Accountability and the Demons in Aso Villa

It is no more news that the Senate had disapproved of the request by President Muhammadu Buhari for a loan of $29.6 billion (about N10 trillion) depending on the exchange rate adopted for the conversion to naira. And the reason was simply because the Presidency sent in the proposal with more questions than answers. The Senate had rejected the request on the grounds that it came without the necessary details required for adequate appraisal and due legislative action; a situation that rendered the proposal a hard sell. Incidentally even the Presidency has acknowledged the shoddiness of the loan packaging and has promised to present the missing details.

There is even an unconfirmed insinuation that the details were deliberately concealed from the Senators in order to vitiate their effective scrutiny of the loan proposal. If that be the case it is most unfortunate as even during the military era in 1986, when the General Ibrahim Babangida administration was to obtain a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government launched a national debate on its propriety. It therefore remains anachronistic that a democratically elected civilian administration will find it difficult to allow public scrutiny of its intention to obtain a loan.

However, acting in apparent sympathy for the executive arm the Senate Majority Leader Ali Ndume offered to represent the loan proposal before the Senate as a gesture of accommodating the weaknesses of the executive initiative with respect to the loan package.

RSpeaking to reporters shortly after Senate plenary on Tuesday, Ndume assured that the Senate will revisit the issue whenever the executive puts its house in order. In the context of the fore going therefore, the fiscal agenda of the government is now hanging on the outcome of a wait in limbo.

It is significant that the Senate action is not in isolation from the public take on the issue. From the thrust of reactions in the public domain, it is clear that beyond the legislators, most Nigerians look at the loan initiative and any other attempt at fresh borrowing by any government in the country today, with concern.

This concern draws from the lessons of history which teach that dalliance between governments in Nigeria and loans - local or foreign, has never ended on a palatable note. The question many are asking is how does the country pay this new loan back, especially when its redemption shall likely extend beyond the tenure of the present administration.

The administration has gone to great length to convince Nigerians on the propriety of a bail-out loan for the country at this time. The fact that it is even incorporated into the budgets of successive years points to the premium placed on it by the government. Meanwhile, based on the sterling public image of the President and the change agenda of the administration, there is a general assumption that the loan proposal is driven by a patriotic zeal to make the country better.

Yet unattended is the question of the absorptive capacity of the country with respect to the loan package which will determine its euben Abati’s widely published piece, “The Spiritual Side of Aso Villa,” deserves very critical attention for its implication for accountability. That implication, which I consider harmful, is that it creates grounds for anyone who has operated and may operate from Aso Villa, our country’s seat of power, to argue their exoneration for any wrong attributable to them on the grounds that the villa, as Abati would have us believe, is a place where “the forces of darkness” hold sway and control the actions of its inhabitants. Indeed, if we accept that people act under the influence of such forces which they cannot resist, why hold them accountable for their actions even by law, which considers acting under duress - in this case the duress of demons - as a basis for the exculpation of an accused person?

So if we asked the first tenant of the villa as Head of State why he annulled the June 12, 1993, presidential election, an act many consider wrong for the attendant economic waste and injustice to various stakeholders, he would be justified to respond that he couldn’t have acted otherwise considering the influence of such malevolent forces. And if it were possible to prosecute one of his successors posthumously over the loot being recovered offshore and said to belong to him, and ask him why he would engage in such rapacious plunder of the public till while in office, he could argue for his acquittal with a response that those “forces of darkness” made him do it.

And if we continued to blame the first occupant of the villa as civilian president for the disruptive “third term” project and some other ultimate utility for Nigeria. For until the country is disposed to optimally utilise the opportunities offered by a bailout loan facility so long will any such endowment be frittered away on frivolities. And unfortunately, that is the state in which many Nigerians and foreigners alike see this country wallowing in as its comfort zone.

The lessons from the disapproval by the Senate of the loan request dictate that the government has to undertake a complete makeover of its administrative machinery to predispose its policy initiatives and general operations towards closer congruence with the legitimate expectations of the Nigerian people. And this can only be realised when the proposals and initiatives of the executive arm (like this loan package) tally with the prescriptions of the legislature, being the true representatives of the people. So far that is not the case.

From experience, it is likely that the National Assembly will be subjected to intense pressure by the executive through sundry channels, to concede to the loan request in spite of whatever reservations the body may muster. Yet since the devil in any suspect document is in the details, the legislators will do well to appraise whatever clarifications the executive may offer from all possible angles, including the following.

Firstly, is the issue of the now questionable competencies of the President’s economic management team, which has been exposed by the tardiness in handling a bailout loan package as sensitive as the present one. The country’s history is replete with instances where the compromised management wrongs linked to him while in office - like the corruption of the politics of a certain state with violence for which a renowned writer rejected a national honour he gave him - he might overturn our justification for blaming him by claiming that he acted under the influence of the same “forces of darkness.” And if we were to criticise one of his successors whose Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy was quoted as having said that the government under him lacked the political will to save for our country’s future, he might tell us it was the same evil forces that prevented him from saving, and sue for our understanding.

And for those wrongs for which we may feel justified in blaming our leader to whom Abati apparently alludes with the remark, “No Nigerian President should be in spiritual bondage because he belongs to all of us and to nobody,” he may deflect our blame by attributing them to the “spiritual bondage,” and ask us to bear with him, rather than take responsibility for such wrongs.

