By Dickson Okafor
Former National Administrative Secretary of the defunct National Centre Party of Nigeria (NCPN), Chief Johnny Ucheaga, said Nigeria has just had a businessman as President in the person of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, since the country’s independence in 1960. He appealed to Nigerians to be patient with the government, noting that in spite of the current economic hardship in the country as a result of the fuel subsidy removal, Tinubu was marching towards fixing Nigeria.
In this interview, he speaks on a wide range of national issues including the ongoing merging of some departments and agencies with similar duties and other issues
Recently, President Tinubu was on a business trip to Qatar, where he tried to attract some foreign investors to Nigeria. With Nigeria suffering from unstable power supply, high rate of insecurity and lack of basic infrastructure, do you think the president’s visit was fruitful or an effort in futility?
I don’t think it will be an effort in futility because your question is like a chicken and egg situation. Why are there insecurity, unsteady power supply and lack of basic infrastructure in Nigeria which has led to massive unemployment opportunities? If these things are in place, the people will have a place to go everyday to earn a living and they won’t have time to riot or protest. How many times have you and I gone out to riot? How many times have we gone out to cause insecurity in the country? How many times have we gone into the bush or forest to kidnap people? If you have a place where you go to and you are sure that your place of work is intact, you will be busy. And that way, you work harder for a brighter future. But, if you are unemployed or unemployable and you don’t have good education or you are disposed or predisposed to preferring substance abuse, you have all the challenges that you have highlighted in your question that may hinder foreign investors from coming to invest in Nigeria. So, President Tinubu as father of the nation has to go to other countries to woo their businessmen and women, even investors to come to Nigeria and invest. It is not an easy thing to tell another man to help you build your economy, it is a bold action. Yes, Qatar knows Nigeria very well, and Qatar has been dealing with Nigeria for a very long time. There is nothing the President will tell the people of Qatar, which they don’t already know. They are a member of the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), just like Nigeria. They have business interest in Nigeria and they are also interested in any issue concerning Nigeria, hence, they have been investing in Nigeria for a long time. Even in the first republic, there were a lot of foreign industries, such as Bata and others.
But one of the statements of President Tinubu that attracted huge condemnation was his advice to the investors to report any Nigerian that demands bribes from them before they can be allowed to invest in the country. Many felt that Tinubu has no integrity or moral right to give such an order, what is your take?
It is not a question of credibility and integrity, but a question of reality on the ground that some government officials ask for bribes. If I ask you, Mr. Journalist, do people ask for bribes before they can do anything? I’m a lawyer and you know that in some cases, they do, especially those in public offices. So, what wrong did President Tinubu do to have given such an order? What event did he go to in Qatar? He went to woo businessmen to come and invest in the country, and he knew that corruption is part of our problem in Nigeria. Formerly, during the first republic, what they used to collect was 10 percent tax, and then the economy grew with 10 percent, but now, somebody takes the entire fund; that is corruption and the cause of lack of infrastructure in the country. We are told that an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of N3.6 billion is missing. How do you handle that? How can that kind of amount be missed? Are we not better if 10 percent of the money was used to better the country instead of the entire amount missing? So, President Tinubu knew what he was saying.
With hardship and hunger in the country, which have led to nationwide protest, former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon visited President Tinubu in the Presidential Villa and appealed to Nigerians to be patient with the government; do you believe that the government will revive the economy soon?
There are people who are naysayers. All those things they are complaining about did they start now? Are they not adults when problems are piling up and previous administrations have been tackling them one after the other? There is a proverb about a tortoise that was thrown into the pit by his in-laws, and when his own people were on their way to release him, he was saying, ‘Please hurry up because the pit is stinking,’ but he has been there since. Is it a new thing that just happened within a few months President Tinubu came into power? It was not until one year that he was elected. These issues have been there and they have not been addressed. However, former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon knew that it would take time for things to come back to normal; that was why he appealed to Nigerians to be patient with the government. I am confident that Tinubu will soon revive Nigeria’s economy. So, Gen Gowon applauded Tinubu’s economic policy and we all must join hands with the government to strengthen the nation’s economy. That is why Nigeria has to reach out to Qatar for a long term investment in industries, steel development and civil engineering construction. So, when people know where they are going, their temperature and temperament will cool down.
Many are calling on the government to reverse the removal of the fuel subsidy, which they believe is the cause of the hardship in the country, do you share the same view?
