In this interview with Abdullahi Mohammed Sheka, a frontline member of the Federal House of Representatives, Hon. Mustapha Bala Dawaki extensively lends his voice to the current debate about fuel subsidy, the? withdrawal of which has led to all sorts of protests across the land, and dwells on other issues of interest to the Nigerian economy.? Excerpts:
The federal government has withdrawn fuel subsidy. What is the message from your constituents?
The message from my constituency with regard to fuel subsidy removal is that it is unacceptable. I received a lot of text messages, some members of my constituency came to my home during the recess and they now gave me a clear mandate that I should come to Abuja, to the House of Representatives chambers to say they are not in support of subsidy removal.
And I promised to convey this message and I tried to do that during the special session and I was not recognised by the Speaker, although it is normal since there are over three hundred people that attended the session and everybody had a contribution to give. Obviously, time could not allow everyone to speak. However, I have used the radio to convey the message to the public that as far as my constituents -the people of Dawakin Kudu/Warawa are concerned, we reject the removal of fuel subsidy.
Proponents of fuel subsidy removal say the policy has become inevitable.? Why then, are your constituents rejecting it?
They reject it because it will add to their hardship. Everyone also knows that the country is going through serious security issues and we also know that there is abject poverty in Nigeria, especially the North. An average Nigerian cannot afford three square meals in a day and these are issues the government should look at. The issue of insecurity has resulted in so much tension being generated all over the country. All over the land are youths who have graduated from universities and colleges without employment. This situation needs to be addressed by the government, and urgently too.
There is a lot of hardship and government is adding to their hardship. The subsidy removal policy is a punishment to the entire people of Nigeria. This is why my constituents are against it.
Dawakin Kudu/Warawa is basically a rural community.? Since many of the people do not own cars and will thus not need to buy fuel, why should they bother about subsidy removal?
But the policy is impacting very negatively on them. Since the announcement of the removal, transport fares have jumped up astronomically. Hitherto, a trip to Kano city from Dawakin Kudu cost one hundred naira. It is now more than two hundred naira, for a trip of about twenty kilometres. Where will they get the difference to pay for the transportation and earn basic livelihood?
But government has made it clear that the money that is going to be saved is going to be geared towards providing critical infrastructure, which is going to be of direct benefit to your people. Can’t you educate them to see the need to support the policy?
I don’t believe them, not because I choose to, but because we must all learn from experience.? Over the years government will come out with a promise of providing infrastructure, of providing? good health care facilities, of good education, of providing road and portable water but you hear nothing at the end of the day. This has led to people on the lower rungs of the society mistrusting the government, becoming cynical about virtually everything it does.
For this, government has lost a lot of credibility because whatever it promises to do does not get done. That is why people are afraid that even the savings they are talking about on the subsidy removal will not yield any meaningful dividend that they could benefit from. At the same time, the agitators of this subsidy removal are just stooges of IMF and the World Bank. They are so blind or they have been indoctrinated by the world powers, that they cannot see anything wrong with this fuel subsidy removal. Look at is happening in Nigeria today, NLC has embarked on a nationwide indefinite strike, so many lives has been lost, even government properties and individual properties have been destroyed. The government has lost huge revenue because of the strike, our image in the international community has also been tarnished.
All these, because the government refused to have listening ears.? The president has consulted with religious leaders, both Muslim leaders and Christian leaders and they openly came out and said no to subsidy removal. They consulted civil societies, they said no to subsidy removal, they consulted with traditional rulers and they said no to subsidy removal. They consulted labour and it said no to subsidy removal. They consulted other trade unions and they also said no to subsidy removal. They consulted the legislature, comprising senators and members of the House of Representatives, we all said no to subsidy removal; the issue of insecurity needs to be addressed first. So any responsive government should at least accord a second thought to these categories of well-meaning Nigerians but the government went ahead and announced the removal of fuel subsidy on 1st of January 2012.
If there are anybody that has to be consulted first in this country it is supposed to be the members of the National Assembly, Members of the House of Representative and the Senators. These people represent constituencies in their various states. They were elected and voted to represent their constituents, so they are in a better position to now tell the government the real feelings of the people.
The president didn’t inform the National Assembly, particularly members of the House of Representatives, We had a special session last Sunday, personally, I had to cut off my planned trip to attend that session, which I am very proud of, as I really wanted to lend my voice to the opposition against this wicked policy. We, members of the House of Representatives came out with a common stance and unanimously agreed that the government should suspend the removal of fuel subsidy and by implication reverse back to status quo, which is N65 per litre and do more consultation of how this subsidy removal is going to be done. The way and manner it is being done now is a punishment.
