Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili has reiterated the authenticity of the arguments she advanced during the convocation lecture she delivered at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Speaking at the ceremony, Ezekwesili had spotlighted the poor management of oil revenues, saying the Federal Government needed to exhibit full disclosure and accountability on issues relating to poor management of the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and the Foreign Reserve Account.
Minister of Information, Mr. Labran Maku, promptly reacted to the ex-minister’s claims, alleging that she lied on the mismanagement of the $67bn reserves and that she herself could not account for a total of N4576bn she received during her tenure.
In a counter-reaction, Ezekwesili has now said Maku’s utterances “failed to respond responsibly” to her demand for accountability. She added that while other countries had moved up the manufacturing and economic development ladder in her 50 years of existence, all she could say for Nigeria is that during the same period, at least five cycles of commodity booms that offered rare opportunities to use revenues generated from oil to transform the economy were not utilized.
“Sadly, each cycle ended up sliding us farther down the productivity ladder. The present cycle of boom of the 2010s is, however, much more vexing than the other four that happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s,” she said.
“This is because we are still caught up in it even as I speak today and it is more egregious than the other periods in revealing that we learned absolutely nothing from the previous massive failures. Furthermore, it is happening back-to-back with the squandering of the significant sum of $45bn in Foreign Reserve Account and another $22bn in the Excess Crude Account, being direct savings from increased earnings from oil that the Obasanjo administration handed over to the successor government in 2007.
“Six years after the administration I served handed over such humongous national wealth to another one, most Nigerians, but especially the poor, continue to suffer the effects of failing public health and education systems as well as decrepit infrastructure and battered institutions.
“One cannot but ask: what exactly does Nigeria convey with this level of brazen misappropriation of public resources? Where did all that money go? Where is the accountability for the use of both these resources plus the additional several hundred billions of dollars realized from oil sale by the two administrations that have governed our nation in the last six years? How were these resources applied or more appropriately, misapplied? Tragic choices! Yes.”
She lamented that the country’s national dignity continues to be degraded by cycles of stagnation because of the terrible choices the current generation and those before repeatedly make as a result of free oil money.
“The wealth and poverty of a nation never found a better Symbol! I have already asked the Federal Government to a PUBLIC DEBATE of the FACTS raised in my speech. Such an open debate of facts and figures of oil revenue since 2007 would help situate public accountability as the center point of our democracy” she continued.
“In accepting to publicly debate the questions raised in my speech, the Federal Government would model the democratic culture of responding to citizens’ demands for accountability especially at a time when the general public is eager for improvements in the good governance records of the Administration.”
She reassured Nigerians that her integrity and transparent record in public office can never be tarnished by baseless allegations regarding her 10 months as Minister of Education.
“Citizens who follow Education sector closely will know that the Education Sector budget, which the government spokesperson carelessly referred to, represents the consolidated direct budgetary allocation by the National Assembly to the 22 parastatals plus all the Federal Universities, Polythecnics and Colleges of Education in the country,” she said, adding that “At no time does a sitting Minister of Education have access to the budgets of statutory bodies under her ministry” and that “the records are at the ministry for the relevant National Assembly Committees and the general public to scrutinize.”
OBIAGELI (OBY) EZEKWESILI
January 28, 2013
