Is the Senate doing enough in terms of checks and balances?
We could do much more. It is not as if the Senate is actually doing enough, but we could do a lot more because there are issues that come up to us and we must be statesmen in every respect because we must not put pressure on the system, which takes me to the PIB debate we had last (now penultimate) week. At the end of the day, what I think we had, irrespective of anybody’s opinion, was a mini Sovereign National Conference (SNC), when people from all parts of the country could come and say, look, we think enough money has been given to people from one other part of the country and they don’t need more money under the host community section of the PIB, and that that particular provision should be deleted from the bill.
The other people would come and say “oh, you guys are the ones that have taken most part of these jobs”. Don’t forget that Nuhu Ribadu, at a point, told governors of the North East that “you have so much money and you have not done anything with it”. So, it was an opportunity to have a mini-SNC and I feel we are statesmen; we are senators representing our various senatorial districts. Whether we like it or not, we are senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We always have that in mind, irrespective of the back-slapping, hugging and the hand-shaking on the floor of the Senate. You must try your humanly possible best to see that Nigeria remains one while you are fighting for the infrastructural development in your senatorial district. I think the Senate president has done very well in maintaining this cordial relationship among the senators, but we could do a lot more because I am of the studied opinion that the President is not doing enough, the executive arm of government is not doing enough. I personally have challenges with the President’s capacity to administer Nigeria, sincerely. He may be a good-natured man, but governing Nigeria means being more than being good-natured. And a lot of decisions have been taken, a lot of inactions have been taken. I am not a fan of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. I even feel that the former President, a lot of times, does self-glorification. However, even if he was going to be wrong, he would take a decision. But the incumbent President does not take decisions; he takes too long and I think he does not even understand the rudiments of governance, and needs to do a lot more. The Senate now stands in a peculiar position. Naturally, the House of Representatives would want to, maybe, bring down the rules; the Senate must moderate and ensure that the rules do not come down. But is the Senate saying that the aspiration of the people is being met? I am of the opinion that not at all times.
I know the President was ill-advised, to the effect that you just bring proposal and dump it on our laps and we approve it. Then, why are we going for all these rituals called the budget process? So, if he brings the budget, we should pass it the following day and send it to him to sign, if we cannot tinker with it. Why are people afraid that we raised the benchmark from $75 per barrel to $79 when in the past one or two years, I cannot recollect that the cost of petroleum has gone beneath $100 per barrel? Why do people want to have more excess crude money, just as we argued when it came to the issue of Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)? I don’t have any problem with sovereign wealth fraud or fund, but my challenge is that it should not be taken from the money that belongs to all of us, under Section 152 of the Constitution; it should come from the money that belongs to the Federal Government under Sections 80 and 82 of the Constitution. It should come from the Federal Government’s consolidated account and not from the federation account. So, I think the Senate can do a lot more by shifting a bit to the left. The Senate is doing well enough, maintaining stability in Nigeria. But the Senate should not dilly-dally when it comes to taking some decisions and talking to Mr. President that in this particular respect or in this particular issue, you have not done well enough and we think you should go back on this issue.
You are the Vice Chairman, Federal Character and Inter-governmental Affairs Committee, which just concluded a public hearing into job-for-sale scam currently rocking the nation in which some senators even confessed that they gave money to get their constituents jobs. Can the Senate sit as judge in its own case?
I sincerely don’t think I am qualified to judge my colleagues. Unfortunately, I was not there when the motion was heard. The Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-governmental Affairs hasn’t come up with any finding. It’s pretty difficult to ask people to come and testify about job placement and job-for-sale because a lot of them will not come, and that was actually our experience. At the same time, we felt it was an opportunity for us to do this holistic work, so that along the line, we will see if there is lacuna in the process which could give room for such. Those who were present at the public hearing know that our chairman actually pointed accusing fingers at our para-military organisations. He did say that going by the report that had reached us so far, they (the agencies) were most culpable of all the agencies. It was only the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) that made bold, through its Head of Human Resources, to say that it is not even possible for anybody that was not qualified or that was not yet fully engaged to enter their payroll because their system was fully computerised, which was one of the insights we now heard. If other agencies were that computerised, probably, it would not have occurred. The Civil Defence said they had retrieved letters from about 5,000 people and that there were matters, even criminal matters pending in court, and we asked them to supply us with information about those involved because we discovered that the petition presented by Senator Ojudu from Ekiti State with respect to some members of his constituents who paid, we must do something about the system itself because two to three months salaries were paid to some people before they said they detected that those people did not qualify. So they could not have been given letters of employment. We were also opportuned to meet a guy that came forward and said he was asked to bring money. He added: “I brought money and I got letter; but on getting to Lagos where they were training, I was asked to step aside and I was detained on the grounds that I had a fake letter.” We are also looking into that. But the job has not finished yet; we have over 300 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). So we could not finish the job in two days; we actually took a third day and the committees on Federal Character, Inter-governmental Affairs as well as the one on Labour met and said we would continue sitting until we go through the process and the procedures of recruitment by all the agencies. We invited some agencies, and some ministries particularly, because we received petitions. Like the Ministry of Aviation and Education. What matters most is that if anybody has stepped on the floor of the Senate and gives money to his constituent to go and look for job, it is left for Nigerians to judge the person. Secondly, it is left for the committee to limit the