Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe, a former Minister of Works and Housing, is a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). In this interview with TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI, he speaks on governance under President Bola Tinubu in the last year, the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, 2014 national conference, and other sundry issues. Excerpts:
As a chieftain of the ruling party, what is your assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s performance in the last one year?
His performance in the last one year has been encouraging. He has broken the ice that will lead to future developments. He has undertaken courageous decisions, but he needs to manage properly. When you take courageous decisions, the outcome may not be pleasant immediately, but gradually, you adjust. I believe that, under his leadership, a prosperous Nigeria is coming.
One of the critical decisions he took in the last one year was the removal of fuel subsidy which he announced on his inauguration. Some Nigerians believe the decision was hasty and that it was responsible for the hardship being experienced by Nigerians. Do you agree with that?
The removal of fuel subsidy was inevitable. There was no other way. My only concern is in the utilisation of the subsidy removal. My own view is that it should have been channeled towards education, technology, provision of electricity and a deliberate investment in what is lacking in our economy, which is electricity. Fortunately, most states can now generate, distribute and transmit. So, they should have invested that money saved from subsidy removal with the private sector, because, to my mind, the future of Nigeria depends on private sector initiative and involvement. That is where everybody should lean towards now. The public sector is a failure. The private sector is what is going to lead Nigeria to what we want the country to become.
As far as I am concerned, we have lost our belief in the public sector. Before now, the public sector was so important in the development of our country. But nowadays, the private sector seems to be more active and more investment should go into private sector, and with partnership with the private sector for almost everything the federal government wants to do now. As far as I am concerned, we have lost confidence in the public sector. The private sector is the in-thing now. We need more investment, more encouragement for the private sector like Dangote. We should do what they did in India. After completion of the 650 barrel per day refinery, they build another one, making two. So, Dangote should not rest. He should build another one. The federal government should encourage him and invest in production through the private sector. All these ideas of creation of public sector facilities should be reduced. Let us see what the private sector can do. I believe our teaching hospitals should be handed over to the private sector. This government is now going to give loans to the students. What is the interest of the government in it? It should be given to the private sector. All the universities should be able to be independent and they will be able to develop on their own and do research. The public sector is a failure in Nigeria now. Total failure!
What do you think the administration can do to tackle the insecurity crisis in the country which is scaring away investors, preventing farmers from going to farms and has displaced many Nigerians into IDP camps?
The solution is State police. Let every state be able to take responsibility for their security. The federal government should just do regulation. The federal government is too big to think of giving everybody security in each state. No! Most of these monies, give it to the state to make sure they are able to secure their territories. They know their terrain, they know the people who are doing it; they know the evil people who are in the community; they know where they’re mining; they know them. The federal government doesn’t know these evil people. If that is done, the state governor will not complain again to say, ‘Ah, there is insecurity in my state’. The president will be able to say, ‘ I’ve given you money, secure your state!’. Everybody will be up and doing, and nobody will be shouting and running to the federal government. The federal government can no longer cope with the pressure from the states, especially on matters of insecurity. Let each state take responsibility for most of these things. For example, why is the federal government saying that they are removing subsidy from electricity? That is a state function now. The federal government has no business talking about subsidy in electricity. What is their business with that? They should allow each state to determine how much is payable in their states. You cannot say somebody who is in Lagos state should pay the same amount of money for electricity with somebody in Sokoto or Zamfara. The economic activities in Lagos state will pay any amount of money you want to bill for electricity. If you know the number of generators that people use every day in Balogun market, it is alarming. Are you telling me that those people cannot pay for electricity if they get constant power supply? They will pay. Nobody expects electricity to be cheap because it is not something that we manufacture. But there are many localities where they can use alternative electricity such as wind, solar, coal and so on. Before you know what is happening, each state will take advantage and use the resources available in their locality to generate electricity. Most of the industrial companies running on diesel to power their big generators will pay if they get constant power. This is the idea of President Bola Tinubu before now, that is, allowing each state to generate their power. This is the time for him to actualise it.
Don’t you think the federal government will have weaker powers if all these things you mentioned are ceded to the states?
The federal government is too big to do almost everything. They should give these monies to the states to develop, and then the federal government can monitor how the funds are used. I have been there before as a senator and minister. Most of the people at the federal level believe that the money there belongs to nobody and that the more you can steal, the better for you. That is why you see a government official diverting N40b as if it is a penny. Can anybody go to a state and steal N40b? That is impossible. So, the federal government should allow the state government to perform maximally and that is the only way the country can develop. This idea of overbearing attitude by the federal government, I don’t know where they learn it from. Even in America, the best and most important airport belong to the local government. So, what is our own business here with FG running airports? The federal government has no land, yet it is doing agriculture. The federal government is doing transportation, where are their buses? Everything belongs to the state and local government. We are carrying a lot of bad luggages at the federal government level and that is why it is easy for officials to steal money. Send many of these officials back to their states to develop it. If they like, let them go to their state and steal N50b and see what will happen to them.
