The news conference by the Honourable Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun on Thursday, December 1, 2016, an outcome of an audit exercise carried out and that a committee in the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation has been set up, in compliance with the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2007, to recover the money. It was a mind boggling revelation.
According to the Minister, about 33 agencies were involved in the non-remittance or under-remittance of their operating surpluses to the tune of about N450billion generated between 2010 and 2015, and are set to be prosecuted.
Citing agencies such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), among others, as major culprits, she said some agencies even operated without an approved budget. The Minister, however, disclosed that few of the affected agencies, among them the Nigerian Shippers Council, had returned about N640million to the coffers.
This claim by the Minister undoubtedly suggests the extent of the rot in the polity, part of which was responsible for the current economic recession. Impunity and flagrant abuse of office and due process by heads of agencies and parastatals are revelations of cases of corruption against many of them.
In as much as one supports every move of the present government to sanitize the polity, one important issue I have noticed in the present assembly of people called to help the President in running the affairs of the country are either not working as a team, feeling superior to others or probably under-mining the good intention of the President.
Some of the ministers publicly antagonize one another to the embarrassment of their principal. One of the culprits in this circumstance is the youthful Minister of Finance, the delectable Mrs. Kemi Adeosun. The subject of many of my private discussions and defense of her actions and inactions with professional colleagues, occasionally in public debates, is about her immature approach and disposition in government. A brilliant woman no doubt, but she has been the butt of several attacks, particularly in the social media community. A classical one was her ignominious public display of immaturity during a public hearing by the Senate Committee on revenue generating agencies’, earlier in the year, where she went into a needless battle with the Comptroller General of Customs, Rtd. Col. Ahmed Ali, over who the Customs’ boss should report to. This issue became a public embarrassment, but how the President was able to resolve this matter is yet to be made public.
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Few months back, the Honourable Minister stirred up the hornet’s nest and went public on the eve of one of the bi-monthly meetings of the CBN Monetary Policy Committee meeting virtually ordering the Monetary Policy Committee members (MPC) to lower the interest rate in order to stimulate the economy, which, she had announced to the public at that time, was “technically in recession”. With public outcry in favour and against her advice, she quickly came out to say she was only expressing her personal opinion as she could not dictate to the committee. This many read as dysfunction between the two critical authorities. Even if she meant well for the economy, I do not expect her to go public when she could easily have reached out to the Governor of the Bank to compare notes on how best to navigate the country out of the economic quagmire. She had also been in a public entanglement with the Minister of Budget and National Planning on issues of budget and running of the economy.
Her recent public statement to prosecute the 33 agencies further attested to her immature approach to governance, which may further create acrimony and instability not only in the economy, but the polity at large.
Mrs. Adeosun should have done due diligence on information at her disposal or reached out to supervising ministers of some of the agencies concerned to quietly resolve this problem rather than heating up the polity by hastily going public, as she often does.
Unsurprisingly, some of the agencies have started to debunk her claim. She was not tardy enough, a symptom of juvenile tendencies. A report on page 8 of ThisDay newspaper of Friday, December 2, 2016, quoted a top official of the CBN as saying that the Ministry of Finance must have made a mistake by including the CBN on the list. According to the source, in 2015 alone, the CBN reported an operating surplus of about N108billion of which N80billion was paid into Consolidated Revenue Fund, being 80% of the amount CBN reported as its operating surplus. The propriety of the CBN reaction is not the preoccupation of this piece, but when the fiscal and the monetary authorities begin to work at cross purposes, particularly in a challenged economy as ours, anyone can tell what would be consequence of their action on the polity.
What impression is the Minister creating to the investing world about the CBN? – How many battles does Mrs. Adeosun want to fight? She does not need to always use the public space to address issues in government – insinuating distrust, incompetence, corruption without carrying out due diligence. If the claim by CBN is found to be right, how would she correct the public opprobrium she may have brought upon the CBN, same for other agencies? Moreover, the CBN is not known to be a revenue generating agency. The Minister could and should have reached out to her colleague minister who superintend over many of the agencies to resolve this issue. Perhaps, her recent action may have further created a deep gulf in President Buhari’s cabinet. No wonder, there has been public outcry to the President to sack some of his non-performing ministers.
At this critical juncture, we expect harmony between the fiscal and monetary authorities to maturely handle the affairs of the Nigeria. More so, that, they are both members of the President’s economic think-tank. If the Minister could be seen behaving this way in the public, how much would it be when they are hollowed up, wracking their brains out on how to get the economy back on its feet. This action by the Minister is an unnecessary distraction that the economy does not need now. Let our dear Mrs. Adeosun take a lesson in humility and maturity. She needs it.
Obafemi Aluko contributed this from Ago Iwoye, Ogun State.
