The recently-uncovered financial
recklessness and obscene lifestyle involving Diezani Alison-Madueke is truly
the apex of cumulative impunity by the Minister of Petroleum Resources. She is
accused of living extravagantly at the expense of Nigerians by wasting about
N10 billion to maintain one of the three private jets she is using for official
and personal travels. More shocking disclosures are still streaming in.
The details of the preliminary enquiry in
the House of Representatives are unnerving.
The minister is said to have spent €500,000
(N130 million) monthly or N3.21 billion in two years to maintain a Challenger
business jet. Every time she flies the second jet on a round trip, taxpayers
lose €600,000 (N137 million), while the cost of the third aircraft is still to
be ascertained. The irreducible minimum Nigerians demand of the House
Public Accounts Committee is to establish the facts of the case.
But as usual, a duplicitous Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation has attempted to turn the page on the scandal by
defending its deviant minister. It says, “It is standard practice for a large
oil and gas corporation such as the NNPC to make use of the most efficient
means of transportation to ensure the effective and efficient coverage of the
vast scope of critical oil and gas assets under their purview.”
The Presidency, also playing the ostrich,
claims it is not in possession of documents or papers or “has any petition
relating to such issue” and will “rather await the outcome of the ongoing
investigation by the House of Representatives before it can undertake any
reasonable action.”
The public is waiting, too. But the same
President Goodluck Jonathan did not bother to follow the due process in line
with the law and civilized practice before suspending Lamido Sanusi, the
Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, over allegations of financial recklessness.
How many probe reports will smear Alison-Madueke before Jonathan saves his
government from the NNPC’s serial graft scandals?
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