in the perception of Transparency International index is on a nosedive slope, irrespective of the noise being made by the EFCC in the media.

I can recall vividly that former President Yar’Adua’s regime, which happened to be a PDP government was pummeled and ridiculed by the then opposition the Action Congress Of Nigeria (ACN), for approving the construction of PTDF permanent site to the tune of N10.3 billion in 2009. The building contract which was awarded to Julius Berger company, was meant to be a 10-floor edifice.

The budget approval for that building was conspicuously dramatized in the media and sternly criticized by the opposition at the detriment of the government’s image. President Yar’Adua’s administration was blackmailed and maligned as “corrupt” and “greedy” by the then opposition leaders who masqueraded as “agents of change”, driven by progressive ideology. Nigerians have seen through the facade of change now.

What do we have today? Kleptomaniacs and megalomaniacs in corridors of power!  The in-your-face embezzlement of public funds ravaging this government is flabbergasting and utterly disdainful. How will Minister Ibe Kachikwu look Nigerians straight in the eyes and tell us that a whooping sum of N1.4 billion naira will be use for “design of a building”; not construction? Even design of another federal capital territory in Daura won’t cost that much. That is how incredible it sounds.

It is either these architects and engineers that will do the designing are being imported from planets Jupiter and Mars, or something is fundamentally wrong with our leaders and their insatiable avarice. Imagine N36 billion naira for a twelve storey edifice? That is simply N3 billion per floor when divided by 12 floors! What a conduit pipe of looting scarce public resources by a “corruption-free” administration. And these were the same set of reprehensible hypocrites who labeled the PDP as corrupt, for building PTDF permanent site with one billion naira per floor.

Today, “saints” in power—from the “Holy of Holies”, have proposed and approved humongous figures of three billion naira per floor for DPR proposed site. Yet President Buhari is “winning” the war on corruption. What a deceptive government! Here are some questions racing through my mind: will the foundation of proposed DPR structure be concreted with raw gold? Will its pillars be made of diamond? And its walls encrusted with refined sliver? Are the blocks, sand, stones, cements and water going to be imported from abroad?

I hope the 12-storey mansion will be bullet-prof, anti-corruption, earthquake immune, immortal; that even God Himself won’t be able to destroy it on the “last day”? Even if the complex will be constructed abroad and ship to Nigeria, the contract sum is brazenly outrageous and outlandish. It is a direct slap on the faces of 87.7 million extremely poor citizens of this country struggling heavily to eke a living, in a nation shamefully rated as world poverty capital. Nigerians are being languished by abject poverty in the midst of gross squandermania of their leaders.

Who knows if government is planning to hire aliens from outer space to work in that proposed ‘tower-of-corruption’ when completed, because it will be idiotic for a Nigerian to be a staff of such over-bloated wasteful edifice, and still complain of systematic looting, epileptic power supply, bad road network, dilapidated healthcare and educational systems. This is purely executive recklessness—misappropriation of taxpayers resources, yet the government needs to increase VAT to pay N30,000 minimum wage. What an aberration!

Lack of national uproar as regards this daylight robbery of Nigerian masses in the guise of DPR proposed permanent site, can be placed at the table of a docile opposition which the PDP represents, especially in its narrative management. It is unfortunate that this development is yet to get proper scrutiny by the party. I wonder whether PDP leaders are strategic and proactive in thinking at all. The APC’s most effective propaganda against the party is corruption. The ruling party has almost succeeded in stereotyping anyone associated with the opposition as corrupt, and many gullible Nigerians have bought the prejudiced propaganda wholly. Yet the PDP is playing Ostrich in the face of this massive corruption.

Buhari’s supporters have gone further to label any criticism of the government by the opposition as “corrupt fighting back. They alleged that ‘looters’ are crying because they have been shut out of public purse. Pathetically, the PDP that is at the receiving end of the vicious propaganda, allows the same government to get away with this pillage of our common wealth and financial hemorrhage, while keep sermonizing its fight against corruption. Let us turn the table for a second. Imagine the PDP as government in power that approved this needless citadel of corruption that will gulp billions of naira, when the same government is borrowing to fund its budget, and juxtapose the APC as opposition? Hell would have been let loose.

The media would have gone frenzy with this story. The outrage across the country would have been something else. Protesters would have occupied streets of Abuja and Lagos in anger. The PDP should wake up from its slumber and be a virile opposition to the true sense of it. It is sheer naivety on the part of the PDP to allow the APC get away with this act of kleptomania, when the ruling party has consistently labelled its leaders as corrupt. DPR, being a subsidiary of the NNPC doesn’t need such mind-boggling sum to construct its permanent site now, especially in the face of paucity of funds plaguing the nation. Is the 12-floor office building a national emergence? Can’t the agency share a floor in the one of four towers making up the NNPC headquarters? Why this monumental wastage?

– Mar. 28, 2019 @ 16:19 GMT |