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While opinions flow through print, television and social media (including on Quora as this question thread shows) regarding who is responsible for the deaths of the 70 children in a single hospital over such a short period of time, no one seems to be talking about the core issues regarding public healthcare in India. There has been a carefully constructed distance between the ruling state party and the tragedy that has unfolded. This is to ensure that the Yogi Adityanath led BJP is not directly blamed for the tragedy. While one can understand why the government would be in this defensive mode what one fails to understand is why our system being questioned is seen as a bad thing.Do our governments owe no responsibility or accountability for healthcare coverage for the masses?Is the cost of a human life determined by the ability of that human to pay?I also want to provide clarity for those who are vehemently defending the government and CM with the following arguments:Government hospitals have always had poor infrastructure and hospital deaths are very common in India- so why blame the government for this “one isolated incident”?Doctors and hospital administrators were responsible for the deaths- why should people blame the government for that?The BJP government is only 5 months old. How can they be held responsible for the previous decades of misrule and poor governance?The government has no money (the most amusing argument) and hence cannot match private health infrastructure.I will answer those at the end of this piece but shall we get the facts first?India’s Under 5 Mortality Rate (U5MR), Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) , Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) is among the highest in the world since several decades and it has not declined in the time since.Just for comparison let us just compare with China as it started out at almost the same time as Independent India with a population to match during the same time period. Do remember that China’s GDP per capita was less than India’s till the early 1990s. I have used this neat tool from the UNICEF website to compare child mortality estimates between India and China. [1]The top three lines on the graphs belong to India and the bottom three belong to China. One can see how poorly we have performed in terms of healthcare since independence.IMR is not an isolated statistic. IMR infact represents the health of our healthcare system. A high IMR is indicative of a poor healthcare system. Not surprisingly, India has one of the highest IMR in the world comparable to some of the strife ridden African countries.Ali Medhi - Head of Health Policy Initiative at ICRIER, Delhi gives some interesting figures in his recent article about the Gorakpur tragedy. [2]India has been the world’s largest contributor to all levels of child deaths since 1953 – the first year for which we have Indian data available. Starting out with nearly 4.7 million deaths a year under the age of five years (U5), it took us almost three decades to bring them down to 4 million a year.Between 1969 and 1979 China reduced U5 deaths by 2.4 million, the highest in a decade in any country in recorded history. The beginning of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) did accelerate the pace of progress in India, but China again outperformed us. As did our neighbours Maldives, Nepal and Bangladesh between 1990 and 2015, to achieve their MDG targets on child survival.The story has been similar at lower levels of child survival as well. At the neonatal level (ie during first 28 days of birth), the Bimaru states accounted for 55% of all deaths in the country in 2011 – UP (27%), MP and Bihar (10% each) and Rajasthan (8%) – and 15% of the global burden. While China performed even better at this stage, with a 90% decline in number of neonatal deaths during the MDG period, we had 695,852 neonates dying in 2015 – more than 7 times China’s.As stated in my recent answer to How does healthcare work in your country?:Public healthcare expenditure via government funding is around 1.3% of GDP - which is among the lowest in the world. [3]Some more relevant facts pertaining to healthcare in India, the BJP and the Gorakpur tragedy:Health is a state subject not a union subject, so healthcare is the responsibility of the state government.The central BJP government slashed the healthcare budget by 20% in it’s first budget after coming to power in 2014- India slashes health budget, already one of the world's lowest and has been reducing it every yearYogi Adityanath is a 5 time MP from the Gorakpur consituency where Japanese Encephalitis is endemic since 3 decades. Despite being an MP for such a long time, even civic infrastructure projects in the region are in poor conditions and sanitation levels are abysmal in the region. Yet he has the gall to blame sanitation and hygiene for the deaths.Japanese Encephalitis kills nearly 1500–2000 children every year in India-500 of those in the Gorakpur region alone. The deadly virus is spread by the mosquito as a vector. Mosquito as we all know breeds in places where there is poor hygiene and sanitation. The disease is known to be fatal to the most malnourished children of the community. Public sanitation and child nutrition comes under the direct purview of the state government.The administration has known about the oxygen shortage from the beginning of August as seen from this ANI report detailing letters written to the authorities- the principal, Chief Superintendent and nodal officer of the NHRM. However all of them were so full of greed that they silently watched as the oxygen supplies depleted.