Senator Abdullahi Adamu represents Nassarawa West in the Senate and is the? Chairman, Senate Committee on Solid Minerals, in this interview with Ruth Choji, the former governor reveals some of the issues that have bedeviled the mineral and agricultural sectors of the economy.
In your opinion, would you say the Senate has lived up to expectations?
Well, it is a matter of the side of the coin on which you are. I’m a member of the 7th Senate, and to the best of my knowledge, we have done our best, given the circumstances we operate with. I will not say we have done all that we set out to achieve at the beginning of the session. We may not have done enough to satisfy the legitimate expectations of Nigerians, but we have done the best circumstances permitted.
What should Nigerians expect from the Senate when they reconvene from the recess, is there any particular agenda?
There is nothing like setting an agenda. However, there are issues on the front banner for the Senate to work with. It is on record that the ad-hoc committee of the Senate charged with the responsibility of working on the constitutional review will bring their proposal to the Senate for consideration when the committee completes its work.
There are other various committees; standing committees, whose reports will either be submitted on resumption, or those reports that are already being submitted will be lined up for debate. Our plate is full, and we therefore are very busy. Over and above these, the Senate will continue to receive and debate executive bills and private members bills as is the convention of every legislature.
Before the recess, the House of Representatives threatened to impeach the President if he doesn’t implement the budget in full by September, and there were also reports that the Senate might likely support them. How true are these reports?
As far as I know, there was no such issue before the Senate and the House. And I will not just sit here and preempt the Senate. I’m not aware that anybody in the House is threatening to impeach the president. They just wanted to get some clarification from the executive, and you, the press, started talking about impeachment. From my understanding of what I read in the papers, it is clear that it was just the creation of the media.
You mentioned the constitution review, there are renewed agitations for the total cancellation of the joint state and local government account. As a former governor, would you support that?
The problem we often have in this country is that, we use bad examples as basis for change in policies for general application. I think that is very bad. People have been talking about executive governors having so much authority over local government councils. If there has been any governor or governors who have played the game according to the rules laid down in the constitution and whatever laws, nobody talks about him or the good part of governance.
People only talk about the bad things that have happened, and that is really unfortunate. In as much as it is good for us to have a continuous evaluation of what public officers are doing, where there are bad policies that have impacted negatively on the populace, it is good to highlight such failures and take measures to correct them.
No public officer in this country receives the kind of bashing that state governors receive… We give the impression also that Nigeria is the most corrupt country. I subscribe 100 per cent that those who do wrong should be held accountable for their misdeed in office, to serve as deterrent to others. Look at the revelation from the executive and the federal service.
But, I appreciate that the governors are also strategically located. They are presumed to be powerful, and I cannot but appreciate the intensity of ambition by senators, House of Representatives?? and other categories of interested persons from the private sector who have tendered to make the office of the governor an easy and vulnerable target…
So, I believe that there is more of the negative talk about local government. If they want to give local government autonomy, fine. But the constitution has given state legislature the jurisdiction to make laws for the good governance of local governments in its entire ramification. The same constitution makes the governor the chief executive office of the state.
We must not easily forget the hue and cries from the First Republic, when local government was strictly under the authority of the regional government. There were all regional leaders of local government system, including the local government police. The country is there for all to see and weigh the difference in the agitations today as compare to the agitations during the First Republic.
Northern governors are agitating for a review of the sharing formula, would you support such moves?
I very much do. We cannot postpone taking a hard look at fiscal federalism in Nigeria. There is a lot of distortion. The existing revenue sharing formula and the administration of fiscal policies will appear to me to be inherently lopsided in a manner that has placed some parts of the country in incurable state. And this is not just simply that of North and South divide. There are parts of the South that are as disadvantaged as the North.
But why won’t the northern governors harness the natural resources they have in their states?
Nobody is denying that, but what has the Federal Government done overtime to really come to the point where they have tried? There is no oil in the North. Out of desperation, a northern governor has gone to invite neighbouring Niger to help with the exploration of oil.
Yes, northern states could do so, but when oil was found in the South-South, which was part and parcel of the Eastern Region, it was not that region (East) that foot the bill for the initial exploration. It was the Federal Government in collaboration with interested foreign oil companies that foot the bills… Now, which federal administration would say that much effort was spared to explore oil or solid minerals in the North? Why this different standard?
What is your take on state police creation?
I have made up my mind deliberately not to comment on state police, because it is now becoming a subject of blackmail.
The raining season is coming to an end, and Nigerian farmers are complaining of not having access to fertiliser. Is it that the new federal government policies on Agriculture have failed?
