Revelations from the anticipated House Committee on Public Accounts probe of Petroleum Minister; Diezani Alison-Madueke’s use of private jets for personal trips, with bills paid by the government, are confounding and damning. It epitomizes, in a dramatic fashion, the rampaging impunity and underlines the wastage of public resources that has become an administrative routine in government circles. The amounts evoked are mind-boggling, and projects Alison-Madueke as a spendthrift, reckless with public funds. If proven, the squandermania would amount to an audacious display of waste, fiscal imprudence, and sheer nonchalance towards the national heritage, which is unacceptable, contemptible and a great disservice to the Nigerian people. Now that the House has raised the matter, Nigerians expect that it gets to the bottom of it. This is no time for a presidential subterfuge to deflect pressure from the minister and other officials involved in the scandal. Certainly, any such move would not be in the national interest.
From all indications, Alison-Madueke has made it a point of duty to travel only on private jets. The problem is that the chartered jets are sometimes used for reasons not related to her official duties, but to satisfy her private taste for comfort and luxury. This underlines her proclivity for wasteful adventures by plundering the national wealth with reckless abandon. Trips involving Global Express XRS ,tail number S5-GMG and tail number OE-LGX,OE-LSS and OE-INA costing $300,000 (about N50m) per trip-way above the standard cost of N7.5million for the same trip – were among flight schedules operated on foreign trips by the Minister between 2012 and 2013. A trip on December 21, 2012 from the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja to the United Kingdom with the Global Express XRS, tail number: OE-LGX cost N57.5million against an estimated N6million.
This impunity personified is a pathetic celebration of graft that needs no substantiating. It is reprehensible, and demands a fundamental review of government’s policy on private jets, which itself is not only outrageous and scandalous but downright insulting on the intelligence of Nigerians. Alison-Madueke has been directed to “tender a written submission within one week about her role and everything she knows about the troublesome transactions, and if as Minister she is entitled to such chartered private jets for private use, and whether or not she has breached public service rules, and state who is responsible for the bills”. Besides the Minister, the House also sent letters to the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Group Managing Director, Andrew Yakubu; private Jet operator VistaJet International; Evergreen Aviation Terminal, and the Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN); requesting them to tender submissions and documents in connection with the troublesome transactions
In real terms, the transactions underscore the yawning disconnect between the government and the people in terms of priority and need, and why there is so much struggle for political appointments. Apart from the fact that due process was circumscribed; that so much was spent on her transportation, at a time the country is in dire economic straits, is inexcusable, whatever the justification. If indeed, she saw anything wrong in combining high public office with the pursuit of personal pleasure, then her actions did not reflect it. Globe-trotting in private jets paid by the taxpayer simply reinforces the contempt in which the average citizen is held, as if only Ministers have the right to life and good treatment. To contemplate spending such huge amounts on private jets, amidst the poverty and under-development in the land, is incomprehensible. Leadership requires serious discipline to draw a line between the private and the public, the official and unofficial, the acceptable and unacceptable ethics of governance. Improper practices are apparent in this case.
Alison-Madueke is a symbol of the much vilified but unaddressed corruption in the country. More than just a question of law and ethics in government, this scandal raises many issues; including the leadership question, propriety of acts of public officials and judicious use of public funds, time and resources. As a people, Nigerians must task themselves about the cause of corruption. Why are people so materialistic that they wish to acquire everything in sight, including what they do not need? Why does the nation allow easy access to massive wealth by a few privileged persons, along with an ostentatious lifestyle that is insensitive to the misery of the masses? How does one reconcile the paradox of having the highest number of private jets in Africa, while most of the people live in abject poverty?
In both her public and private statements, Alison-Madueke has been known to boast about her “special personal relationship” with the President. Her penchant for the luxury of private jets may rightly be said to be pioneered by the presidential fleet, which is costing the nation huge maintenance bills, with questions on the propriety of the buying decisions; and the cavalier deployment of these aircraft to domestic, conjugal and frivolous uses. The Nigerian Presidential fleet, today, is an invitation to the licentiousness of the country’s political leadership to continue the perfidious lifestyle that constitutes an affront to Nigerians. This cankerworm, shoved in the face of citizens by physical sight of these aircraft, is reprehensible. For a country deficit in many indices of human development and national growth, the unbridled crave for private jets, when many Nigerians are jobless and struggling to eke out a paltry living, is appalling and highly intolerable.
By her profligacy, the sleaze-prone, private jet-addict has shown she is unfit to hold public office. By any moral or decent standard, Alison-Madueke ought to have been ushered out of office to allow unfettered investigations given her rumored closeness to Jonathan. At the very least maintaining Alison-Madueke in the cabinet suggests poor judgment on the part of the President. The more Nigerians think about it, the more they are tempted to remember how Jonathan also wavered against erstwhile Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah over the scandal involving the purchase of bullet proof cars at a whopping $225 million. No government that vacillates in cases so obvious and that smacks of massive moral deficit on the part of the minister will be deserving of the respect of its people.
Nigerians are too familiar with investigations and alarmist observations from the National Assembly that at the end of the day, simmer into a whimper and then silence. If only for the sake of its own reputation, the House should muster the integrity and courage to ensure this intended probe is not an addition to the comedy of errors, which unending probes have become. But Jonathan must act decisively by sacking her or suffer political damage as her stay in government will reinforce public perceptions that Jonathan is a weak an amazingly indecisive President who shirks the hard decisions that go with the top job. The President himself must realize that Alison-Madueke has behaved idiotically, and he should not be seen in the nonsensical contradiction of defending an idiot. What does a punctilious President do with a Minister who has become a liability and public embarrassment? Mr. President, sack Diezani Alison-Madueke as Oil Minister!