[4]Now let me come to the arguments that have distanced the government from any responsibility. I think the following paragraphs will bust those arguments.By pinpointing the tragedy to a few causes like lack of oxygen or corrupt babus and doctors or greedy suppliers, unclean environments- the government is oversimplifying the problem as it often does. The problem is the broken system and not individual issues. The public healthcare system in states like UP, Bihar, Odhisha and West Bengal are so terrible due to years and years of neglect. This has given rise to corruption among healthcare providers because private healthcare centers have sprung up everywhere in those states and holding the population to ransom because no one wants to go to a government hospital to die. This coupled with high proportion of unemployment in these states makes sure that people who are not able to afford private healthcare are at the mercy of the bursting at the seams- public healthcare delivery system. Many of the doctors working in the government hospitals are corrupt and siphon off funds meant for public health.The talk of the lack of funds at the hospital’s disposal seems to be a load of lies as seen in from data provided in this article.The lack of payment by BRD Medical College does not seem to be restricted to the oxygen supply company. The salaries of at least 400 medical personnel who are involved in the treatment of encephalitis at the medical college have not been paid for many months. Doctors at the physical and medicine and rehabilitation unit have not been paid for 27 months and neonatal unit staff have not received their salaries in six months, it said.The reason for the lack of payments is unclear. In 2014, the BRD Medical College received Rs 150 crore – Rs 120 crore from the Centre and Rs 30 crore from the state government – under a scheme to upgrade medical college institutions under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana.In October 2016, The Times of India reported that BRD Medical College was among several hospitals in the state that had not fully utilised funds allotted to them under the state government’s Asadhya Rog scheme. BRD Medical College had used just Rs 15.56 lakh of the Rs 4.5 crore that was allocated to it three years earlier in 2013.Clearly someone else is eating up the money that was meant for improving infrastructure and paying salaries of medical personnel. It is an open secret in the public healthcare sphere that to release government funds, enough money filled suitcases have to exchange hands.If you don’t pay doctors and other medical personnel for months together, they will obviously find less ethical ways to earn their livelihood as they also have to put food on the table. Doctors will do private practice even though they are not supposed to as they need pay their bills.For such a large state such as UP, there are only 25 medical colleges, out of which 15 are private medical colleges.[5] Clearly those medical colleges are not enough for the most highly populated state in India. We need more government hospitals, more government doctors, more healthcare workers and better healthcare facilities- in these type of under-served areas. Governments should prioritize public healthcare as electoral reforms and not farmer loan waivers to woo voters. The priorities of the UP government can be gauged by the fact that they have now have cow ambulances and hospitals for cows in UP but no new government hospitals for humans who cannot pay. The cost of a human life in India has gone below the cost of a cow’s life. In Yogi Adityanaths Uttar Pradesh, cows get an ambulance serviceIn this tragedy, Japanese Encephalitis -on which the death have been blamed on- can be reduced drastically just by improving the sanitation, hygiene, vaccination, public education and improved nutrition. If the civic bodies had concentrated on those basic and less expensive things, many of those unfortunate children who died would not be in the ill fated hospital in the first place. If the Swatch Bharath Abyiyan program was followed to its spirit, the government would not have blood on it’s hands now.Governments cannot put their hands up in the air and say. “We are overwhelmed and under-resourced”. The government’s job is to look for solutions. They were elected for that purpose- to take care of it’s citizens. Their job is not do the finger pointing as if they were a kid caught with his hands in the cookie jar. It is their job to put their hand up and take responsibility. In any other part of the world, this type of state negligence would be considered state sponsored murder and many of the ministers’ and officers’ heads would roll.But not in India!They have predictably found a few scapegoats to blame the debacle on, successfully diverted the issue so far away from the real problems that things will be conveniently forgotten by the public and the media soon. The system however remains the same and new corrupt people will come to take the place of those who vacated their places or the present scapegoats will get away using the same corrupt state machinery to reclaim their old spots.Not one person from the government has taken responsibility for this tragedy and there was not even a token statement that they will take steps to prevent this from happening again. While the honorable prime minister of our country has time to tweet about even smaller international tragedies, this massacre in a single government hospital in his own country doesn’t find any mention.To fix a problem, one needs to acknowledge the problem. If you keep denying to see what the problem is, you will never fix anything. As I pointed out earlier, we have already missed the healthcare bus several decades ago and now we are not even bothered to catch up with it!Footnotes[1] CME Info - Child Mortality Estimates[2] http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/who-will-save-our-children-go-beyond-immediate-causes-and-buck-passing-on-gorakhpur-child-deaths-fix-systemic-failures/[3] Japanese encephalitis to Superbug NDM-1: the diseases that attacked India in 2014[4] A tragedy foretold: The questions Uttar Pradesh government must answer for Gorakhpur deaths[5] What the Gorakhpur Tragedy Tells Us About India's Public Healthcare System

