“Paradise is not the absence of evil. It is the presence of good. Today we still have paradise in our world, for wherever there is good, there is paradise.
Paradise is not the absence of darkness. It is the presence of the Light.” From Paradox lost
Welcome to Scammers Paradise!
No contradictions.
Nigeria is a place of ongoing tragedy and unceasing comedy, outgoing subsidy and uncertain remedy.
That resignation brings hope, that realisation brings happiness, with everything that Coolio found in Gangstas Paradise till he was 59. Everything in Pastime Paradise that Steve Wonder lives in, 73 years on.
Two Saturdays into President Tinubu’s accession as the 16th ruler in these parts of Paradise, some dualistic scenarios began to play out – typical of those opposites in Milton’s Paradise lost.
One, as soon as President Tinubu announced an end to the petrol subsidy scam last week, labour leaders on the other side announced the beginning of strike action, protesting financial pangs visited by the soaring cost of transport and living.
Conversely, as soon as the labour unions suspended their intended strike action, deciding to keep working under the new austere conditions, the Presidency, on the other side, suspended the Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, from further work at his office.
“This (suspension) is sequel to the ongoing investigation of his office and the planned reforms in the financial sector of the economy,” the Secretary to the Government of the Federation’s spokesman, Willie Bassey, said.
One hopes they remove the subsidy and audit what is gone just as they’re removing Emefiele and auditing what he’s done.
Again, just as news of President Tinubu’s first appointees spread in town, news spread too of his predecessor’s appointees’ misspent time in office.
One of the latter is the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika’s, role in the Nigeria Air scam. A scam that gulped 85 billion Naira and solicited free international embarrassment for the country.
Like Sirika’s Aviation Ministry, the Justice Ministry under Abubakar Malami is in the news too for providing refuge and refusing extradition requests for Nitin and Chetan Sandesara, two Indian fugitives wanted by the Indian authorities. The duo were accused of scamming several Indian state-owned banks of undeserved and unpaid debts to the tune of $1.7 billion.
Wanted criminals in their homeland, the Indian scammers have found a new land and a thriving oil exploration business in Nigeria.
For a fact, the Sandesaras are easily absorbed into these parts of paradise on account of their leading investment in Nigeria’s oil industry.
- an industry plagued by piracy and oil theft from Nigeria’s littoral waters deep into the Gulf of Guinea
- a bloody-greedy industry Nigerian naval officers have a conflicted relationship with, being seen as the main enemy to the offshore pirates but the minor enemy to the oil thieves.
On air, land and sea, Nigeria comes by as a safe haven for scammers.
Nigeria Air: N85 billion vanished in thin Air
The federal government under President Buhari spent an incremental sum of N85.42 billion on transaction advisers, working capital and consultancy bills to facilitate the launch of Nigeria’s national carrier, Nigeria Air, between 2016 and 2023, according to several media reports.
But the national carrier, Nigeria Air, like a daydream, has vanished into thin air.
In the twilight of his administration, President Buhari arrived at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport to launch the commencement of Nigeria Air, the country’s national carrier.
“When the aircraft landed at the Abuja airport on Friday, May 26, 2023, it was greeted with a water salute, an action which is usually used to mark the first flight of an aircraft to an airport,” the Sun witnessed.
Far from what Nigeria meant for the world media to see, the Nigeria Air plane that Buhari commissioned was a plane chartered from Ethiopian Airlines. The former Honourable Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, rented the plane for the national show of shame. He fulfilled his deal to return it 48 hours later to resume normal commercial operations.
Typical of every scam, the plane looked like it. It wore the Nigerian national colours green and white and was boldly branded with Nigeria Air and its earlier unveiled logo.
Yet, “hardly had the aircraft touched the runway when the registration number showed that it belonged to a foreign airline. It later emerged that the aircraft belongs to Ethiopian Airlines (ET) but was previously operated by Malawian Airlines, one of ET’s other subsidiaries,” The Sun reported.
Prior to this charade, “there was strong pushback from industry stakeholders when Sirika announced some of the modalities for the deal: Carrier would be driven by the private sector and the Nigerian government would retain only 5 per cent stake in it, while ET will have a 49 per cent stake and 46 per cent of the airline would be owned by Nigerian investors (MRS and SACHOL).”
Nigeria’s Waters: Under the Navy’s watch, Piracy reduces, and Oil Theft increases
Next to the petrol subsidy scam, oil theft remains the unresolved criminal puzzle here in Scammers Paradise.
ADF reported that Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea continues to drop due to efforts by regional and international navies. Still, the decline in piracy might be due to criminal networks shifting to other crimes, especially oil bunkering.
“Field research in the Niger Delta shows that high-level actors controlling pirate groups and oil bunkering may have reached consensus to stop allowing deep offshore piracy … A key factor remains that oil bunkering, when compared to deep offshore piracy, entails less risk and significantly higher reward or profit.,” ADF reported.
Also, going by the Nigerian Navy’s profile on Wisevoter, it appears the Nigerian Navy is known for everything coastal and maritime security except preventing oil thieves from pumping and packing crude oil away from their country’s shores and territorial waters.
“While Nigeria does not have any globally famous navy ships, the Nigerian Navy plays a crucial role in combating piracy, illegal fishing, and other maritime security challenges in the region. It also contributes to international peacekeeping efforts in collaboration with other navies.”
“Nigeria ranks 22nd among the largest navies in the world, with a total of 136 warships. The Nigerian Navy operates a green water navy, focusing on coastal defense, maritime surveillance, and enforcing maritime laws within Nigeria’s extensive coastline along the Gulf of Guinea.”
“A green-water navy is a maritime force that is capable of operating in its nation’s littoral zones and has limited competency to operate in the surrounding marginal seas. It is a relatively new term and has been created to better distinguish, and add nuance, between two long-standing descriptors: blue-water navy (open oceans) and brown-water navy (inland and shallow littoral waters).”
Thus while the Nigerian Navy is known around the world to be useful in combating illegal fishing in their country’s territorial waters, they are not known for combating illegal pumping of their country’s crude oil through illegal pipelines to vessels on the ocean.