Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, hit the headlines yesterday with his castigation of Niger Delta leaders whom he challenged to come clean on how they spent the billions of naira in oil revenue  allocated to the region over the years. He was reported to have told the monthly publication, The Interview, that even President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure in government, during which Excess Crude Account (ECA) was turned into pocket money, did not make much difference in the region.
He, indeed, asked how much of the ECA funds turned into pocket money during the Jonathan presidency went to the Niger Delta.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, had earlier set the tone for the renewed interest in the Niger Delta derivation billions when he noted last week that the funds that accrued into the region in the last 12 years amounted to 40 billion dollars.  Expectedly, the questions being raised in different quarters about the whereabouts of the Niger Delta billions is generating heated debate in the region and other parts of the country. Many Niger Delta leaders have kicked against the challenge from Masari, who is a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. A number of those who have spoken on the matter said the money could not have ended in the pockets of the leaders of the region as Northerners own 83 per cent of the  nation’s oil blocks, while Niger Delta leaders are not at the helm of affairs at institutions such as the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the state governments.
However, the South-South Reawakening Group which has Comrade Ambakaderimo as its Convener, saw merit in Masari’s challenge because, as he put it, “the money coming to the region is not commensurate with what is on ground.” He agreed that Niger Delta leaders ought to be called to account for the monies before Niger Delta youths carry arms, even though the federal government is  owing statutory institutions such as the NDDC.
Of all the responses so far, I see that of the former Provost Marshall of the Nigerian Army and South-South leader from Edo state, Brig. General Don Idada Ikponmwem (retd), right on point. He said the problem of what happened to public funds is not a Niger Delta problem but a national one. Niger Delta leaders, he argued, were already talking to the youths about the bombings and they have stopped, pending proper dialogue with the federal government.
There are no two ways to look at this matter. It is not only in the Niger Delta that leaders at various levels in the country have dealt callously with ordinary Nigerians. Everywhere, North, East, South-South, Middle Belt and West, there is no debating the fact that our leaders have not dealt fairly with the citizens. What we have had is mostly a situation   in which our political office holders, over the years, including the present ones, are getting fatter and fatter, while the ordinary citizens are getting leaner and leaner.
Today, many of our leaders are billionaires, while the vast majority of Nigerians are living in poverty. These days, you do not need to search for statistics from the United Nations to know that large numbers of Nigerians are living in poverty, with many not knowing where their next meal is coming from.
In the North-East in particular, the billions of naira that have accrued to the region over the years cannot be seen in the lives of the ordinary people from that part of the country. This is glaring in the vast numbers of uneducated and unskilled people from the region, who became easy recruits into the Boko Haram insurgency. I particularly mention the North-East, not because there are no uneducated and unskilled persons in all other parts of the country. There, certainly, are.
But, the high percentage of people in this category in the geo-political zone, and the failure of the leaders over the decades to ensure that the youths in the zone get a good education, resulting in their continuing abysmal failure in public examinations such as the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSSCE), are a tragedy for which these leaders ought to be held accountable.
There is no doubt Nigeria is suffering a dearth of good leaders. We do not have leaders in the mould of our post-independence helmsmen, who had as citizens, predominantly uneducated citizens, but did all that they could to better the lot of the people by providing them with good education, the like of which is almost a luxury in Nigeria today. Today, it is doubtful that our leaders are interested in whatever becomes of the citizens who voted them into office. Our National Assembly members seem only interested in how much of the commonwealth they can appropriate to their own pockets. As  the embattled House of Reps member and former Chairman of its Appropriation Committee admitted recently, no less N650 million or so had accrued to him alone in the little over one year that he has been in office. He was not lying. It has been known by Nigerians all along that the game called politics in Nigeria is little better than an avenue for cornering public funds into private pockets and the pockets of cronies of the administration.
If anyone was in doubt of this fact, the brazen sharing of public funds for elections and other purposes during the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration; the humongous allowances paid to federal legislators in spite of the deafening national outcry; the scant regard for things that are of greater importance to large numbers of Nigerians, such as the Second Niger Bridge; the continuing sorry state of the Niger Delta backwaters in spite of the huge allocations to the region, and the sheer number of out-of-school children, especially in the North East of the country, are clear indications that only the enthronement of good leadership can change the Nigerian story for the better.
This, however, is not to say that the N273 billion contracts said to have been paid for in the Niger Delta, but not executed, as reported in the media last week, should not be accounted for.
But largely, the challenge to Niger Delta leaders   from Governor Masari is nothing but the case of a pot belonging to a Northern leader calling a kettle owned by a Niger Delta leader, black. The simple truth is that both the pot and the kettle are black. Black as hell.  There is no debating the fact that Nigerian leaders have woefully failed the people, and have come short of what is expected from them.
Therefore, instead of this game of name calling across the regions, the time has come for them to rethink their mission and begin to do what they were  elected to do.

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