The outcome of the fuel subsidy probe by the National Assembly has no doubt shocked many Nigerians. It revealed that a major rip-off was going on in the name of fuel subsidy. But this did not really prepare Nigerians for the final figure of over 1trillion naira that was paid to dubious beneficiaries.

Anger has become the most consistent reaction to the findings of the National Assembly, which did well by the people by probing the subsidy regime. The probe had become imperative considering the fact that the Federal Government had pinned the survival of the nation on the removal of fuel subsidy.

The government had insisted that the subsidy regime had to stop because it was fraught with irregularities and corruption. This raised many questions as Nigerians wondered who the beneficiaries of the irregularities and corruption were. In spite of all the questions, the government however failed to name its beneficiaries. More disturbing however was the fact that there was no talk of bringing the abusers of the subsidy regime to book. Were they the untouchables?

There was no answer and the government continued to insist that the subsidy regime must stop. So, when in October, 2011, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki moved a motion on the floor of the Senate calling for an investigation into how the N240 billion budgeted for fuel subsidy for the whole of 2011 had ballooned to over N1.2 trillion under ten months, he was speaking for millions of Nigerians.

Saraki had sponsored the motion with 14 other senators.

It was a turning-point move. Adopting the motion on the 13th of October, the senate directed its standing committees on Petroleum (Downstream), Appropriation and Finance to immediately commence the investigation of the operation of the fuel subsidy scheme. This move also had immediate multiplier effect as it shifted focus to the transparency and accountability in the subsidy regime. The House of Representatives also decided to look into the subsidy rip-off.

Today, Nigerians have learnt a lot about how federal resources were committed to a dubious subsidy regime. The Senate and House of Representative special committee reports showed that Nigeria was short-changed by over N1 trillion through the payment of suspicious subsidies on fuel in 2011.

But while Nigerians were trying to comprehend the gargantuan rip-off; and while many were waiting for the unmasking of the big masquerades behind the massive swindle, a new twist was added to the tale: Saraki became the subject of a police investigation; his name was linked to an alleged bank loan that no one appeared to have heard anything about in the past. Strange, one might say.

It is no coincidence that the Senator is being invited by the police only when the report of the National Assembly on the fuel subsidy rip-off is in the court of public opinion and is about to be debated by the legislature. Why the police, and not EFCC, have been involved?

The good thing however is that many Nigerians have been able to read between the lines and understand the political machinations in Saraki's current travails.

The Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for Transparency in Governance (CSOTG) warned that it would lead Nigerians to resist attempts to punish the Saraki and others they consider patriotic Nigerians, because they asked questions that exposed the fraud in the management of fuel subsidy "while allowing those indicted to walk free."

The Coalition's president, Comrade Ibrahim Alih told newsmen in Abuja that the only way government could convince Nigerians that it was still interested in implementing the Senate and House of Representatives' reports on fuel subsidy probes is to bring the perpetrators of the fraud in the sector to book.

Other Nigerians are just as angry and distrust the government's action.

As Edmund Burke wrote in ‘Thoughts of the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770), "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an un-pitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."