On the night of Friday June 7, 2013, a pre-wedding party was in progress at the Cavalli Club – named after the renowned Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli – within the 5-star luxury Fairmont Hotel in Dubai. There was champagne in abundance and some of the performers on ground for the all-night gig included DJ Jimmy Jatt, leading comedian, Basketmouth, singer Wizkid and rapper Naeto C. It was the summer party to be at.The next day, the wedding proper held at the JW Marriot Marquis Hotel on the same street. Most of the floors at the hotel and the nearby Mirage Palace were occupied by the over 300 guests who had flown in for the wedding from Nigeria to attend. Over 40 private jets were buzzing in and out of the United Arab Emirates with sitting governors, senators, traditional rulers, government officials, politicians and businessmen.The entire weekend was, as tabloids will call it, awash with pomp and pageantry. The groom was Oluwatosin Omokore, first son of Olajide Omokore, a maverick oil trader; and his bride was Faiza Fari, first daughter of Abdulkadir Fari, then Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Encomium Magazine reported that souvenirs at the wedding rumoured to have cost an estimated $8 million (N1.2 billion using the exchange rate at the time), included the Blackberry Q10 released in January of that year, other smartphones, Bang & Olufsen luxury speakers.In the aftermath, the then Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, acting on the recommendation of his petroleum minister and Mr. Fari’s boss, Diezani Alison-Madueke,suspended and later redeployed the father of the bride to another parastatal. His accounts were also reportedly frozen by the Economic & Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. An insider at the ministry told The Nation newspaper that the wedding was deemed too lavish for a civil servant to fund and that in allowing his daughter marry the son of a major player in his sector, Mr. Musa had triggered a conflict of interest.In reality, the wedding had been primarily funded by Mr. Omokore who understandably spared no cost to give his first son the gift of a good wedding. Mr. Fari who reportedly had been a little too strict in demanding due process on some deals relating to marginal oilfields, was simply the sacrificial lamb who had to go for delaying Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s desires. He was one of many in a revolving door policy that saw five group managing directors and several permanent secretaries exit the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in the five years of Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s tenure.Back in May 2010, the death of Umaru Musa Yar’adua precipitated the ascension of Goodluck Jonathan as Nigeria’s president. There was pressure on him from his kinsmen and others within the enclave of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, to run for the 2011 elections. It was only expedient to turn to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, a major source of election funding for incumbents since the return of democracy in 1999.To ensure a smooth process, Rilwanu Lukman, the incumbent minister who favoured a restructuring of NNPC into a full commercial entity, was replaced with Diezani Alison-Madueke in a cabinet reshuffle. Mrs. Alison-Madueke eventually became like an unofficial prime minister. From then till May 2015 when the Muhammadu Buhari presidency took over; anyone that stood in her way was removed either by her personally or the presidency acting on her recommendations.In an era where Nigeria earned over N51 trillion from oil and the commodity price peaked at $112 per barrel, it was the best of times to have the listening ears of the president and the discretionary powers of an oil minister as enshrined in the Petroleum Act of 1969. In that five-year period, Mrs. Alison-Madueke, whose name means ‘look before you leap’ in her native Ijaw, leapt to unbelievable levels of immense influence and the accompanying affluence.DIEZANI’S CHILDHOODBorn Diezani Kogbeni Agama in the city of Port Harcourt two months after Nigeria’s independence, the young girl had a decent childhood as the third of six children. Her father Frederick Agama – had a distinguished career at Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) as a management executive before retiring to become a traditional ruler of the Epie-Atissa Clan in Yenaka, Bayelsa State. Her mother, Beatrice Agama, is a retired schoolteacher. Though her parents were not as wealthy as rumoured, they lived a decent life by all standards. She grew up at the Shell residential camp in Rumuomasi, Port Harcourt and schooled in Warri, Port Harcourt and Mubi.An intervention from her maternal grandfather N. K. Porbeni, a renowned Ijaw chief from Delta State led her to study architecture rather than the creative arts. “He travelled all the way from Warri [to the UK] to tell me in no uncertain terms that my father hadn’t spent all that money on my education for me to study Fine Art”, she said in a 2007 interview.Mrs. Alison-Maueke began her architecture training in the UK. It is unclear why she abandoned her studies in the UK, but she later moved to the United States to do a 5-year architecture course at Howard University. She graduated in 1992. Right after her graduation from Howard, she was employed by SPDC and would continue to go through the ranks, heading strategy and planning team handling its joint ventures with the NNPC. By this time, she was married to a former military governor of Imo and Enugu State, Alison Madueke.In 2006, she was appointed Executive Director, Facilities, becoming the company’s first female Nigerian director in its entire history. Ann Pickard, the