The Abia debt hang (1999-2015): Amid professorial naivety

BY EBERE WABARA

Over the past eight years or thereabouts, the Abia State government under the feeble and rudderless leadership of Governor Theodore Ahamefula Orji has preoccupied itself with viral and vicious bouts of gobbledygook over the state’s debt profile between 1999 and 2007 when the former governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu was in office. It has never re­moved the moth in its eye all these while via public finance rendition.

All manners of scurrilous statements had been issued from May 29, 2007, till date on how Dr. Kalu allegedly misman­aged and squandered the riches of the state! Nobody has bothered to pry into the increased income from statutory alloca­tions and enhanced internally generated revenue since the advent of the present administration. The diversionary tactic had been exclusive focus on the Kalu years and, in the process, hoodwink unsuspect­ing Abians and other Nigerians.

The Abia Debt Hang in the past 16 years is not a subject for speculation or political jobbery, as the chairman of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and member of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Prof. Herbert Orji, emerged from the blues and alleged that the former gov­ernor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Kalu, plunged the state into indebtedness between 1999 and 2007 when the transnational business mogul was in office.

From my modest knowledge, the hallmark of professionalism and profes­sorship is objectivity. If Prof. Orji had been dispassionate in his assessment of the Kalu years, no eyebrows would have been raised, but when he decides to contemporaneously lavish encomiums on the acclaimed worst governor in the world then there is more than meets the eye. With such laudatory indiscretion, he gave himself up as a hatchet man! By virtue of his standing today as NBC chairman and member of the NSE, Prof. Orji should not have condescended so low, no matter the trappings and recompense for such a dirty and fatalistic job! This is where the Yoruba are ahead of us: their son of equivalent status as Prof. Orji will maintain his public dignity, no matter what. I say it for the second time in the past one year, we, the Igbo, are too slavish to money! We can do anything for money! Other ethnic groups love money, too, but not to the point of self-destruct as signposted by this profes­sor.

Before now, I had thought that only newspaper cub-reporters indulge in unprofessionalism, charlatanism and occupational deviancies on grounds of institutional and individual poverty — not investment bankers, chairmen of govern­ment agencies and council members of the stock exchange! It is akin to my being a media ombudsman and taking sides with a publication in my evaluative critique in anticipation of “settlement.” It is quite de­meaning and speak volumes of the erosion of values in our society. It will never be well with professorial and governmental corruption, including individual impropri­eties!

This is the opportune time for Dr. Alex Otti, the immediate-past CEO/MD of Dia­mond Bank PLC and governorship candi­date in Abia State on the APGA platform, to reveal to Nigerians the level of loans the Gov. Orji government has accessed in the bank in the past seven-and-half years—and possibly avail us with similar data from other banks. There is no privacy with public funds. The failure of Dr. Otti to do this will be symptomatic of our collective docility on matters that affect our existentialism. I will not disclose the figures at my disposal lest I am accused of partisanship because of my involvement in the restoration of God’s Own State. This is why I had expected Prof. Orji to focus on the redemption and renaissance of the state instead of fiddling with imaginary figures and playing to the mercantilist gallery.

I do not know why the T. A. Orji-led administration should waste resources on sponsored, frivolous and malicious allega­tions about the state’s finances before the inception of this tepid government. All the state needs to do is to write to the Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Allocation Committee (FAC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on revenue inflow to Abia State between 1999 and 2015 and get the feedback published in major national dailies (excluding The Sun, which has been erroneously classified as an “enemy newspaper” by Umuahia)! You do not need The Patriots, a few famished Abia elders and other nondescript elements to misinform people on a critical matter as this. It is also not a subject for political witch-hunt or demonisation of benefactors who have inexplicably become foes.