extent of the person’s involvement, so that it will not affect the hearing and the report of the committee. Thirdly, most unfortunately but most naturally, there is nothing anybody can do about it because anybody who has stepped on the floor of the Senate is privileged under the Legislative and Privileges Act. And fourthly, that becomes a matter for all of us because the truth of the matter is that all of us are under pressure to get our constituents employed. At my last count, the CVs I have cannot be less than 2,000. I have been opportuned to influence about 80 people to get employed, and without being immodest, I want to say that probably, I am one of the highest here. This is without losing sight of the fact that you cannot put everybody in the civil service. The executive arm of government must be up and doing to open up the public private partnership (PPP) to open up opportunities given to people to set up industries on their own, instead of becoming employees. You cannot do that by all of us wanting our people to get employed in the civil service. But opportunity cannot come to me and I say I don’t have anybody because of my philosophy that the executive arm of government must make sure that we create more employers of labour than employees. I will take the same opportunity when it comes to me, and the same argument goes when it comes to constituency projects. Constituency project is an aberration, but for a failing government, you don’t have any option. The only thing we can show for a period of four years is the constituency projects we influenced in the constituency arrangement, which we don’t do; it is done by the executive arm of government and they make a lot of news over the fact that we determine the projects. Why am I the representative of the people, if I can’t determine the projects? In the area of education, for instance, the Minister of Education does not know the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), which I attended. I grew up in Ife, had my primary and secondary education as well as university in Ife. It is not possible for her to know my backyard more than me. So if there is any project going to OAU, it should not be the executive arm of government that should determine it; it should be us. This also takes me to the issue of appropriation, which is the burning issue in Nigeria, to the effect that of what effect can you, as a parliamentarian, tinker with proposals dropped by the executive arm of government? I have always been of the opinion that what the President brings is an estimate. We are the ones to determine. Unfortunately, we don’t have a congressional budget office here, which we should have. So we are the ones to fully determine this and we are looking into the issue. I don’t want to be a judge in my case, but I am of the view that we will do a good job on the issue of jobs-for-sale. You will soon get our report; it may take a little more time than we expected. We want to give every ministry, every department and every agency the opportunity to come and speak with us. And like I had said earlier, we are looking at how we won’t tarnish the report of the committee.
Few months away from now, Osun State will go to the poll. What are you expecting from that, especially given the allegations that the governor, Rauf Aregbesola, awards contracts to only his company?
Now, on this issue of Osun, a lot of people said so many things about my governor and we needed, when we came in, to let people know that it is government unusual. People are already used to a form of government. Don’t forget that Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola was there like seven years and five months and we met a government where nothing was happening. When I said nothing was happening, I mean nothing was happening. There were no developmental projects. The only thing we met on ground was the facility obtained from United Bank for Africa (UBA) by the government of Oyinlola to build six stadia. And we were asking: are we hosting the Olympics? What do we want to do with six stadia? If you go to Osogbo stadium and to the one being built in Ikirun, if there is no traffic, you will drive through between 12 and 13 minutes. If there is no traffic along the steel rolling axis, you will drive 12 to 13 minutes. So we felt there was need to re-negotiate; finish the Osogbo one, look at the rest and the level the contractors have done, let us look at the way of going back to the architects and the engineers, with same money. Of course, we re-negotiated that same facility, extended the tenure, reduced the interest rate and lo and behold we had more money to work on infrastructure. If you go to Osun now or any state in South West, the extent of work going on is scary. The governors of those states have attacked infrastructural projects from Lagos to Ogun, to Oyo to Osun to Ekiti. I have visited all those states. Projects are going on. All the local governments in Osun are doing average of 10 kilometre roads at the moment and the state is working on almost all the state roads. Nobody in that state has seen the extent of work going on at the moment. If you are going to Lagos, you don’t have to go to Ibadan first. In my own senatorial district, Ijebu-Igbo, it is less than 30 minutes from Osun State; that road is being done as I am talking to you now by Osun. The little Governor Oyinlola had to show was the dualisation of Osogbo to Akonda junction of Ede. That is being taken. Bisi Akande started what he called the Ring Road. We noticed recently that there have been congestion in Osogbo and Akande was doing a Ring Road round Osogbo. That project was abandoned by the last administration, but the project is now back on board and that will decongest the roads in Osogbo. A lot of projects are going on. It is wrong to say that anybody is giving any contract to any company belonging to the governor. I am not aware that any company belonging to the governor is taking any project and I doubt it. In governance, you give projects to people who are qualified and I am of the view that this is what is happening in Osun. I will not lie to you. Whether you like it or not, if I happen to be in such position, somebody that is close to me, if he is qualified, are we going to disqualify him because he knows me? For as long as he satisfies the conditions, he follows the due process and the rule of law and he does the job. If he does not do the job, it is another issue entirely, and I think this is everywhere, even in the Diaspora. I am not aware that people who were close to George Bush would even apply for work under Obama. They will not even bother. Whether we like it or not, it is a bare truth. Let me even tell you this: in the area of agric, the government is giving land to people. Those who are interested in fishery, the government is giving them fingerlings. The government is giving day-old chicks to those who are interested in poultry farming and seedlings to those who are interested in planting. The government is now buying from them at the end of the day. The government is going to even make the land available to them. The government is going to plough the land; the government is going to do almost everything. It is only a lazy man in Osun now that will complain or you are just a perpetual opposition person. And there is nothing anybody can do about that.
Source: dailyindependentnig.com
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