As we approach General Elections in 2011, there is a sense in which Nigerians must understand that we are fighting for our individual lives and for our posterity in ensuring free and fair polls. The House Power Committee probe on the $16 billion invested in reaping darkness is instructive. the sky did not fall, rather it was members of the committee that were taken to task for allegedly collecting N100 million bribe from faceless complainants.
Fighting for our lives Part 1 by Kingsley Omose
As we approach General Elections in 2011, there is a sense in which Nigerians must understand that we are fighting for our individual lives and for our posterity in ensuring free and fair polls.
A Powerless Generation
According to Saul Alinsky, the foremost American community organizer,” Power is the physical, mental or moral ability to act”. Last week, two different but related news items were reported in most national dailies and electronic media that show our increasing powerlessness as Nigerians.
Both news items came forth at public hearings being conducted by committees in the Senate of the National Assembly.
At the Senate ad-hoc committee investigating the Transport Sector it was revealed that the Nigerian Ports Authority could not account for over N537 billion.
Of the N548 billion NPA internally generated revenue from 1999 to date only N11 billion was paid into the Federation Account and the balance spent without due approval. This revelation was made by Prince John Emeka, Honorable Minister of State for Water Transport and confirmed by NPA Managing Director, Abdusalam Mohammed.
Other than admitting that the actions of NPA were irresponsible, the managing director had no other plausible explanation for this N64 billion average yearly spending binge.
Considering that no new infrastructure had been built by the NPA in the period under review when most of its facilities had been concessioned, this was mind boggling.
The second was even more stupefying and had to do with the escalation in the construction cost of the Escravos Gas to Liquid Project from $1.7 billion to $5.9 billion.
This revelation was made before the Senate Committee on Gas Resources following admissions by Chevron Nigeria Limited that it acted unilaterally in this regard.
The gas to be processed into diesel by EGTL belongs to Nigeria, who through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation holds a 25% share in the project. More shocking was that a similar project in Qatar had been executed at under $1 billion and that NNPC had only approved an increase of the contract sum to $2.72 billion.
Unlike the NPA managing director who could not explain what had happened to N537 billion, Chevron at least attempted to explain why the cost had shoot up by over 300%.
According to Chevron, the increment was necessitated by the volatile situation in the Niger Delta, the depreciating value of the US Dollar and the need to beef up security.
Others reasons were changes in logistics, training of staff and the construction of fence as well as designs at the site. It was alleged that following threats by the contractors to abandon the EGTL project, Chevron unilaterally converted the contract from lump sum to reimbursable.
This in effect meant that the contract costs were being determined by the contractors and the fear is that the final bill for the EGTL may be in the region of $11 billion. The reactions of members of committees, the government officials and management of the relevant agencies would seem to indicate that these incidents are normal.
Likewise the way that these incidents were reported by the news media and the response of Nigerians including those who know the inner workings of the oil and gas sector. Come to think of it, the sky has not fallen over revelations that came out during the House Power Committee probe on the $16 billion invested in reaping darkness.
Rather it was members of the committee that were taken to task for allegedly collecting N100 million bribe from faceless complainants. The lesson for members of the Senate committees would be to learn from the experiences of their House committee counterparts in knowing how to package their reports.
I am at a loss on how to proceed further with this write up. What is the point when the revelations of today are buried by the ones of tomorrow with no lessons learnt?
PROLOGUE
Life and Death
After the death of his first wife Helen, Saul Alinsky the foremost American community organizer, fell into depression and drank heavily, and took to visiting his wife’s grave daily.
For several months, he thought he had been visiting his wife’s grave; then he discovered he’d been visiting the wrong grave! “What the hell am I doing?” he roared. That realization propelled him back into action, back into the organizer’s greatest joy – creativity, which he lived until his death. The valuable lesson he learned from that experience was that he was not going to live forever and that he was going to die someday.
This gut wrenching revelation was life changing for Saul Alinsky resulting in his confronting the question, ‘What is the meaning of my life, since I am here just so long a period of time?
Although he was never able to fully answer that question, he got to the point of accepting his own death, at which point he no longer cared whether he was important or not.
A few months before his death in 1972 he was asked by Playboy Magazine about whether he thought much about death. He responded, “Once you accept your own mortality on the deepest level, your life can take on a whole new meaning.
If you have learned anything about life, you won’t care anymore about how much money you have got or what people think of you, or whether you are successful or unsuccessful, important or insignificant.
You just care about living every day to the full, drinking in every new experience and sensation as eagerly as a child, and with the same sense of wonder”.
On whether he believed in any kind of afterlife, Alinsky said, “Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not “Is there life after death?” but “Is there life after birth?”
Man’s obsession with that question he added comes out of the stubborn refusal of man to face up to his own mortality. (Quotes courtesy of Rev. John E. Gibbons – 1995 and Playboy Magazine – 1972)
TO BE CONTINUED EVERYDAY
kingsley Omose<kingsleyomose@yahoo.com>