This matter does not require any compli­cation or media blitz. If Dr. Kalu bor­rowed monies from 22 banks, as alleged by the professor, can we have a list of the banks, the borrowings and their status as at May 28, 2007? Can we equally have the so-called 22 banks authenticate such information and the findings made public? In the same breath, can we also have the same classification beginning from May 29, 2007, till date? This will give a lucid picture of who borrowed what and the level of redemption/outstanding? It is a very simple task that does not require hungry hangers-on granting duplicitous interviews to justify their monthly stipends from Government House, Umuahia! If, as Dr. Kalu insists vehemently, he did not leave any debt and has publicly made such avowals, the only way to put the records straight is to have his accounts and those of his successor audited. Thereafter, we shall then know who has been lying and who has been telling us the truth. The rabid buck-passing cannot get to the root of the matter, especially now that another puppet-governor is in the making!

I had expected Prof. Orji and his co-travellers to do a comparative financial analysis of the Kalu years and the currency of their obvious sponsor: giving the public information on all statutory accruals and IGRs for both men’s tenures, their con­firmed debt profiles (local and external), authenticated investment schedules and all other allied issues connected with public income and expenditure that should be verifiable. For each of these, there are federal and global agencies that are very ready to volunteer information if formally approached, In other words, there is no need for any professorial interjection in a case that is within basic bureaucracy.

The political jesters in Umuahia and their messengers should be conscious of the fact that accountability, transparency and integrity are not issues for political gimmickry, but fundamentals of democ­racy, good governance and the hallmarks of personal and group credibility. They are not items for salacious media tomfoolery. If Prof. Orji were so fantastic in audit matters, why was his fleeting employment in demised Progress Bank not celebrated? And what culminated in the bank’s extinction? Equity is everything and self-dignity a treasure in the public sphere and marketplace. Nobody should, on account of political patronage or rehabilitative exi­gencies, lose the tangential respect he has.

When Prof. Orji declares glibly that Dr. Kalu took facilities from 22 banks and never redeemed them, it sounds like the tantrums of a jaundiced investment analyst! Are those banks he referred to dead like Progress Bank? Can he get them to publish Dr. Kalu’s alleged indebtedness and also ask First Bank, Diamond Bank, Skye Bank and Access Bank to give us the debit profiles of his mentor, Gov, Orji. For purpose of clarification the “22 banks are still functional and could be compelled to publish the records so that we know who the serial liar is between the Orjis.

Prof. Orji is among those misleading Gov. Orji and deluding him on perfor­mance. Is this professor aware that all through the eight years of Dr. Kalu’s governorship, less than N90 billion ac­crued to the state, while in less than eight years Gov, has spent N1.9 trillion naira on propaganda, abduction of this writer, using the police, deception and falsehood? There is no basis to compare Dr. Kalu and Gov. Orji on issues pertaining to public finance management because the former gover­nor represents light while his anointed successor symbolises blackout. If anyone doubts this, let the governor go to Aba without security details today and let us see the outcome! For Dr. Kalu, it would be a carnival.

The NBC chairman must have been afflicted by schizophrenia when he made an allegation that could easily be verified in the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). A man who claims professorial attainment should not operate in the realm of speculation, which is antithetical to scholastic candour.

Dr. Kalu has consistently asked for an independent and forensic audit of the ac­counts and statement of his tenure as Abia State governor from 1999 to 2007. He has also copiously written about his steward­ship generally and financial management particularly during the period he func­tioned as governor. The only money bor­rowed at the time under reference was N2 billion from Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), which was repaid a year before the expira­tion of Dr. Kalu’s second-term tenure. Kalu’s government officially related with Hallmark Bank PLC and GTB. The allega­tion that Dr. Kalu had credit interventions from 22 banks is the wildest, irresponsible and most vicious interjection any sane fel­low could make.

It is mind-blowing that a government that is rounding off eight years of the worst misrule in the 23-year history of Abia should still be hallucinating over Dr. Kalu’s years. And in pursuit of these serial attacks, the like of the NBC chairman and other compromised blokes are unsurpris­ingly willing tools for such dastardly acts.

I renew my agitation for a judicial en­quiry into the borrowings and debt profiles of Abia State between 1999 and 2015, which was the only way to end the lies, de­ception and propaganda that have become statecrafts in the country’s most backward state. What we need now is professorial distinction on Abia’s debt chain —not naivety, pedestrianism or juvenility! There must be a difference between cerebral quintessence and political rascality, which usually characterises hollow interventions from unlettered politicians’ errand boys!



THE SUN