controversial American who headed Shell’s operations in Nigeria from 2005-2010 fast-tracked her from mid-level executive, singling out her and other promising young women for top roles. Perhaps Ms. Pickard, believed to have placed moles in the Nigerian government –according to US diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks – and described as “having a willingness to manipulate every available political angle to further the company’s interests”, saw a reflection of herself in the younger woman.While at Shell, she was rumoured to be involved in contract racketeering and it was not uncommon to see staff in the corridor whispering about her dirty deals during lunch breaks. “The Business Integrity Department takes time to act”, an insider in Shell Nigeria revealed on the condition of anonymity, because the company strictly forbids unauthorised persons from talking to the media. “It can be tracking an executive for years, so it would have caught up on her activities sooner or later. She got away with it because she was ED for just over a year.”In July 2007, she was named Minister of Transport. Her tenure was brief and uneventful save for when she wept openly in August that year while inspecting a bad road. Between December 2008 and March 2010, she was heading the Ministry of Mines & Steel Development.During her time in the Ministry of Mines & Steel Development, it funded ‘Hollywood Glamour Collection’, a new limited-edition collection of Nigerian gold and gemstone jewelry by the popular jeweler Chris Aire. The collection was unveiled at an exclusive event in Beverly Hills, California on April 7, 2010, barely hours after Mrs. Alison-Madueke had been moved to the petroleum ministry. In the months after, Mr. Aire registered new companies for the sole purpose of being awarded questionable contracts to handle crude lifting, earning over an estimated $30,000 daily.Her royal heritage, love for jewellery, style and the finer things of life inevitably drew swift comparisons with the late Princess Diana of Great Britain. In time, friends, well-wishers and hangers-on began to call her Princess Di.THE MENOne of these hangers-on was Donald Chidi Amamgbo, the lawyer who reportedly became her lover for a while when they met at Howard. Usually described by the Nigerian press as her cousin, he hails from Imo State, not Bayelsa and runs a thriving U.S.-based legal practice, Amamgbo & Associates. In 2012, he was put on probation by the state bar of California for misconduct.When government appointees and politicians in general assume office, friends, well-wishers, government contractors and stakeholders in their specific industry find ways to contact them through their network, sending unsolicited gifts to them and their relatives and taking out pages in the newspapers for congratulatory advertorials.“When someone sends you a $10,000 watch here or expensive jewellery there with no favours asked, you have to call one day to say thanks and have the person visit”, said a former staff of the ministry, who asked not to be named because he still works for the government and has not been permitted to talk to the press. “Or your daughter calls from Dubai that an unknown person paid her tuition for two years and sublet an apartment for her. Can you say no? Even the Bible says it that ‘A man’s gift maketh a way for him’.”No one knows for sure which gifts came to Mrs. Alison-Madueke from some of the men at the centre of the storm in her world today. But they worked regardless because they became her close associates soon enough. There was Kola Aluko, an oil trader seeking a big break; Mr. Omokore, a shipping magnate looking to diversify and swell his fortune. There were also the fronts and middlemen, Benedict Peters and Walter Wagbatsoma.One of the many billionaire conquests of supermodel Naomi Campbell, Mr. Aluko was born and bred in Lagos as one of the nine children of Akanni Aluko, a geologist and popular traditional chief in Ilesha, Osun State. His first reported stint in the oil business was in 1995, after years of wandering through the pharmaceutics and automobile industries, when he cofounded Besse Oil, an oil trading firm. By the mid-2000s, one of his serial companies, Exoro Energy International merged with a partner firm, Weatherford, to become Seven Energy. It was run by Aluko who had one per cent equity, alongside Mr. Omokore and a third man, Phillip Ihenacho.Kogi-born Mr. Omokore, who was given the title of Elegbe of Egbe in his hometown in October 2014 for his commitment to his town, was an affiliate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) from state to national level. As a government financier, he was rewarded with waivers and mega contracts from agriculture to oil & gas.From time to time, there were contingency bailouts requested by members of the inner caucus of government. After the 2012 flooding disaster, he donated N50 million to the victims.In February 2014, Lamido Sanusi, then governor of the central bank was suspended by Mr. Jonathan after a controversial statement about missing $20 billion in crude oil earnings. According to an insider in the oil & gas sector who did not want to be identified due to his current position, Mr. Omokore allegedly doled out $200,000 to a number of local journalists to begin a campaign against the outspoken central bank governor; Mr. Jonathan had apparently fallen for the bait and wanted the pressure off his beloved minister.In 2010, Shell was plagued with a lot of issues in its onshore operations. Oil spills across the Niger Delta had gotten it into a lot of legal tussles; its goodwill with the host communities had been on a decline since the days of slain environmental activist, Ken Saro Wiwa in the 1990s; militants had wreaked considerable havoc on its asset causing countless force majeures; the government was seeking to get more local marginal field operators out onshore. It has gone on a