Christine Lagarde
President, IMF
1900 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC, NW
United States
May 16, 2016
Dear President,
1) There is every likelihood you missed a lot of what’s driving Nigeria on your most recent visit. This was expected given that on a strictly business trip you couldn’t meet with ordinary Nigerians to feel their pulse, what they think about their lives steadily going down the tubes. Against the backdrop of great expectations, you missed the disillusion and despair that’s taking over the nation. Sorry, you couldn’t see the faces of fear and desperation up close and personal.
2) Permit me therefore, to write you as president Buhari impresses on the world audience and particularly the International Monetary Fund for a $2.3 trn trillion dollar loan. This loan request is ill-conceived because the timing is misplaced to say the least. When this administration came on board, its first lamentation was about meeting an empty treasury it claimed. But it’s on record the administration was left the foreign reserves of about $30m million dollars. No small change considering the sliding cost of crude oil at the time. Still, it’s inconceivable that Buhari missed this critical part of his handing over notes his predecessor gave him. Why, therefore would any serious government contrive such a blatant and patently false lie and force-feed it to gullible Nigerians?
3) That the country is fantastically corrupt, permit me to use Prime Minister David Cameron’s trending term, is not in question. However, the idea of her penury as advanced by the Buhari’s administration remains an attractive myth nonetheless. It’s akin to giving a dog a bad name so as to hang it. For most discerning Nigerians, there’s more to this patently false claim than meets the eye.
4) In the past 9 months, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) and the government both have variously claimed the country had recovered looted funds running to the tune of almost N3.4 trn trillion naira. In addition, a substantial amount of late general Abacha’s stolen funds have been returned from various western countries we are told. Altogether, these staggering and dizzying figures is more than the national budgets of some EU countries combined. The compelling reason for an IMF loan the country doesn’t exist. Definitely for an international financial institution not interested in the mortgaging of the future of Nigeria’s unborn generations.
5) The distaste for this loan is premised on other equally compelling events and outcomes that the people know too well. First, that the Buhari ministerial cabinet consist of some of the stupendously and obscenely corrupt leaders in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Let’s take a look at a few. It is believed most of these money merchants decamped to Buhari’s political party for a reason.
6) Amaechi Rotimi, now minister of transport was the former governor of Rivers State. He is alleged to have bankrolled the Buhari presidential campaign with billions of naira, and in the process leaving the state treasury completely penniless. However, miraculously, he has so far escaped the Buhari anti-corruption crusade. This is the same former governor who we are told “mistakenly” wired the sum of $340m million dollars to the Minneapolis Branch of the Bank of America. This is the same governor who spent millions of dollars to construct a rail line not more than the length of a soccer field! Part of the unfinished rail line sits on top of a building! A testament to the caliber of technocrats ensconced in rarefied government ministries. No wonder many in president Buhari’s party calls them the dream team, after Barack Obama’s cabinet. He frequently travels in the president’s large entourage. To add salt into injury, the EFCC is said to have sent him congratulatory messages on his appointment as a minister! It is very unconscionable that the EFCC couldn’t even take a cautionary glance at the hundreds of petitions of corruption levied against the high flying former governor. What a dereliction of duty!
7) Babatunde Fashola now a minister of energy, works and housing is said to be another former governor who bankrolled the All Progressives Congress with hundreds of millions of dollars. It was Fashola who used the sum of N78m million naira to design a government website, hundreds of millions to dollars for the construction of two boreholes and one suspension bridge, the equivalent of San Francisco’s iconic piece of engineering. The result was that he left Lagos State the most indebted state in the history of Nigeria, if not Africa. Nigerians remain horrified about the prospect of these leaders managing an IMF loan to Nigeria. It is hard to believe IMF doesn’t have information relating to these egregious cases of malfeasance.
