By Kenneth Okonkwo

Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited is a foreign trading company that heard that in Nigeria, you do not need to add any value to the country to get billions of dollars to yourself. You simply need to know the right people to meet and the right money to give them. The company was told that Nigeria is very rich in both solid and liquid resources worth billions of dollars and it’s only criminals that harvest such resources for their own benefits not for the benefit of the people who own the resources. They learnt of how bandits control the gold in Zamfara State with the connivance of the leaders of Nigeria. They were informed of how government officials project their own illegal pipes on the official oil pipeline to siphon our crude oil illegally for their own selfish enrichment, while the security agencies stand idly by and watch helplessly and collaboratively as such resources were stolen in an open day robbery style. They heard how contracts were awarded to fictitious companies and money paid to such companies without any evidence of work done. They learnt that contracts were even awarded to real companies and money paid to them without work done and without any demand for accountability from the institutions that appropriate such money.

Indeed, they heard how at the floor of the National Assembly, how a former Minister of Niger Delta, Senator Godswill Akpabio, accused the Honourable members, that they were the ones that got the largest portion of the contracts from the Niger Delta Development Commission, and that they were most guilty of non-performance of the contracts. We recall how his phone was ordered switched off to prevent him from spilling more beans. The company heard how the Supreme Court openly held that Bashir Machina should be denied his Senatorial seat he fairly won and be given to another Senator who didn’t even participate at all in the same primary election, despite the fact that the two lower courts that handled the case had confirmed that Machina was the right candidate. They also learnt that you don’t even need to have proven record of experience in any particular field to be appointed or contracted to do something in that field by the executive if you are ready to pay the right price. They came to the conclusion that the three arms of government were in collusion in Nigeria in this game of duping Nigeria of its God-given resources.

Armed with all these facts, the foreign trading company, without any experience whatsoever in area of gas, heard that the sector you can make the quickest bucks without qualms is in the oil industry that flows like river in the Niger Delta. He chose the gas sector and simply paid a staff of the Ministry of Justice, the sum of $20,000.00 to draft an agreement between P&ID and the Federal Government of Nigeria worth $6.6 billion which will make him build a gas processing plant in Cross Rivers State on the condition that the Federal Government will supply him the needed gas for the working of the gas plant. Without building any gas plant anywhere, he cried that the Federal Government had breached the contract and he must be paid damages. With the connivance of his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, a surreptitious arbitral panel was set up that awarded them the amount they so wished to be paid. The same gang of thieves convinced President Goodluck Jonathan to settle out of court to the tune of $850 million. Nigeria didn’t pay on time and P&ID ignited the spirit of the dubious contract to invoke the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom Court to grant it the amount of $11.5 billion as at the last time the court heard it. That was when Nigeria woke up to the reality that an already bankrupt country was going into financial perdition. Nigeria set up a genuine legal team to confront the P&ID and eventually got the UK Court to see the contract for what it was – a monumental fraud. Nigeria was let off the hook that Nigerians put on their necks by a UK Court.

Certain issues cropped up in this regard. The first is that we are our own problem in this country. It’s the rat in the house that informed the rat in the bush that there’s fish in the cupboard. All these unhelpful narratives that it’s foreign countries or entities that are responsible for our problems will make us sink into further abyss of misfortune. What these entities cannot do in their own countries, they freely do here. It’s the officials in the Ministry of Justice that made it possible for Nigeria to be scammed. From day one, they knew that the contract was a scam and just wanted to use it to enrich themselves and they succeeded. The truth is that the only reason Nigeria did not pay that money was because Nigeria was broke. Recall that they have already advised President Goodluck Jonathan to pay. They were waiting for the tranche of money to come in to pay, but the money never came, thank God. $11.5 billion today is about N11trillion, putting the price of dollar to N1,000.00. This quantum of money has already been paid to another group of thieves without nothing to show for it, just ask the Senators of the tenth session who openly declared that Nigeria has paid the sum of N11trillion to repair the comatose petroleum refineries from 2010, without any positive results to show for it. Incidentally, the P&ID contract was dubiously instituted on 2010 and would have cost Nigeria N11trillion today if Nigeria had been buoyant.

Another thing we must know is that we have a problem of incompetent, inefficient and dishonest civil service that is yearning for restructuring. We had a personal experience with this incompetent civil service. We recall how a former Attorney Generneral of the Federation gave us an assignment to defend the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) in a case brought against the IGP by one alleged criminal. The case was held in Kaduna. The facts of the case was that the criminal wanted to cheat an innocent businesswoman in Kaduna State of her filling station which he had sold to her and collected her money and which he also sold to another person and wanted to take it back from her. The woman reported the matter to the police and when the police moved in to investigate the allegation of fraud, the man ran to court to shield himself of the crime under the pretext of defending his fundamental human rights.