large-scale divesting spree since then. That same year, Shell fixed one of the major pipelines in the country – the 97 kilometre-long Nembe Creek Trunkline passing through 14 oil pumping stations – for $1.1 billion. By November 2013, it was on the market.The company went ahead then to divest its stake (45 per cent) in asset held in joint venture partnership with NNPC which held the remainder (55 per cent) on behalf of the Nigerian government, and focus on the less ‘dramatic’ offshore fields. The divested fields were the OMLs 4, 26, 30, 34, 38, 40, 41 and 42 and Shell sold them to indigenous operators, raking in a total $2.3 billion.Meanwhile NNPC transferred its shares to one of its many loss-making subsidiaries, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, for $1.8 billion as valued by the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR. Till date, over $1.7 billion is outstanding as only $100m has been remitted to NNPC which wholly owns it.On September 16, 2011, a Strategic Alliance Agreement (SAA) was signed between the NPDC and Septa Energy, a subsidiary of Seven Energy for OMLs 4, 38 and 41. Another SAA was signed with Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts (AEDC) Ltd for OMLs 30 and 34. These companies were registered in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and in the United Kingdom, limiting the revenue payable to the Nigerian government in form of taxes.The contracts were awarded by single-source procurement, in clear violation of Nigeria’s Public Procurement Act which stipulates that bids be subject to public tender and competitive. Mrs Alison-Madueke also contravened a guideline under the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act 2010 that mandated companies wanting to lift Nigerian crude to show records of involvement in the industry in the preceding ten years.SAAs are usually signed between two or more companies for a number of reasons including collaborating to augment technical expertise, meet capital requirement or reduce high costs of operation. NNPC adopted this approach to meet the huge capital requirement for cash call and lack of required skill and manpower at the corporation.According to the terms of the SAAs, the partner company provides the capital outlay required to lift crude in the assets supplied by the NPDC as well as non-refundable entry fees of $0.30 per barrel and $0.010/mcf, 70 days after the start of exploration activity. It was to recoup its investment by lifting crude. Quite interestingly, another requirement was that the collaborating firm pay a fixed sum of $350,000 per asset annually for five years to facilitate the training of NPDC staff. This came to $1.4 million per year and Atlantic Energy never paid up.Till date, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is pursuing Atlantic Energy to get its tax returns. And while the NNPC has moved to terminate the SAAs so it can get new partners who will pay as at when due, a court order obtained in October 2016 by Seven Energy, may be restraining it from doing so.“NPDC has till date paid only $100m for those eight OMLs but is still enjoying the benefits of an owner”, says Waziri Adio, executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) which tracks revenues accruing to government.An alternate commercial valuation byPricewaterhouseCoopers in 2015 took Shell’s divested assets into consideration and roughly estimated these eight assets to be worth $3.4 billion in total.“NPDC brought them on as partners because they are supposed to have financial capacity and technical capacity even though the assumption is that NPDC itself has financial and technical capacity to manage the assets”, Adio explains. “These firms had neither and the same assets were used in raising the money. What stops NPDC from raising the money and hiring contractors to do this job as well?”Essentially, an unnecessary medium was created to pay the SAA partners for sourcing capital which they used the national assets to raise. All of this was possible because of Mrs Alison-Madueke’s discretionary powers.In 2014, Mr Sanusi told the Senate that Atlantic had lifted over $7 billion worth of oil between January 2012 and July 2013, but while the NPDC had paid $400 million as petroleum profit tax (PPT), its partner had paid nothing, flouting the PPT Act 2007.“The profit sharing arrangement was too good to be true”, The Cable screamed in its analysis. “Under Article 10 (d) (i)-(v), the two parties were to share “profit oil” and “profit gas” in ratios of 90% for NPDC to 10% for Atlantic (“profit oil” and “profit gas” with regards to undepreciated costs associated to capital costs prior to execution of agreement); 40% to 60% (upon full recovery of development costs by Atlantic); and, thereafter, it would be 70% to 30%.”“Up to the full recovery of development costs related to the continental resources, “profit oil” was to be shared 40% to 60% and, thereafter, 70% to 30%. For the “profit gas” upon full recovery of development costs regarding non-associated gas by Atlantic, NPDC would take 30% and Atlantic 70%, and reverse to 30% to 70% thereafter. Profit gas” from the continental resources was to be shared 30% to NPDC and 70% to Atlantic, and thereafter, 70% to NPDC and 30% to Atlantic.”