Re: Ngozimokonjo Iweala and her goof on Akwa Ibom BY MMEK-ABASI AKPABIO

Osondu Ahirika my brother, let me thank you for your commendable professionalism in handling your challenging brief as a media aide to one of the cabinet men of our governor. I call it challenging because by extension, your schedule of duty will often drag you into the trenches such as the instant case, against perceived, rightly or wrongly, political enemies of Akpabio. 

And minding the public image of our Governor, with all h free-wheeling gusto, theatrics, impertinence, excessive loudness, boastfulness and swagger, even from fringes of the theatre of activities, is one of the most unenviable tasks that any Public Relations expert will take up. And these personal contradictions you will agree with me, are in the main, the inviting factor in his running battle with most of his critics. Almost in all occasions where our Governor is taken on in both the social and conventional media by whosoever, check out your facts, Akpabio will always provoke it through the unabashed manifestation of either one or a combination of some or even all the aforementioned leadership deficits. The current Okonjo-Iweala saga is not an exception. That is just as well.

On the issue of the Minister of Finance’s statement on Akpabio and the management of Akwa Ibom finances, let me say here that when the news first broke out, I tended to be skeptical because of the spontaneous alarm of, one percent? However, on  a deeper reflection and coupled with four recent pieces of information I came in contact with, I started being persuaded by the Hon. Minister. Check out the information which My Governor and his men are at liberty to affirm or refute: 1) the amounts that you publish on that table represent only the statutory allocation, true or false? 2) States receive sundry grants, refunds, bilateral and multilateral foreign inflows from both the Federal Government and their direct partnerships with international agencies and donors either in kind or in cash or both, true or false? 3) Some time ago in his first term, there was a day Akwa Ibom collected such statutory refunds relating to the Federal Government’s previous sustained deductions from the State to service the Paris Club debt. And when the debt was eventually cancelled for Nigeria, those states who had suffered such deductions over the years were reimbursed and the late President Umaru Yar’Adua magnanimously refunded a princely sum of USD600m (conservatively as at then about N90b) to Akwa Ibom State. True or false? And this is yet to proof that beside statutory allocation and derivation there are sundry other sources of substantial revenue to states and one will be naïve or dishonest to think that the Finance Minister is ignorant of this. 4) On two occasions recently, I got to watch on TV reports of Governor Rochas Okorocha’s stewardship.

And by my experience, those things that I saw Okorocha claim he has done are real and besides, no contradiction has come from any quarters, so far, partisan or non-partisan. At the end of each episode that I’ve been privileged to watch so far, the Imo Governor will always remind the audience of the total allocation in-flow to his state in the last three years. The last one I saw, the governor revealed his government had so far received from the federation account about N170b. but the most interesting part of Okorocha’s conclusion is when he threw what I saw as a challenge to Akpabio. Something like, “in three years Imo has collected about N170b and this is my scorecard while Akwa Ibom has collected over N800b within the same period..” The challenge here is why has our Governor not freely mentioned the amounts that he has collected since inception of his government are very fond of big mouthing about the so-called Uncommon Transformation, one trope that the irreverent tabloid in Uyo, Global Concord once derisively described as “Uncommon Propaganda”. I want my very voluble Governor to equally regale us with a balanced scorecard by simply declaring how much money Akwa Ibomites have been arming him with to the market in the last seven years and what volume of goods (projects and services) that he has been able to bring home just to underscore the value-for-money factor in this whole enterprise. This way, the people can then attentively understand the lyrics of, and enthusiastically join the uncommon transformation choir.

Now back to Okonjo-Iweala’s declaration my great friend Osondu, my advice is, let the sleeping dog lie. My people say what a goat sees and keeps quiet far outsizes what a hen glimpses and starts shouting and flapping her wings. You know Ngozi is the nation’s Minister of Finance. She supervises the disbursements of all these monies. She has clear knowledge of every state’s debt profile being the one whose office acts on behalf of the Federal Government to guarantee those loans. Lest I forget, by some unconfirmed estimates, Akwa Ibom currently is said to be owing over N350b in unpaid bills, true or false? And if this is true, which is likely, you mean the nation’s first finance officer will not know? That is why we should be careful not to hurriedly dismiss this “below one per cent” assertion by the Minister since she of course might have been referring to one percent of the consolidated accruals to the state over a 7-7ear period away from the net statutory allocation and derivation. In all these, no one has even made mention of the internally generated revenue (IGR) of the state. 

Osondu, rushing to excoriate Ngozi will not wish away the issue since she has never been known for flippancy. On the contrary, subjecting her to crude, uninformed and baseless attacks may dare her to divulge more of what she is undeniably in a position to know and which she of course, knows. And this may be more damaging to the already blighted reputation of Akpabio and his government which you people have been labouring hard to clean in the first place. Above all, if Akpabio feels as seriously hurt as you his men seek to defend him, let him proceed further and ask his lawyers to file his writ against the Minister. After all, only recently he eloquently hinted at that possibility against “anyone” at the Bush House Nigeria interview.

*Mmek-Abasi Akpabio, a social commentator writes in from Abuja