WED, 10 AUGUST 2016-Control Risks in their 2016 RiskMap report, predicted at the beginning of the year that delays to government decision-making in Nigeria will persist in 2016, reducing its effectiveness, while political tensions will remain high amid anti-corruption campaign. All of that is playing out uncontrollably now as we enter the second half of the year making it even harder to make specific forecast for 2016.
The most recent addition to the fault lines, the implosion of the National Assembly over what has become the ‘Padding Gate’ scandal, in which the leadership of the National Assembly are accused of injecting N281 billion into the 2016 budget for selfish reasons, have emptied the National Assembly floor of lawmakers, leaving vital national economic, social, political and security issues pending.
So far the confusion has managed to draw attention away from the many known risks the country face that are turning into monstrous systemic risks-fiscal crisis amid sustained low oil prices, an economy now deeply in recession and facing depression, the volatile Niger Delta militancy and the pockets of agitation by the Biafra separatists group in the South East, Nigeria.
These risks, according some country experts, are no longer accidental but seemingly created. One diplomat summarised it thus; if you create this type of mess around the budget and the appropriation, you are bound to have a failed budget. Similarly, if you have no credible response to your fiscal crisis, the crisis is bound to persist. If you set up a flawed engagement process to reach out to the various restive or violent groups in the country, you will be duped and nothing fundamental will change and if you focus your attention away from the intra-party or inter-party crisis you will be allowing political tension to flourish.
This is the umpteenth time major scandal facing probable investigation into how members of the national assembly share tax-payers money in the name of constituency projects is playing out on the assembly floor.
“I think this time the probe should go beyond the principal officers to include those members who brought up the case,” says one angry APC ward chieftain in Lagos who says he feels betrayed by his party’s involvement in the scandal.
“We should within the party, institute a parallel criminal investigation to determine how and why our money should just be shared among a few people,” he added.
A PDP source told G&BJournal that the APC is proving the thinking of some of his party members right and that is “they (APC) will steal more money than they imagined the PDP stole. He says that this padding gate scandal is the tip of the iceberg.
“I bet you, the president, Muhammadu Buhari is scratching the surface and looking in the wrong direction in his fight against corruption. Corruption resides in his backyard-the NASS in Abuja,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian House speaker, Yakubu Dogora has been asked to resign but his followers now numbering about 262 have signed up to defend him. On the other side, the whistle blower, former chairman of house committee on appropriations, Abdulmumin Jibrin, have 206 members of the house on his side. All of them are fully focused on what a source called ‘a stupid credibility war’ and wholly indifferent to the disintegration and fracture.
