This is the minimum that this president can offer Nigerians in the present circumstances as investigations continue into the affairs of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation. Betta Edu should be accorded the right of appropriate investigation and not sacrificed just for the blood thirst of critics of the Tinubu administration.
In the last one week since the suspension of Betta Edu following the reports of sleaze in the ministry she supervises as minister, a lot has happened that required the action of President Bola Tinubu. As far as that goes, he appears to have checked the right boxes, winning him the praise of even some of his detractors, except the implacable elements, apparent sore losers, who still can’t accept he is president or that they and/or the candidates they supported lost the presidential election of 2023.
To all such, there is nothing more to say or needs to be said that has not been said. Nor is there anything that the president will do that will satisfy them. Not even if he cuts off his head (assuming he can do that) and sends it on a platter of gold to them. They will still find something to turn their nose up at, something they find objectionable in the viscera of their being.
For as long as he is alive to continue in office, these critics will neither be consoled nor satisfied. He can ignore such and address the concerns of Nigerians who are genuine and open-minded enough to engage him on issues and expect his response as he has been doing on the ongoing saga. He should be careful, though, of those who would stampede him into taking actions that may result in reputational damage to others, including some of his appointees currently under investigation, without necessarily advancing the fight against corruption or transparency in government. Many of those bent on making demands like this are only interested in tarnishing the image of the administration by claiming nobody in the All Progressives Congress, APC-led government could be trusted, beginning with the president himself. It’s their continuation of the presidential campaign by other means.
Which is not the same thing as saying that all is well and that the president’s feet can’t be held to the fire. Or that past allegations against him are entirely without merit. The point is that every one should be assumed innocent until proven guilty and where no crime has been established none should be made culpable. This is the minimum that this president can offer Nigerians in the present circumstances as investigations continue into the affairs of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation. Betta Edu should be accorded the right of appropriate investigation and not sacrificed just for the blood thirst of critics of the Tinubu administration.
While the optics that she acted as she’s alleged to are not in her favour, her action is in itself not a proof of guilt or corruption, especially as she seems to believe it’s the norm in that ministry before her appointment as minister. Was she misled or was her action a manifestation of her naivety, a lack of experience and ignorance of civil service regulations, not minding her apparent intelligence and high educational attainments? All of which is not flattering to her, a former commissioner and grass roots politician who would be expected to know a thing or two of the rough and tumble of political intrigues. Or could hers be the brazen act of a power-drunk upstart confident of her ability to escape detection? It also needs to be known at what point the Accountant-General, Oluwatoyin Madein, advised her against her action- before or after the fact?
These questions require some clarification in order to be sure that she is not a victim of a set-up, caught in the whirlpool of office politics with persons old enough to be her parents. Some of them may see the success of young Turks like her, made ascendant by politics, as reflecting badly on them, and to prove some obscure point about experience, they could have them tripped. Such villainy is not unheard of in the civil service. But it would be grossly irresponsible and, even criminal of us as Nigerians or the investigators in Abuja, to overlook these considerations.
Was it the practice in the Ministry for payments for official transactions to be made into the private accounts of staff as Betta Edu claimed through her spokesperson or is her action unprecedented in this regard? If she’s correct, then that will be extenuating ground for what happened. Her case can’t be isolated for sanction just because she is a minister who rubs some people off the wrong way. But whether an old practice or not, diverting public funds to a private account should not by any means be condoned. It leaves too much room for corruption.
Which is another reason why the Tinubu administration should with appropriate modification (where needed) uphold the extant policy on the use of the Treasury Single Account which some reports (I hope they are not correct) suggest the administration may want to jettison. It took us a long time to get where we are with that policy and it would be a great disservice for the administration to send it to the waste bin. Together with its IPPIS offshoot, it’s a policy that is unsuitable for some institutions like public universities. But Tinubu already addressed this particular shortcoming by excluding the universities from it. Why tamper with its operation in the MDAs where they are needed and are very useful?
As I pointed out above, a lot has happened in the past one week and President Tinubu has taken the right steps in addressing several of these developments.What with the suspension of the entire National Social Investment Programme Agency, NSIPA, and setting up a panel headed by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, to investigate the operations of the agency in the last few years? Add to this the sacking of the board of five banks that changed ownership in very questionable circumstances and the cut in the travelling expenses of public officials. All but one of these are fallout from the investigation of the Central Bank of Nigeria under Godwin Emefiele, the longest-serving but ironically the worst-performing Central Bank Governor in the estimation of some Nigerians.
The Tinubu administration must continue on this track it has chosen for itself. It must, however, do so with the full awareness that it has still so much to do before it can begin to persuade Nigerians that things are about turning around for good. The harsh effect of the removal of oil subsidy and devaluation of the national currency and the national immiseration the policies have engendered require urgent relief on the part of ordinary Nigerians. An anti-corruption fight devoid of the comfort of economic prosperity has no meaning to a hungry, pauperised people. Get the economy right and everything else will follow.