By Chuba Keshi
MON. 13 MARCH 2023-theGBJournal | Towards the close of 2022, the Delta Commissioner of Finance Chief Fidelis Tilije announced to a bewildered State that the State’s government debts to local creditors stood at a “safe” N272 billion. The briefing came in the heels of protests from several quarters against what became a sudden and wanton borrowings by the Delta State government of Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa.
Midyear, the Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party had named Governor Okowa his running mate in the ill-fated (PDP-wise) just-concluded Presidential election. And it seemed that the Commissioner was on a mission to test the waters for the coming reckless borrowings, surreptitiously for the funding of the presidential campaign and election.
The betrayal of Okowa who, shortly before then had championed a course by Southern governors to pull the coming president to the South, by accepting a VP position to a Northerner, is a story for a post-mortem analysis of the 2023 general elections. What is important here is the mortgaging of the future of the Delta youth and generations of Deltans still unborn, for his inordinate vice-presidential ambition.
Even before the November 2022 briefing on the State’s debt status, the windfall had begun, most noticeably with the December 2021 nod by the State House of Assembly for the governor to borrow N20 billion naira from Fidelity bank. The loan was for a “5 percent equity in the UTM offshore Limited Floating Liquified Natural Gas (FLNG) Project, under the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) real sector support Find/Differentiated cash reserve requirement window”.
That said, before we go into the wanton loans jamboree, let us point out a few pertinent things. Firstly, let us not forget Okowa’s arguably most used catchphrase “egho ari’a” meaning “there’s no money”. The Egho ari’ amantra has not only been the albatross of the common Deltan, it became a huge Cross the people of Delta had to carry in the eight years of Okowa’s misrule. And arguably, the people who had direct legitimate claim to compensation, were the civil servants and the army of pensioners, some of who went to their early graves, having been denied their due.
It was egho ari’a that denied workers payments for the 33 percent salary increase approved in 2010. Though implementation began in 2019, by December 2022, 99 months’ arrears were still outstanding.
Or is it what has become a standard practice in Delta State where most pensioners do not receive both gratuity and pensions till after eight-to-ten years of retirement? The number of persons that die while on the queue, can only be imagined. And when payment eventually comes, arrears are paid in trickles.
The same egho ari’aleft the general environment in Delta State highly degraded. From flooding of untold magnitudes, to dilapidated roads round about the State, it is the same. Even for roads constructed, tales are told of the high presence of cronies whose only qualification as road engineers was their tribal, not even ethnic, stock. As a friend jocularly put it, welders turned civil engineers, while vulcanizers became electrical engineers, all doing big State contracts.
Do we agree that it was egho ari’a that drove our governor into plethora of inexplicable borrowings that now threaten the solvency of a State that ordinarily would be the most solvent in Nigeria given her peculiar human and material resources? I do not think so. The question that easily defeats the acclaimed purposes for the borrowings is, why would he suddenly embark on such huge loans in the twilight of his administration?
The obvious real reason(s) for the wanton loans, include what our people call igba egwu una which means in this context, a primitive accumulation as one departs office. Another; perhaps a bigger reason, was his angling for the PDP trophy of running mate to Atiku Abubakar.
A lot of money was needed to prosecute the campaign for the president; which, bid, was ultimately ill-fated.
A cursory look at the checklist of these loans requested and / or taken since December 2021 include the N20 billion of that December; a N150 billion, “bridging finance facility” of March/April, 2022; a N25 billion loan from First City Monument Bank for palm plantation farming; a N120bn loan from a consortium led by Premium Trust Bank, January 2023.The facility, according to reports, would have Premium Trust Bank lead with N100 billion, and her partner Fidelity Bank, the balance of N20 billion. And of course the latest N40 billion, January 2023 that immediately triggered a terse warning from Senator Omo-Agege.
Omo-Agege had warned financial institutions in a strongly-worded open letter that they must desist from granting further loans which were, rather, only a private scheme between the governor and the Speaker of the House Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori; the man he is trying to install as his successor and stooge.
The right man for the job, the out-going Deputy President of the Senate HE Senator Ovie Omo-Agege knows full well the danger in managing such frivolous debts in the wake of gross deprivation for Deltans, especially the youth, and even unborn generations.
Some of the other lame reasons given for the loans included all kinds of white elephants and outstanding payments for contracts executed in the past even by governments that preceded the present government. It also included payment of backlogs of pensions and gratuities, according to the government. If anything, it is most curious that the Okowa government was blinded to these “outstandings” for seven whole years only to suddenly regain its sight as we approached the 2023 elections.
Indeed, no one really knows how much Delta borrowed under Okowa. Early January this year, the Civil Society community in Delta State gave Okowa a seven-day ultimatum to state clearly the financial status of the State. This followed what they described as “litany of complaints by concerned Deltans over frequent borrowing amidst lamentation by pensioners”. Though not much came out of that, it is believed that the debt stock would be in excess of N400 billion.
Finally, it is very curious that we still sang egho ari’a even as Delta received over N771 billion from FAAC in the past seven years; a good chunk of the over N1.7 trillion the State received in the past 12 years. This has been in addition to the huge proceeds from Internally Generated Revenue during the period. Yet, the egho ari’a mantra permitted the bribing of over 110, 000 civil servants with N10, 000 each in a move to buy their votes for the governorship and State legislature elections. These bribes – unappropriated N1.1 billion – were wired to the accounts of Civil Servants though Fidelity Bank.
On Saturday, March 18, Deltans will speak with one voice. The voice that will put an end to PDP’s 23 years of waste and Okowa’s eight years of recklessness. De;ltans will say very loudly: “enough is enough”.
This will be done by passing a vote of no confidence at the polls on the PDP, and by voting Omo-Agege, thus voting-in a restoration of our glory past, and of Delta State as the model State for all Nigeria.
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