Things not getting Betta. What has been termed Edugate speaks to a growing monster rather than a dying one
There was no way you could miss her in the Candidate Tinubu crowd, in those heady campaign days of last year. Her smile was the widest, and it was permanent, her eyes glaring out of a shiny, made-up face. Betta Edu stood out. But why labour so hard to stand out in a campaign crowd where you are not the star? What was that big, ever-present, toothy grin for? For ages, Mona Lisa, that eternal painting by Leonardo da Vinci, has also drawn questions from her beholders. Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa, famous African-American singer Nat King Cole, asked in his song Mona Lisa? Or is this your way to hide a broken heart? Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep. They just lie there and they die there. Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa? Or just a cold, lonely, lovely work of art?
For Dr. Edu, a medical doctor trained in the University of Calabar, was that fixed smile no more than the good old ladies’ vanity? Or was it meant for the eyes of friends and acquaintances watching on TV in Lagos, where she was born 37 years ago, or Calabar, where she was commissioner for health in Ben Ayade’s administration? Or was it to charm her way into Tinubu’s heart if he won the election? Like Mona Lisa’s dimpled smile, Dr. Edu’s grin will forever remain a mystery.
But if Dr. Edu, was smiling for a place in President Bola Tinubu’s government, it was bull’s eye. She nailed it, because in August she was appointed minister of Humanitarian Affairs. Since January 8, though, the smile has vanished. That day, President Tinubu suspended her from office following a leaked memo and public outcry that she approved the payment of N585 million meant for distribution to vulnerable persons in four states into the private account of a civil servant, one Oniyelu Bridget. Civil service rule says that public funds must not be deposited in private accounts nor private funds transferred into public accounts. That reported transaction has been dubbed Edugate, and President Tinubu has since asked Dr. Edu to step down while the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) moved in to investigate it. All social investment programmes in the country, including the school feeding scheme, have been put on hold while investigators look into their operations too.
This is a shame. It doesn’t speak well of the Tinubu administration, nor for the country he leads, nor for Dr. Edu, who’s scarcely five months on the job. Of everyone hurt by the alleged scandal, President Tinubu and Nigerians are the worst hit. Why? Every administration has a burden and obligation to correct the errors of the administration it succeeds. We all remember how President Muhammadu Buhari promised so much and delivered so little. Your columnist voted for him in 2015 and also put in a good word for Mr. Integrity, but by May 29 last year, eight years after, few were still convinced that President Buhari was the one Nigeria needed. It took him a clear half a year to form a cabinet, and we thought Mr. Integrity knew what he was doing, and that when he finally assembled his team, the critics would shut up. We were fooled. The country bled financially, and in every other way a country could bleed. When a corruption case popped up, (and many did pop up) and the people cried out, their president couldn’t be seen or heard; when it was clear that he knew what happened, it took him near eternity to act. President Buhari failed to contain the monster of corruption, for which he took President Goodluck Jonathan apart and denied him a second term.
President Tinubu was expected to correct all that upon hitting the ground. But eight months into his own administration, he is only starting to suspect that there may be some worms in the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry thanks to the Edu case. His media managers such as Ajuri Ngelale now wax lyrical about their principal’s distaste for corruption. There are no sacred cows in Mr. President’s government, Ngelale has been saying, adding that the investigation will go wherever possible, and anybody implicated in the matter will face the music. What if that memo hadn’t leaked? And what if there hadn’t been any public uproar?
Dr. Edu is suspended and under investigation. She cut a miserable, worn-out figure in an internet photo as she stretched out awkwardly in a chair, probably asleep, waiting for her interrogators. She brought this upon herself. Didn’t she know that as a minister, it was not her place to approve payments? That should be the job of the permanent secretary. Dr. Edu should have questioned whoever sent her the N585 million memo to approve. But there are also sundry other questions the investigators will do well to ask. Barely five months on the job, could she have acted alone? And just how badly does the Humanitarian Ministry smell? Let’s remember that Dr Edu’s predecessor Sadiya Umar Farouq is also under investigation following the arrest of a contractor to the ministry over an alleged N37 billion fraud while she was in charge—yes, N37 billion.
Even then, some say whatever the probe will find at the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry may be a tip of the proverbial iceberg, and that the investigators should spread their dragnets farther afield and increase the capacity of their magnifying lenses. Will that happen? Will all the ministries and their agencies get a real shakeup, and the leeches pinched out and cast into the fire? I won’t bet on it. Remember, we are not merely talking about a 37-year-old female minister approving some millions to be sent to a private account; we are talking of a country where some are thinking of doubling the president’s salary, where they think the first lady’s office, which is not known to our laws, deserves vehicles valued at N1.5 billion, a country where the senate leadership sends ‘tokens’ and ‘prayers’ to senators’ bank accounts for the holidays. We are talking about a country with overpaid federal lawmakers now cruising in newly-acquired luxury vehicles each valued at N160 million, while the majority of their people are multi-dimensionally poor. And now they want a befitting park valued at billions of naira for the SUVs. We are talking about a country of presidential yachts, a country where anything can happen, and does happen.
