Not a stranger to controversy, Hon. Dino Melaye dismisses the Christopher Kolade Committee empanelled by President Goodluck Jonathan to oversee the use of subsidy savings as an Owambe one litre price. Speaking to LEADERSHIP WEEKEND’S RUTH CHOJI, the former chairman, House Committee on Information also bared his mind on other topical issues. Excerpts:
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You led a coalition of civil society groups to protest removal of oil subsidy. What prompted you?
The strike is still an on-going battle. The battle to build a new Nigeria; to have a just society is a battle of ‘No Retreat, No Surrender’. What the federal government announced on January 1st had nothing to do with elitism or poverty. I have a cook, gardener, driver and a cleaner. If the increase in fuel pumps stays, I will definitely have to increase their salaries if they must survive. I pay my cook about #45.000 a month (forty –five thousand naira) a month and he comes early everyday from Mararaba (a suburb in Nassarawa State)? and his cost of transportation will be one thousand naira every day (#1,000).
So it is already thirty thousand naira (#30.000) per month. He has children in school and his family to cater for. So it is not about the rich or poor. Some of us have agreed to be the voice to the voiceless. If you want to sell PMS for one thousand naira, I can afford it. But I have parents in the village; I have cousins, friends and extended family who will suffer the consequence of the increase.
But you were in a better position in the House then to enact a law that would have changed this situation before it got to this stage. Why didn’t you do it then?
Unfortunately I don’t have the celestial power to read people’s minds. If I had, I would have known that Jonathan was going to increase pump price on January 1st, 2012. In the history of legislature in Nigeria, no legislator has moved as many motions as I have done – either in the senate or House of Representatives. I?? moved the motion that led to the revocation of the sale of Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill; ditto for Delta Steel. I moved a motion against a sitting president as it then was, President Yar’adua when? he went and borrowed money from the World Bank.
I? was a member of the PDP then and when I registered my intention to move that motion, the party called me and spoke to me, and I said no! I moved that motion and Yar’Adua had to return that money to the World Bank. I moved a motion for the Kubwa/Airport Road dualisation project which was pegged at two hundred and something billion naira. But as a result of my motion, it was reduced by a hundred billion.? The MD of Julius Berger came and said it was a typographical error. I moved the motion for the airport runway, which was awarded at sixty- four billion naira.? I travelled around the globe to eleven airports to carry out an analysis. Heathrow Airport had nine lanes, that is terminal five with four points zero five kilometers and it? was constructed with less than eighteen billion (#18bn).?
We in Nigeria want to construct two lanes, three points, and eight kilometers for sixty-four billion naira. As a result of my motion, the president had to cancel that contract. That contract was supposed to cost just eight billion naira (#8bn). I moved the motion for the revocation of five companies as chairman of information and communication. So I cannot count the number of motions I have moved that had direct impact on Nigerians as a whole. It is not about being in the House or not being there. When in the House, you should know that I moved a motion against the leadership of the house.
The protest was?? for government to revert to #65.00, but they have now settled for N97.00. Is that okay for Nigerians?
It can never be okay. May God Almighty judge labour leaders in this country according to the dictates of their conscience?? It was a satanic decision. Nigerians have died, people sacrificed their lives and blood just because they want a reversal? to #65.00.
People have been sleeping outside their houses, on the road because they wanted government to reverse it. Some people’s economic power can never be okay again because labour took us on a rampage strike.?
What some people lost economically can never be recovered. Why allow poor Nigerians go through pains, agony and later turn around to have a macabre dance? Labour tied the negotiation to the neck of the NEC. They said only the NEC can suspend the strike. Unfortunately without calling a NEC meeting, labour unceremoniously agreed to accept #97.00. I was in all the rallies with the president of NLC and TUC on daily basis.
In fact Omar was invoking the name of the almighty Allah if he will agree to anything less than #65.00.? But somehow the same people dancing and sweating went home and changed their labour attire. Esele was dressed like a bride; I have never seen him looking so immaculate and cosmopolitan.? He was dressed like a bride that was going to be wedded just to announce to Nigerians that, they have accepted #97.00.
Why do you think they accepted that?
I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t have celestial power to read minds. But whatever motivated them to take this satanic decision on behalf of Nigerian people, they are happy with it. Throughout the protest, Esele was dressed in combats. But the day he was going to address Nigerians after they have accepted the #97.00, after a presidential handshake with the minister of finance and the president, he? was dressed to the nines in a very expensive outfit. From afar you will mistake him for a bank MD.
The civil society will not take this; we will do everything possible within the ambit of the law to compel the federal government to revert back to #65.00.you will start seeing us on the street by God’s grace soon.
But security have been told to arrest anybody that continues the protest?
We cannot be afraid of soldiers. It is better to be killed fighting poverty than to die sitting in poverty. There is a popular saying that, in an unjust society, silence is a crime. I am not going to be intimidated or cajoled by soldiers being around. In the first instance, it is criminal for soldiers to be on the streets because they are not trained to handle civil disobedience. We are not at war and unfortunately, if the president has mobilized the kind of soldiers he did between Sunday and now, he would have ended Boko Haram. Boko Haram would have become history. In the heat of the Boko Haram attack on the force headquarters, the UN building and the attack on a church in Madallah, we did not see theses number of soldiers on the street.
What is your take on the two committees that were set up to oversee the subsidy funds?
That is an ‘Owambe’ committee. It is not different from any other committee that has been set up in the past. Let me give you an analysis, there was privatisation and commercialisation in the past. They said there will be enough money when we privatize. Indeed we privatise, what are the gains of that action? What did we do with the money that we released from all the privatisation of all our infrastructures? What they are proposing by subsidy will bring growth but not development, growth plus change gives you development.
Development is when, people who were drinking from the well before are now using pipe borne water. Then they brought monetisation. There is so much wastage in the system. Let’s monetise. We want the federal government to tell Nigerians what happened to the monies realized from the sales of government properties. The same Okonjo-Iweala sold a dummy to us during the Obasanjo administration, that if we spend so-so amount of money, we will get debt forgiveness that once we have that, the office of the MDG will be established and all the monies we have been using in servicing our debt will be used to build railways, hospitals, good health can so on.
Most Nigerians are not against subsidy removal but the timing is their problem. When do you think will be appropriate to deregulate the sector?
From my myopic point of view, it is not about timing. It has nothing to do with timing but the insensitivity of government over our populace. We have the Boko Haram situation that government has failed to handle despite the billions of naira that has gone into security. We had a bomb attack on a church; government is yet to apprehend those behind the dastardly act. The president has not even addressed a press conference to commiserate with the families of Nigerian who have lost their loved ones which is as a result of their inadequacy.
There are two things government must provide for its citizens which is food and security. In Nigeria today, there is no food and there is no security. In the midst of these short comings, you have the effrontery to unleash subsidy on Nigerians by unceremoniously hiking the price of Pms. What Nigeria is losing to corruption is about five times more than what they are trying to remove from subsidy.