8) It was only recently that a newspaper in the UK accused president Buhari of diverting foreign Aid the equivalent of One Hundred and Fifty Thousand pounds to fight political opponents in the guise of fighting corruption. This, coming on the heels of more accusations Buhari himself is very corrupt and that his anti-corruption crusade is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide from the public his vast empire made up of mismanaged funds at various times of his political career. His refusal to appear before the Justice Oputa Panel many decades earlier cannot therefore be misconstrued. Not only that, his apparent failure to publicly declare his assets, which was a major campaign promise is fueling insinuations he is a multi-billionaire. They point to the fact that his children attend some of the most expensive universities in the UK. It is believed his family has a real estate in the Mayfair district of London. Nigerians now know he has more than five mud huts and farmstead comprising of only 150 cows. This for a man who claimed he only had a paltry N30,000 naira in his bank account early 2015. The quantum leap to a billionaire status is gawking phenom in just less than a year of becoming president.
9) The list of compelling facts goes on and on. The reasons for the impropriety of the IMF loan go beyond an opaque and less than transparent system in which only a select few continue to help themselves to the spoils and excesses of political office. Something else stands out in the narrative about this administration. It is the more one looks, the less he sees. Suffice to say, the Buhari government is blessed with hypocrisy, lies and propaganda. Does the IMF want to share in Buhari’s blessings?
10) By now the IMF must have collated all the news surrounding the national budget that went missing as soon as it was delivered to the national assembly. However, whatever political capital that was expected from this wonderful disappearing act soon evaporated. Even when it miraculously reappeared, the budget was found to be padded with billions of naira. The presidency didn’t help itself in the ensuing blame game. There were fictitious millions budgeted for Aso Rock clinic, president’s barber shop, billions of naira for feeding the first family, his dogs, etc. The intrigues and shenanigans that followed the passing of the budget didn’t inspire Nigerians. There’s therefore that huge question mark hanging over an IMF loan. But that is not all. The president is still maintaining a presidential fleet of expensive jets, exotic Mercer dis Benz S 600s and a coterie of perks which he claimed would cut in half as president. But once he became resident of Aso Rock, his taste for the exotic cars and jets have not waned. Instead, he has even increased the refurbishing of the presidential villa to the tune of hundreds of millions of naira. Talk about an elegant way of cutting waste!
11) Last but not the least. Nigerians are increasingly worried about President Buhari’s disrespect for the rule of law and the constitution. They are worried about his lack of appreciation for the country’s democratic norms and ethos. The daily arrests and indefinite detention of victims of corruption allegations cannot but push the country towards the abyss. Buhari’s flagrant disobedience of court rulings, the use of excessive force by security agents, the abuse of human rights of the average citizen doesn’t speak of a government ready to manage the people’s commonwealth judiciously. Clearly what Nigerians see is a government rife with the tyranny and excesses of power. An IMF loan of over a trillion dollars can only compound their misery.
12) Dear President, as you sit and ponder, wonder how best you can use your office to help a people in extreme deprivation. It is no secret the Nigerian economy the fifth fastest growing in the world only a less than a year ago is now in a tailspin and tanking near the bottom. The absence of basic amenities, energy, gas, modern infrastructure plus double-digit inflation makes Nigeria only slightly better than a banana republic. If at all the loan is going to be considered, it should be tied to the following conditions:
a) the immediate release of all those in jails who have their bails certified by a judge, including persons accused of corruption allegations and political prisoners of conscience.
b) An order in no vague terms the government will not muscle free speech and that critics would not be hounded like dogs in Hitler’s gestapo unit.
c) A government order restraining security agencies from intimidating, harassing and abusing citizens human rights.
d) An order stopping the secret employment of the children, friends and family members of political office holders.
e) That citizens will be allowed to protest freely across Nigeria and that security agencies cannot deny them the freedom to speak truth to power. Right now, the absence of these freedoms is making citizens feel the return of 1984 all over.
I remain
Yours Sincerely
Signed
Ebi B Asain
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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