If you don’t have eggs, would you have chicken? No, between a grown chicken and one egg; which one is more valuable? The egg is more valuable. When you do subsidy you are eating the egg. When you allow it, those eggs go into production and they grow into a chicken and it is still yours. But when you eat your eggs and you want chicken meat, there is no way, you won’t have it. It is now that they have removed the fuel subsidy that investors will bring their money to invest in Nigeria because they will say the people are now serious. Anybody who is in the poultry business and he eats his eggs, sooner or later, he will close shops. Because of the subsidy we don’t have foreign investors to build refineries and industries. Rather, the few industries and factories are closing down or relocating to neighbouring countries because of bad policy. That policy called subsidy is what is depriving us of foreign investment, thereby encouraging unemployment in the country. And we are left with a few people in private businesses, such as shop owners. The foreign investors that closed their businesses and left to the neighbouring countries are the tap root of the nation’s economy and investment in Nigeria is being cut. When we spoke last, I told you that now we have a businessman as President of the country. President Tinubu is now looking at the bottom line and the cause of all these challenges. But, policies such as letting my people go, nobody should talk about these problems have not done us any good. President Tinubu is working towards growing the economy through fuel subsidy removal, so that foreign investors will see the need to come and invest in the country.
For me, I see a good and prosperous future for Nigeria and I’m more optimistic now than before because it’s more the same. We are seeing a paradigm shift and people are suspicious because they are not quite sure with their experience in the past administrations that made similar promises and didn’t fulfill them. But, the economic policy of the present administration is bringing hope unlike in the past. In the long run, the people will be happy because Nigeria is no longer a consumption economy, but a production economy.
How can the government nip insecurity in the bud?
The answer is in restructuring and it is very important and key to economic revival. And restructuring is on the way with restructuring in the electricity generation and distribution, which have paved the way for the Aba electricity project realization; I mean the Geometric Power. Now, both houses of parliament, the Senate and House of Representatives, have passed resolutions for the amendment of the constitution to allow for creation of state police, which is what is supposed to address insecurity and crime that you are talking about. Some of those crimes are harsh in villages, especially in the farms, which has been responsible for the scarcity of food because people are no longer going to their farms for fear of being killed or kidnapped. Formerly, people work in their farms and sometimes, sleep there, and whenever they want to come home they come home. But now, if you want to stay over, somebody or group of people will kidnap you and that is because there is no state police. So, many prefer to stay in urban areas because they don’t want to take risks. But, if we have state police the members will come from the local government and the wards as they have that intelligence and can share it, because chairmen of the local government areas will be part of the component. In 1966, there was the problem of unitary government that was announced by the then military head of state, and there was an instant Eastern riot. Before then, there were local government police, even though they didn’t call them local government police then, but we had provinces. So, there was provincial police then, just as what you now call states. Today, most of the provinces come together to form what we call states and that’s how they created states by jamming these provinces together, and that is what has been happening. So, if you have provincial police, which is now the state police, they know you, they know the culture and they know who is who, and when people know that if they report cases or crime that there will be action, they will report. But, when they report, there will be no action instead they will expose those who report the criminals. There used to be in the police what they called Special Branch, which they later called Intelligence Agency; that is very important.
But people are afraid and against state police because they believe the state governors will hijack it?
I heard that in the debate in the House of Representatives. Now, let’s not go far away, let’s talk about the 1999 constitution, the first governor to become President was late Umar Musa Yar’Adua. You couldn’t trust Yar’Adua to head state police but you could trust him to head national police? How bad did he misuse the police when he was President? We had former President Goodluck Jonathan; he too was a governor of Bayelsa State. You could not trust him with state police but you trusted him with national police? We also had former President Muhammadu Buhari who was Military Governor of North Eastern State. So, you could not trust him to handle the state police, but he handled the national police. So, how bad did he handle national police? Those are self-defeating arguments. That is why you have a choice to choose and if you choose a bad leader, then you leave with the bad leader. Every person who comes up for election can’t all be bad, but if you take a bad person and vote him in, then whatever he does is good for you. So, those arguments against state police don’t hold water.
What is your take on the Federal Government’s resolve to implement Stephen Orosanye report and his recommendations to merge departments and agencies that perform similar functions which originally was established to create jobs?
I don’t think it is job creation that made them duplicate the functions of departments and agencies, and nobody could have said so. However, if you are creating jobs in any administration, that is a very poor policy. Formerly, we had only a police force that was called the Special Branch. The functions of all these establishments that are being merged to were done by the Special Branch, and with all these duplication of responsibilities; we still have so much crime in the country. So, has the job creation worked? No, if you try something and it does not work and you continue on it, it is called emotional madness. So, Nigeria is pulling out of madness by merging these departments and agencies as contained in the Orosanye report. But because there are a lot of interest groups in those places, when they get the budget they share it. They want to be where they will control a budget and not where they will control files. Which of those departments and agencies scattered everywhere have we found improvement? None; therefore, if they are merged, it will be easier to supervise. Some managing directors and heads of the departments and agencies have made enough money to start production or set up factories. How many bakers do we still have in Nigeria? They are few because of high cost of production. If we can overcome insecurity and get our farmers back to their farms, there will be no food shortage in the country. The cause of hardship is because our farmers are not in the farms, having been driven away by bandits. Many of these farmers are living in Internal Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps or doing menial jobs.