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“Who receives a gift, sells his liberty” “Benefits make a man a slave” – Arabic proverbs

It is an open knowledge that on Friday March 10, the Federal government slammed the former Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, with 6-count charge of over alleged N3billion Money Laundering which the Ex-NNPC boss insisted to be “accumulated gifts he received during different ceremonies”.
Certainly only the Federal High Court in Abuja has the final pronouncement on the claims of the gifts for which Mensuir Yakubu had been arraigned. Certainly only the Federal High Court in Abuja has the final pronouncement on the claims of the gifts for which Mensuir Yakubu had been arraigned. Facts ever remain sacrosanct while opinions can vary.
Interestingly both the EFCC and Mensuir Yakubu agreed that it is a total sum of $9,772,800 and £74,000 that its legality or otherwise will be determined. Whatever would be the outcome of the judicial process which had elicited such global interest, without prejudice to the court process and outcome, the interest of yours truly is purely academic. What for instance is the political economy of over N3billion alleged gifts Andrew Yakubu claimed to have accumulated as the GMD of the NNPC between 2012 and 2014?
A casual observation at least reveals that Mr. Yakubu had an annual gifts turnover of N 1. 5 billion, a monthly turnover of N125millions! With monthly gifts like this, whoever must have invented monthly salary/ wage for honest monthly productivity needs a rethink when a slam on the wrist is more rewarding.
Talking about monthly pay, at N18,000 legally permissible minimum wage, N3billion gifts will pay a minimum wage earner for 14 years, some 167 months! According to a business survey, there is a leading, privately owned energy and infrastructure multinational with operations in the upstream, midstream and downstream infrastructure and power sectors. It has offices in Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, UAE, Switzerland, Singapore, and United Kingdom, and boasts over 600 employees. As of 2012, (when GMD Andrew Yakubu started accumulating the ‘gifts’) the company’s annual turnover stood at $11.4 million, almost the same as $9,800,000 Yakubu gifts. With gifts like this why should anybody worry about value adding activities and employment of thousands of staff? The total population of Kaduna state is 3.6 million.
If Mr. Yakubu had been as generous with his gifts with compatriots, gift per capital translate to N8 million per person! A leading Nigerian newspaper reportedly has about 200 staff and prints its newspapers simultaneously in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.
The company claims its 2014 turnover was $15 million (3 billion Naira), almost the same as gifts like N3billion in 2017! Rice remains the most consumed food staple in Nigeria and Billions of dollars goes into importation of this product yearly from China and Thailand because the local farmer are unable to meet up the demand due to poor funding and limited knowledge.
It is said that any investor who has a million dollar to invest has a guaranteed 100% return. $1,000,000 = $2,000,000 guaranteed meaning invested gifts of $9,000,000 =$18,000,000 annually in rice production. Kaduna State 2017 Budget is N214, 000,000,000. The state’s HealthCare Allocation is N10.49 Billion, almost a quarter of which passes for an alleged gift! After ten months under the stewardship of Dr. Ibe Kachikwu as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), it was reported with fanfare recently that the state-run oil firm finally turned the corner, reporting an operating profit of N273.74 million for the month of May and reversing the losses of N35 billion made by NNPC over the last 15 years!
The celebrated corporation’s N273.74 million operating profit in May 2016 as against its operating loss of N19.43 billion in April is certainly a peanut compared to the claimed monthly gifts of a former GMD.
With gifts like this, the imagination can legitimately run riot on what the gifts can deliver in an economy under recession. The CBN rice anchor borrowing of N 5billion had impacted on hundreds of thousands of rice farmers in the country. We can imagine what value gifts like N 3 billion can add and what difference it can make.

By. Issa Aremu mni