It is very important for the government to understand that democratic system of government consists of three arms, which is the Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary and these arms are suppose to be collaborating and cooperating in order to move the country forward. Where the government decides to do something without consulting other arms, definitely there is going to be disputes. There will always be issues when communication gap is created, or when communication becomes one-way traffic. If the gap of communication is too much, then one person is cheating the other.
The Constitution gives each arm of government a jurisdiction. We have the right as members of the National Assembly, after the president has removed subsidy, to put it back during the appropriation of 2012 budget. And any spending that is made before then will amount to a breach of the constitution, which makes it an impeachable offence. We surely don’t want such to happen, as democracy is still young in Nigeria and we want it sustained so that this country will move forward.
I could remember that during the town hall meeting organised by newspaper proprietors in Lagos, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Ngozie Okonjo-Iweala, Diezani Alison-Maduekwe and Governor Adams Oshiomhole were all there, and each of them presented papers and they all have different opinions. Lamido mentioned that this subsidy is benefitting only the middle class and the high class to the detriment of the poor man in the village. He suggested that we should remove the subsidy and put it in agriculture so that the farmers can get loans with an interest rate of 7% as against 21%. In my village in Dawakin Kudu and Warawa I don’t know anybody that has access to these facilities.
Most of them are involved in subsistence farming, to harvest for the use of their households. Telling those? people to start borrowing money from the bank, and that they need to provide a collateral before accessing the loan will make no meaning to them. I am surprised that Lamido, who is from Kano, a blue blood from the traditional institution, who should know better, is saying that people should get loans from banks, as if it is something you can easily get over the counter. I don’t think that is going to work. They are putting theories and policies that are applicable only in developed countries like Europe to Nigeria.
My take is that we need a specific or peculiar solution that will be in conformity with our system and suit our people. This will assist in effective deliverance of government policy. We all know America is the most indebted nation in the world and because of that even other European countries have been downgraded by rating agencies, but Nigeria has not been downgraded. The Nigerian economy is doing well. When we had the global financial crisis, many of the financial institutions in Europe collapsed; many jobs were lost. But in Nigeria the impact only affected the oil and gas sector where some people lost their jobs, but it was not as devastating as in America and Europe.
Look at what is happening in Europe at present, Greece’s economy has been down, but Nigerian is blessed with a lot of mineral resources and agriculture.? All it lacks is good government. President Jonathan has announced a 25% salaries cut for those of them in the executive, but we in the federal legislature have, as far back as last year, cut our running cost by 65% and we all know what 65% means. He is talking about 25% of his basic salary, how much does that amount to? If you look at the president’s basic salary it is about N2 million and when you cut it by 25% it is about 640,000. What about the allowances and the security votes? If you look at the 2012 budget what was budgeted for security vote was almost 1 trillion naira which is like a quarter and a half of 2011 budget. All these security votes are not something that you can account for. At the state level you will see that each of the 36 states of the federation has security vote. Therefore it is important that when we say we want to reduce the cost of government we do it with all sincerity of purpose.
I was going through the 2011 budget of the State House and saw that they purchased kitchen equipment worth N365 million. Which kind of kitchen is that? Do you want to tell me that there was no kitchen equipment before? They acquired public addressing system in the Vice President’s conference room with N176 million, they acquired and up-graded the VP’s guest house at N356 million; they bought an electric switch gear that is not more than two carbonate in the State House at N662 million, utility vehicles for VP at N255 million. What happened to the old one? Are they up to four years of usage? There was something that I could not even understand, the e-government equipment they purchased with N220 million. I don’t know what is e-government.
So this are the kind of things that needs to be addressed, we need to stop all this extravagance in this country if we are sincere. Nigeria is blessed; Nigeria is the seventh largest oil exporter in the world therefore Nigerians need to get fuel subsidy in what Nigeria is producing. For example when you go to Iran, if you convert how much they spend on petrol per litre it is N58.40K,? in Qatar they sell it at N54, in? Saudi Arabia, they sell it N17.50K per litre, in UAE, they sell it at N52.2K, in Venezuela they sell it at N22.15k, In Libya they sell it at N15.95k even amidst crisis. Egypt, which does not produce a litre of petrol sells at N46.72k, In United States they don’t sell in litre, they call it gallon and it is sold at N125.04k and the quality of? PMS in these countries is much higher than what we import from Russia.
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