However, the most intriguing thing, for me, is that “the forces of darkness” said to plague Aso Villa do not prevent its occupants at the top from desiring to exhaust or extend their tenures in office. One of them, on leaving office, said he was stepping aside, implying his intention to step back in someday as he tried to do by trying to run for president. Another military Head of State like him sought to transmute into a civilian president, having set up sham political parties which a former Attorney General and Minister of Justice famously described as “the five fingers of a leprous hand.” Does that mean they would rather prolong their torment by those “forces of darkness”?

Another sought to wangle for himself an of national issues has created permanent damage to the national weal. Typical examples are the loss of the Bakassi Peninsular, the Niger Delta imbroglio and the cancerous Boko Haram insurgency in the country’s vital North East. In line with the African proverb that “if the first child does not crawl how will the second one run”, it is doubtful- going by street level wisdom, that a team which cannot manage with success the preliminary advocacy for a loan package can effectively supervise its implementation.

In any case, it is easily recalled that for some time there have been persistent calls for the President Buhari to review his team especially with respect to building synergy with the National Assembly. If he has been looking for an opportunity to act, this is it.

Another area of concern is the nation’s public service which remains the plank on which public service delivery is marshalled. It is no secret that without fundamental changes in orientation and structure at the three tiers of governance, the public service is hardly in a shape to drive the implementation of a bailout loan package that will deliver the expected results on schedule. Even the President recently ordered the commencement of reform programmes in the public service domain, and charged the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOSCF) Mrs Oyo Ita in that regard. It is of interest to Nigerians in general how far the reform programme has extra term in office. And yet another fought probably the most bitter and divisive election in our country’s history apparently to remain in the company of the same evil forces that had tormented him and his aides for almost six years.

Then think of this: in most cases they parted ways with the said “forces of darkness” with better stories to tell about their personal finances. Yet we are expected to believe that the forces, if they exist, are not being maligned as unkind to them.

Here, for the avoidance of doubt, is a summation of Abati’s views to which I respond: “When Presidents make mistakes, they are probably victims of a force higher than what we can imagine. Every student of Aso Villa politics would readily admit that when people get in there, they actually become something else. They act like they are under a spell. When you issue a well-crafted statement, the public accepts it wrongly. When the President makes a speech and he truly means well, the speech is interpreted wrongly by the public. When a policy is introduced, somehow, something just goes wrong … Those mistakes don’t look normal … I am therefore convinced that there is an evil spell enveloping this country. We need to rescue Nigeria from the forces of darkness. Aso Villa should be converted into a spiritual museum, and abandoned … I am tempted to suggest that this is indeed a country in need of prayers …The President … can make wrong decisions based on the cloud of evil around him.”

All the wrongs Abati attributes to “the forces of darkness” can be rationalised or explained in existential terms. For instance, if a president appoints his speechwriters based on primordial considerations rather than merit, and in spite progressed since such a dispensation will determine if the envisaged loan shall save or enslave Nigerians in the future.

Yet another area of concern is the factor of governors whose states are participating in this forthcoming bazaar as the loan package is largely seen as. What guarantee is there that the same actors who made mincemeat of the recent federal government bail-out package will play according to the script with the benefits of the foreign loan.

Then is the often-concealed ethnocentric element in foreign loans with which lenders shackle borrowers to permanent subservience and neo-colonial control. Foreign loans, no matter how seemingly benevolent they are offered - as it were on a platter of gold, hardly come without a price. In reality they usually come with all forms of padding as will promote the core interests of the lender. For instance loans from China cannot come without the dumping of Chinese labourers on Nigeria, who will starve Nigerians of access to available jobs.

It is therefore in the context of the foregoing considerations that the National Assembly should look at the loan proposal and drive its utility for the country. It is also in this respect that all stakeholders in the country - labour, corporate Nigeria, the academia and corporate Nigeria should rally around the legislature in this enterprise of inventing a welcome future for Nigeria. of their questionable competence, then he may end up with speeches marred by embarrassing flaws including plagiarism, on which his critics may pounce.

I think Nigerians are already praying in excess, alas with hardly any proof that our prayers are being answered, unless we do not pray for the good life and a united, just, peaceful, prosperous, well-governed and corruptionfree nation. If prayers could generate revenue, Nigeria could be the richest country in the world. Though a very prayerful nation, we import a wide range of goods from an atheist, prayerless nation like China without seeming to ponder what gives a nation that doesn’t pray such an edge of productivity over one that prays.

My favourite definition of prayer is by the American philosopher and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. He says, “Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.” It is like reckoning that we cannot pray a bridge over a river with folded hands; but with the right knowledge of bridge building and effort we can build a bridge over a river even without praying. Nor can we pray ourselves to economic prosperity amid unbridled corruption and a poor work ethic. Or expect our prayers to be answered if misaligned with our actions, like praying for peace while fomenting crises.

I believe we can overcome “the evil forces” in Aso Villa with positive and patriotic action. And if we abandon the villa and build a new one, can’t the same forces relocate to the new one and haunt its inhabitants such that they continue to make wrong decisions that derail our collective destiny?