I would not want to dismiss the policies of the Federal Government on agriculture. The minister has just been in office for one year and some few months, and when he went to the ministry, the problems he met there were not his creation. He has to understand them and how to navigate over them; he has to take everything to his boss, for certain decision that can be taken.
Every policy you bring to bear on a system requires time to be implemented and gestation to be realised. So, it is too premature to pass a judgement. I admit that this year, distribution of fertilisers has been a failure. I am a farmer of more than 20 years standing. As I talk, the system through which I was supposed to get fertilisers failed me. And so failed millions of farmers across the country.
From my investigations, the failure cannot justifiably be blamed on the minster. I didn’t receive one single fertiliser from the state administration to buy or from the input suppliers. I bought my fertilisers from the market. The banks agreed to finance the procurement of farming input including fertilisers, but they failed, and so, the new policy suffered. People couldn’t access fertilisers, because the banks could not come up with the finances that were required to get the input supplied.
What then happened to the N200 billion agricultural credit scheme. Has that money been distributed, and why is there nothing to show for it?
Our mistake here is that, we treat agriculture with the same perception that we handle commerce; buying and selling. With agriculture, if you are lucky to get a loan, if you miss one month of the planting season, it can have a devastating effect on your produce, not to talk of a loan that was released in the month of September or October. The other thing is, where the farmer has a loan and he is required to buy equipment. Most of this equipment is not in Nigeria.
He has to order them from Europe or Far East. By the time they get here, it takes more time to clear them, and haulage to wherever his farm is located. Then, he will install the equipment and start using them. So, by the time you go through this scenario, the farming season would have gone off. Sometimes, more than one farming season is lost.
So, if a person has a loan, one year or two years will not be enough. So, to access and evaluate the success of these funds in terms of food production require time. We are using different indices for evaluating agriculture. There is gestation period where you harvest, plant and go to the market.
It is not like buying and selling. So, I believe that the funds you are talking about, up to about last year, it was still being disbursed. I know as a fact that, some have not even been in receipt of equipment or plants that they have bought as at the time of this discussion.
But what are really the problems of the agricultural sector, why is it that Nigeria cannot feed herself?
The fact of the matter is that, the policies might not have been right from the onset. We seemed to have veered off from the path that gave us practical results in food production. Hitherto from post independence period to the First Republic, the regional governments were wholly responsible for agricultural production; they determined what they wanted in terms of agriculture, the quantum they needed for each produce, they made an identification as to which part of the region of the country might produce what crop better, they knew the personnel and research required.
Up to that point, there was only a department in the Ministry of Economic Planning of the Federal Government that was developing general policies guideline for promoting agriculture, and the regional governments queued along the lines of those policies and ensured that set annual targets of production in various aspects of agricultural produce were achieved.
From the demise of the First Republic, resulting from military intervention, the Federal Government got a bit overzealous with the vertical command philosophy by taking deliberate steps for the creation of a full fledge ministry of agriculture. The outcome of this singular step is partly responsible for the misfortune that befalls agriculture up to this point.
Are you saying that the regional arrangement is better than what we have now?
Yes, that is why we keep referring to them. We talk about the pyramid, the cocoa and the rest; go to every part of the country and you will see carcasses or ghost of institutions or agricultural programmes initiated under Dr. Michael Opara, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Chief Osadebe and Sir Ahmadu Bello. The question, simply put, is what positive difference have we made since their passing away?
Back to your committee, it was recently reported that Nigerian solid minerals contribute just one per cent to the GDP, why is that sector still in comatose?
The problem is, there has never been any serious policies to harness it. We only talk about it. We are not working our talking. There is so much talk about agriculture; we have everything that any nation could hope for.
To develop the sector, what would we need?
We need to first find out what we have got. To some degree, it has been discovered, but how much there is, we don’t have the quantum. But in general terms, we know the mineral resources that are in existence. We must be able to develop the manpower for tapping these resources that we can link up with investors that may come.
We must provide basic infrastructure that might precede the exploration; like rural roads and rail lines. We need energy and water, and until we do these, nobody will come with any serious proposal, because nobody will come if you can’t provide water for him when there are other countries that have these facilities.
Nobody will come here and provide you energy because he wants to explore your resources, when there are many countries that have it in place. If you go to stock exchange everywhere in the world, you will not see Nigeria’s mineral resources, except maybe in Canada.
Nassarawa State used to be a PDP stronghold, how did the CPC take over the mantle?
It is an unfortunate development that we lost the governorship during the last elections in 2011. After a close look and evaluation of the situation, it was clearly a protest by the electorate. It was a protest against us and our government, and we have seen this. It is our desire to take every step conceivable to try to reassert the followership of the PDP.
?