Today, the federal government is talking about humanitarian services and providing palliatives. These are state functions. What is the business of the federal government in humanitarian services? They are talking of giving food to students in primary schools, how is that the responsibility of the federal government? Is the federal government the owner of the school or the children? The school belongs to a local government. We encourage stealing in this country. If you see the manner people are stealing and diverting billions of naira in this country, I just wonder, ‘where are they getting all these monies from?’ It is sacrilegious and something to be ashamed of reading about it in the news. The whole world is reading all the news about stealing and it is not good for the image of our country. A very big shame for us as a country.
The report of the 2014 national conference is still left untouched. Will you advise the president to implement the reports as already suggested by some concerned Nigerians?
He has an idea of what he wants to do. He is a proponent of devolution of power from day one. So, nobody should teach him what to do about devolution of power. He has been the person at the forefront of that struggle. So, who is going to teach him? I believe he knows what to do. He has been a victim of all these things. Don’t forget what happened to him during the creation of additional 37 local governments when he was governor. My take is, let us restructure this country. If we don’t do so, we will destroy our country with the level of corruption in the country. I am repeating it: the amount of money available at the federal government level is killing and unbelievable. They keep talking about padding, padded budget and so on. Almost all the money at the federal government level is padded. Can you pad at the state level? As long as we continue this way, we can’t make headway. All those policies are good but they are not implementable with the current structure we are operating. You can’t have the same structure for power supply in Lagos and Sokoto. What are they going to use power for in Sokoto? No matter the amount of money you ask them to pay in Lagos, once there is constant electricity that will boost manufacturing and businesses, they will pay. They will even come together and build power plants on their own and run it. How long can we continue having a feeding bottle federal government, trying to feed everybody? It is impossible! Most of the successes we have recorded is through the private sector. Look at how we successfully managed our telecommunications sector successfully with government support. When it was NITEL, everything crashed but when they gave licences to MTN, Glo and others, look at how competitive it has been. If not for that revolution, where would Nigeria have been today? We just have to take the bull by the horns and allow the private sector to take over. Public servants are becoming a very bad influence on the Nigerian people where a level 12 officer will have 15 houses in Abuja. Where did he get that kind of money from? We cannot continue to steal federal government’s money and everybody will keep quiet. No matter the policy we try to implement, it will never succeed as long as the level of corruption is this high in our country.
Another issue is the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu. Do you think his unconditional release will reduce the unrest in the South-East?
What is the problem? Let Nnamdi Kanu go through the trial. If he is not guilty, he will be released. He said no court in Nigeria can try him, that is his own view. Let the federal government start the trial. When the judge sees that there is no case there, they will do a no-case submission and he will be released. Why are they afraid of trial and keep begging for his release? If they have started the trial all this while, it would have been concluded by now. Instead of going through trial, they wanted to finish everything on technicalities. What is the big deal about trial? Can’t they see what former US President, Donald Trump is going through? Is Nnamdi Kanu bigger than Trump? As far as I am concerned, Kanu is the one delaying the trial through all these tactics that no court in Nigeria can try him. Let the trial start. The prosecutor will present his evidence and Nnamdi Kanu’s lawyer will present his own too. The judge will look at everything and if there is anything there, they will throw it away, and he will regain his freedom. His lawyers are the ones causing the problem by trying to frustrate the trial on grounds of technicalities. How can they presume that he cannot get justice and he will be found guilty? Kanu should get a good defence lawyer who will present his case. How many people have gone through treasonable felony case in Nigeria? Some have been released while some were jailed. Let Nnamdi Kanu go through the trial. Nothing will happen. If he is not guilty, he will be freed.
You granted an interview few years ago where you said President Bola Tinubu achieved more than the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Do you still stand by the statement today?
I didn’t say so. The context is different. I was talking about the capacity to win election. It is different from the capacity to perform. No leader in that country can perform better than Awolowo in terms of what he was able to do. But to win election easily, as done by President Bola Tinubu, just compare the two men. My position is quite clear: Awolowo has the capacity to perform while Tinubu has the capacity to win elections easily. That was what I was talking about. Don’t equate Awolowo with Tinubu in terms of performance. No! Awolowo performed but the capacity of a southerner like Tinubu to acquire that level of trust from the northerners, to the extent that they want to give him power. That is what I am talking about and I still believe so. What was the inhibition for someone like MKO Abiola to win an election successfully? How do you think Tinubu was able to attract more votes in the North than the South? That was what I was seeing at that time when I compared him with Awolowo. It requires somebody who is a researcher to be able to decipher what I am talking about. Tinubu has the capacity to win elections and it is a skill. If you don’t have that skill, you can never win. He has been preparing and strategising to become president since 1999. Look at the results of the last presidential election. Who could have imagined that a southerner will be so welcomed in the north like they did for Tinubu? We couldn’t have imagined that will happen when we were growing up. Igbo people wanted to win presidential election, can they borrow from the skills of Bola Tinubu to be able to sell themselves to the whole of Nigeria and win? What did Tinubu do to be so attractive to the northerners? During the primaries, they never wanted him to win but he did. Even the northern governors in APC had to tell northern presidential aspirants to step down for him. What did he have that no other politician in the South have? When I saw what Buhari was doing, I knew Tinubu will win the primary. The performance of Papa Awolowo is unparalleled but Tinubu has the capacity to win election, especially in the northern part of the country. If you don’t win in the north, you can never be the president of Nigeria. The strategy Tinubu used to win the presidential election require a lot of study. It is unimaginable.