“When you look at the depositions from the US courts, you see that it (the SAA) was a cover for Mrs Alison-Madueke and others to cream off things that should have come to the Federal Republic of Nigeria”, Mr Adio concludes. According to a July 2017 affidavit at a federal high court, Messrs. Aluko and Omokore owe the Nigerian government the princely sum of $1,762,338,184.40.Curiously, the 55% held by NPDC was not given to the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), the NNPC subsidiary concerned with supervising Nigeria’s joint ventures (JVs), production sharing contracts (PSCs) and services contracts (SCs). Why then did the NNPC transfer them to the NPDC, which had no capacity for exploration?Back in March 1999, as former military head of state, Abdusalami Abubakar was wrapping up his eleven-month stint in office and preparing for the transition from military to democratic rule, the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contracts Act was sent to his desk. The bill was meant to stem declining investment in the upstream sector at that point in time due to the absence of a defined fiscal structure. Nigeria had also entered PSC agreements in 1993* and did not have legal backing for the agreements it was entering.Particularly significant was Section 16.For the purpose of the efficient management of Production Sharing Contracts and joint ventures under this Decree, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (in this Decree referred to as “NAPIMS’) shall be incorporated into a limited liability company under the Companies and Allied Matters Decree 1990, as amended.Accordingly, NAPIMS shall be vested with the exploration and production properties and assets owned by the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the purposes of this Decree.It was following in a tradition of governments signing controversial or hard-hitting legislations at the end of their tenure. Nineteen days to Democracy Day (May 29, 1999), the bill was signed into law; however, a single clause present in the initial version had been deleted. It was Section 16.The amendment effectively opened the floodgates. “With that clause, JVs would have been incorporated”, says a source within the Ministry of Petroleum who requested to be named because he does not have the permission to on the matter. “If they were, as opposed to the unincorporated JVs agreement we run currently, quite a few things would not be permissible. NPDC would pay its bills, crude lifted will be accounted for, recently incorporated companies will not be given such juicy OMLs to operate, cash calls will not be paid ‘mistakenly’ etc.”“Will NPDC use shareholders’ funds to be doing rubbish?”, the source asked rhetorically. “Will an incorporated company setup to make profit be acting so silly? So many ifs.”If the deleted clause was a loophole, the discretionary powers given to the oil minister in the Petroleum Act was a spade that helped Mrs Alison-Madueke dig into depths previously unknown. The entire petroleum industry is controlled by the president and the minister; the former appoints the latter who is then empowered by law. Only the National Assembly could have checked her excesses, but it didn’t.“The political pressure on petroleum ministers to finance elections has turned NNPC into petty cash machine for government”, says Bassey (last name withheld for anonymity), an industry insider. “That the minister has discretionary powers that makes things worse and that’s what we’re trying to unbundle with the PIB. Discretion can make or mar our industry but it is clear what happens in Nigeria.”Who and what institutions dropped the ball and allowed her fully exercise those powers? “The CBN was definitely not one of them, because Mr Sanusi kept harping on the rot in the oil sector”, says Mr Bassey. “The greatest enablers of corruption are civil servants who keep quiet or look the other way to save their jobs because of the god complex of chief executives in Nigeria. Red flags were raised only because of inter-agency collusion with banks, audit firms etc.”“The government is one single unit”, emphasizes Kola Banwo of Abuja-based Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center. “Institutions have roles but usually, with the nature of patronage and corrupt party system we operate, corruption is endemic. The NNPC has internal mechanisms and systems to prevent fraud. The relevant National Assembly Committees have oversight roles and could have prevented this. The Office of the Auditor-General could also have made some difference. The EFCC, ICPC, etc. However, these all formed part of the problem and so did nothing then. Some action from one or all of these, could have reduced if not prevented what happened during that period.”Those in the know say it was the impunitywith which Mrs Alison-Madueke broke the rules that set her apart from those before her. There were times when she stopped receiving visitors at the office and made them come to her in the comfort of her official residence. She would keep governors waiting for hours, dodge calls from CEOs and chairpersons of multinationals, employ domestic staff on the bill of the corporation and more.Mrs Alison-Madueke requested kickbacks from her collaborators to approve dubious contracts and the infamous oil swaps which Buhari ended in November 2015. Mr Aluko for instance, admitted paying rent for Mrs Beatrice Agama’s luxury home in Parkwood Point, St. Edmund’s Terrace, St. John’s Wood, London, describing it as “simply gifts to a friend, given long after Atlantic had signed its deal.”Under her, the NNPC ran accounts that CBN and Ministry of Finance were unaware of. The president would regularly send people to her with odd financial requests and she became the nation’s unofficial treasury with the state corporation as her petty cash ATM. As a result, she was not remitting funds and records to the Ministry of Finance which as in turn unable to remit to the CBN.In the run-up to the 2015 elections, pressure mounted again on Mrs Alison-Madueke to deliver funding and then something happened. In October 2014, Bernard Otti a director at the NNPC was appointed deputy group managing director (Finance and Accounts), a position created entirely out of thin air. The press release justified his appointment as needed to transform NNPC into a commercially-driven entity but the truth was that he had to close some deals to secure election funding.After the Mr Buhari’s inauguration, he ran to the UK after reportedly entering a plea bargain with the EFCC; With his help, the EFCC traced monies allocated for the Ekiti gubernatorial elections and other issues. His retirement was later announced by Kachikwu in August 2015.Audits by both PwC and KPMG showed that the NNPC had at its discretion, spent an average of $6 billion annually from 2011 to 2013 and there were no watertight records. A similar amount had also not been remitted on a yearly basis by NNPC to the CBN.After studying the patterns and making calculations, Mr Sanusi cried out in a September 2013 20-page memo to Jonathan that $20 billion was missing. The NNPC claimed the money had been spent on subsidy payments for kerosene and pipeline maintenance even though Mr Yar’adua had ended the payments in July 2009. Another audit by PwC was submitted before the 2015 elections but never released by the government.