TO HER, everybody else was a nobody. She looked down on others as if they were not God’s creatures. She was too full of herself and she went about her job – a public office at that – as if she was her own boss. In a way, Dame Diezani Alison-Madueke was. Her boss, former President Goodluck Jonathan could not call her to order. Rather than rebuke her for her excesses, he took sides with her. Because she knew she had a hold on Jonathan, Alison-Madueke began to see herself as untouchable.
There was nothing she did not get away with under Jonathan. She was the minister in whom Jonathan was well pleased. As a favoured minister, she strutted the land like royalty, though she is not a blue blood. She enjoyed uncommon favour even when she did not have anything to show for holding the petroleum resources portfolio. Alison-Madueke’s sun began to rise long before Jonathan came to office in fortuitous circumstances in 2010. She started out as Transport Minister under the late President Umoru Yar’Adua in 2007. She was subsequently moved to the Solid Minerals Ministry.
When Jonathan mounted the saddle in 2010, she found herself in the Petroleum Ministry. From then, she became uncontrollable. Alison-Madueke became law unto herself. People amounted to nothing in her eyes. She was the queen of the manor, before whom all must bow, including the lawmakers, who tried unsuccessfully to call her to order. The National Assembly could not do anything to her because she enjoyed executive cover. Through her haughtiness, she missed a great opportunity to leave her mark in office. She so much believed that the Nigerians she was supposed to serve are beneath her.
I have never stopped wondering how Alison-Madueke scaled Senate screening to become a minister of the Federal Republic. But then, under a government of anything goes, such as Jonathan’s, such things are bound to happen. Since the executive and the legislature were on the same page, ministers’ clearance was done haphazardly and by the time people like Alison-Madueke assumed office, they became tin-gods and the lawmakers saw her in her true colour. If she had acted that way before her clearance, the Senate would not have thought twice before rejecting her nomination.
By the time she started showing the lawmakers that she was more powerful than them, it was too late to do anything about her. All they could do was to ask Jonathan to remove her, a request they knew the former president would not accede to. While in office, trouble was Alison-Madueke’s second name, but she survived it all with Jonathan’s tacit support. Will Jonathan be able to help out now in London, where she may soon face trial for alleged bribery and money laundering? Alison-Madueke was arrested in her London home last Friday by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the British outfit that leads law enforcement against serious and organised crimes.
Last year, the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts accused her of spending N10 billion on chartering a private jet. She was invited to explain how that came about. Again, she shunned the lawmakers. Rather than call her queen to order, Jonathan, during the May 4, 2014 Presidential Media Chat, upbraided the lawmakers for performing their oversight duty. Jonathan said on national television : ‘’I am not aware that the minister (Alison-Madueke) went to court to stop any investigation…the minister has appeared before the parliament more than 200 times.
‘’In fact, some of my ministers attended 25 percent of the sittings in the parliament. No country can progress when a minister spends most of the time appearing before the parliament. The Minister of Petroleum has not gone to court to stop them…I am not trying to protect anybody. Some people talk about jet or no jet. The Ministry of Petroleum Resources is one ministry that people pay attention to because of its activities… when somebody wakes up and says the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is making use of a jet; the ministry has always been using jets’’. That was all Alison-Madueke needed to stick to her guns not to appear before the panel.
Taking a cue from Jonathan, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which board she chaired as minister, also rose to her defence, saying : ‘’This practice (jet chartering) is common and acceptable in the local and international business environment in which it (NNPC) operates. There is nothing prohibiting NNPC from owning or chartering an aircraft. The law establishing NNPC empowers it to hold, manage and alienate moveable and immoveable property and enter into contracts and partnership with any company and person”. So, why didn’t Alison-Madueke go and say this to the lawmakers?
The answer is obvious. She could not go because she has something to hide and she had Jonathan and a public utility to hide it for her. Will they be of help to her in her London travail? Let’s wait and see.
NATION
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There are more of Jonathan who are incapable of functioning well with their capabilities, sad
There are more of diezani that feel extreme when fame and wealth smiles. Sure all taste sour, but that is the appallingly nature of man. Let them continue, I doubt if all wld escape the fate that awaits all mortals.