“Civil society has always suspected that there was corruption in the oil sector”, reveals Banwo. “When information of extravagant spending for maintain jet emerged, civil society raised alarm, called for investigations and her immediate resignation or removal, which the then president ignored. The NASS set up a committee to probe but nothing came out of it.”“When in 2015, the then CBN Governor alleged that she was responsible for the missing $20 Billion from the NNPC coffers, civil society also initiated a campaign for her investigation and removal. The impunity in the then government allowed her get away with the deeds.”If Mrs Alison-Madueke was Princess Di, then Mr Aluko, who was last seen in Porza-Lugano, Switzerland, in 2016, was The Fresh Prince. He owned quite a few private jets and an $80 million yacht, Galactica Star; in September 2013, it was rented to Jay-Z and Beyoncé at the cost of $900,000 a week for two weeks for the latter’s 32nd birthday party. A big fan of Ayrton Senna, he is also a car racing enthusiast and placed third with a Ferrari 458 GT2 at Rome’s Vallelunga circuit in December 2012. Mr Aluko was also the owner of the eighth most expensive condo in New York, costing a mere $50 million.Omokore likewise had expensive lovers including Porsha Williams of; Sanomi and co would reportedly send jets to different cities to pick random girls for weekend parties in cities in another continent. It was the good life.The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit under its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative against the trio asking for the forfeiture of assets worth $144 million,proceeds from the oil contracts. Mr Aluko remains elusive while Omokore has been arraigned in court since July 2016. Mrs Alison-Madueke herself has been arrested even though she is yet to be tried in court. The proverbial mills of God that grind slowly, seem to at last be grinding well“She kept saying ‘when we come back’, says Mr Bassey. “She did not think that Jonathan would lose the elections. Maybe the opaque deals would have continued till now.”Beyond Mrs Alison-Madueke and her oil men, perhaps the biggest fear of stakeholders in the industry is that there could be deja vu in this administration or another. As the salacious details of her time in government circulate, the loopholes that made this possible remain open. The NNPC currently remains more of a political financing tool than a truly national oil company like her peers globally. Newcomers to the party will be happy to take notes – literally.This report was made possible by the BudgIT Media Fellowship 2017 with support from Natural Resource Governance Institute.http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/242769-special-report-diezani-men-deals-bled-nigeria.html

Firstly, that after the conflict over the previous three and a half years culminating in Parliament being paralysed at the end of 2019, it was unexpected that within one year the EU and the UK would have negotiated the Withdrawal Agreement, the Northern Ireland Protocol including an agreement on its implementation and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement on their future relationship.”Secondly, it is unexpected given media coverage that after the end of the Transition Period the Trade and Cooperation Agreement would contain clauses that will apply to faciliate cross-border trade and fisheries such as:Preamble“RECOGNISING the need to ensure an open and secure market for businesses, including medium-sized enterprises, and their goods and services through addressing unjustified barriers to trade and investment.”“CONSIDERING the importance of cross-border connectivity by air, by road and by sea, for passengers and for goods, and the need to ensure high standards in the provision of transportation services between the Parties”“NOTING that, the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union and that with effect from 1 January 2021, the United Kingdom is an independent coastal State with corresponding rights and obligations under international law,”Sanitary and phytosanitary measures“The Parties shall not use SPS measures to create unjustified barriers to trade.”“3. Regarding trade-related SPS procedures and approvals established under this Chapter, each Party shall ensure that these procedures and related SPS measures: (a) are initiated and completed without undue delay; (b) do not include unnecessary, scientifically and technically unjustified or unduly burdensome information requests that might delay access to each other’s markets; (c) are not applied in a manner which would constitute arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination against the other Party’s entire territory or parts of the other Party’s territory where identical or similar SPS conditions exist; and (d) are proportionate to the risks identified and not more trade restrictive than necessary to achieve the importing Party's appropriate level of protection.4. The Parties shall not use the procedures referred to in paragraph 3, or any requests for additional information, to delay access to their markets without scientific and technical justification.5. Each Party shall ensure that any administrative procedure it requires concerning the import conditions on food safety, animal health or plant health is not more burdensome or trade restrictive than necessary to give the importing Party adequate confidence that these conditions are met. Each Party shall ensure that the negative effects on trade of any administrative procedures are kept to a minimum and that the clearance processes remain simple and expeditious while meeting the importing Party’s conditions.”“The importing Party shall not introduce authorisation requirements which are additional to those which apply at the end of the transition period, unless the application of such requirements to further products is justified to mitigate a significant risk to human, animal or plant health.”“Each Party shall ensure that all SPS control, inspection and approval procedures are initiated and completed without undue delay. Information requirements shall be limited to what is necessary for the approval process to take into account information already available in the importing Party, such as on the legislative framework and audit reports of the exporting Party.”Customs and trade facilitation“In order to improve working methods and to ensure non-discrimination, transparency, efficiency, integrity and the accountability of operations, each Party shall: (a) simplify and review requirements and formalities wherever possible with a view to ensuring the rapid release and clearance of goods; (b) work towards the further simplification and standardisation of the data and documentation required by customs and other agencies; and (c) promote coordination between all border agencies, both internally and across borders, to facilitate border-crossing processes and enhance control, taking into account joint border controls where feasible and appropriate”“Each Party shall adopt or maintain customs procedures that: (a) provide for the prompt release of goods within a period that is no longer than necessary to ensure compliance with its laws and regulations; (b) provide for advance electronic submission and processing of documentation and any other required information prior to the arrival of the goods, to enable the release of goods promptly upon arrival if no risk has been identified through risk analysis or if no random checks or other checks are to be performed; (c) provide for the possibility, where appropriate and if the necessary conditions are satisfied, of releasing goods for free circulation at the first point of arrival; and (d) allow for the release of goods prior to the final determination of customs duties, taxes, fees and charges, if such a determination is not done prior to, or upon arrival, or as rapidly as possible after arrival and provided that all other regulatory requirements have been met.”“Each Party shall work towards simplification of its requirements and formalities for customs procedures in order to reduce the time and costs thereof for traders or operators, including small and medium-sized enterprises.”“Each Party shall adopt or maintain measures allowing traders or operators fulfilling criteria specified in its laws and regulations to benefit from further simplification of customs procedures. Such measures may include inter alia: (a) customs declarations containing a reduced set of data or supporting documents; (b) periodical customs declarations for the determination and payment of customs duties and taxes covering multiple imports within a given period after the release of those imported goods; (c) self-assessment of and the deferred payment of customs duties and taxes until after the release of those imported goods; and (d) the use of a guarantee with a reduced amount or a waiver from the obligation to provide a guarantee”Facilitation of roll-on, roll-off traffic“In recognition of the high volume of sea-crossings and, in particular, the high volume of roll on, roll off traffic between their respective customs territories, the Parties agree to cooperate in order to facilitate such traffic as well as other alternative modes of traffic.”“To this effect the Parties: (a) shall adopt or maintain procedures allowing for the submission of import documentation and other required information, including manifests, in order to begin processing prior to the arrival of goods with a view to expediting the release of goods upon arrival; and (b) undertake to facilitate the use by operators of the transit procedure, including simplifications of the transit procedure as provided for under the Common Transit Convention.”Fisheries“1. The Parties shall cooperate with a view to ensuring that fishing activities for shared stocks in their waters are environmentally sustainable in the long term and contribute to achieving economic and social benefits, while fully respecting the rights and obligations of independent coastal States as exercised by the Parties. 2. The Parties share the objective of exploiting shared stocks at rates intended to maintain and progressively restore populations of harvested species above biomass levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield.”“2. The Parties shall hold consultations annually to agree, by 10 December of each year, the TACs for the following year for the stocks listed in Annex FISH.1. This shall include an early exchange of views on priorities as soon as advice on the level of the TACs is received. The Parties shall agree those TACs: (a) (on the basis of the best available scientific advice, as well as other relevant factors, including socio-economic aspects; and (b) in compliance with any applicable multi-year strategies for conservation and management agreed by the Parties.3. The Parties’ shares of the TACs for the stocks listed in Annex FISH.1 shall be allocated between the Parties in accordance with the quota shares set out in that Annex.”