OLADIPUPO AWOJOB 
It’s been one year since President Bola Tinubu got into office, how would you describe his economic policies, especially the removal of fuel subsidy and floating of naira?
We have to thank God that there is nascent enthronement of democracy in Nigeria; God did not allow our nation to experience war despite the crises that we have had. President Bola Tinubu was at the forefront to ensure that democracy comes back to Nigeria. However, Tinubu inherited a trailer load of problems, but some of the problems did not start today. The ones from the immediate past administration are the worst in recent times.
The major ones are the economic problems that have been mounting over the years. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo met some money and squandered it, same goes for former president Goodluck Jonathan, and former president Muhammadu Buhari.
Even Buhari almost met an empty treasury, he deepened it more. Tinubu inherited many problems and it will take time for him or for this administration to solve them. Let’s start with the removal of fuel subsidy, a lot of people thought it a misdeed, but that was the saving grace of this administration.
How do you mean?
There was no provision for fuel subsidy in the 2023 budget. You must have budgetary allocation for any money before you spend it. The budget of the coming year would be passed in the preceding year, I can tell you that there was no allocation for fuel in the 2023 budget. If there was, it stopped in June 2023. All the economic analysts had been saying that fuel subsidy would kill us, so a proactive government would know what to do about it.
The removal of fuel subsidy is good for us, but many people misconstrued it. One, the major marketers and independent marketers of fuel products saw it as an opportunity to inflate prices of fuel products. They felt it was an opportunity to make money before the administration settled down, and that is African mentality. Most people that think like this don’t help us to solve our problems; they only make them to degenerate. Our political differences do not also help matters.
But that is normal, we will have political differences…
It is not normal; it is abnormal in a socialised environment. But there will always be different political parties…
I am not talking about political parties, our political differences in the sense that they felt that since Tinubu has made such pronouncements, they should add more to it that his administration is bad. The pot would be calling the kettle black.
That is what the Obedient people and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were doing, thinking that they want to sink the person in power not knowing that they are sinking the country. The argument was that the removal of fuel subsidy should have been gradual… You must know what fuel subsidy is all about; who are the beneficiaries, where is it coming from and where is it going and of what benefit is it to Nigerians? It’s doing more harm than helping the masses.
Imagine the marketers buying fuel at a particular amount and the government is telling them not to inflate the price that they should bring it down so that the masses can benefit from it. But a lot of people in the corridors of power used it to enrich themselves even when some of them didn’t have offices. You could not point to anything they imported, they only put it on paper and the government would be paying money.
Can’t the government sanitise the system?
It is not possible, how many times have they tried to put the refineries in order and the people at the helm of affairs don’t allow them to work? Do you know how many billions of naira the government has spent to make the refineries work? It is some of these people that are the beneficiaries of the subsidy regime that would not allow it to work.
Have you listened to the Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Gen. Sanni Abacha, Al Mustapha, who said that people would just come up with expenses and get money for the things they would not do. What President Tinubu has done is in order, it’s for us to sit down and ask that how do we support the govern- ment to achieve their aims. But instead of supporting the government they are making life harder for the masses.
They think that they are running Tinubu down. The effect of non-proactiveness of the past government on economic development is what has led us to the situation we find ourselves now. Many who understand governance and economic issues know that we are doing well in terms of economic recovery. Re- moval of fuel subsidy has made us to pay debts that would have amounted to several millions of dollars. Once you can pay your debts, then you are recovering, and we will get there gradually.
Talking about security we discovered that we are yet to get there, there are still kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism, what do you think the government should do to make security better in Nigeria?
We are the problems of ourselves, when a government comes to power, they would have done checks and balances, there are some areas where the military has failed and areas where they have passed. The miscreants, kidnappers, and others live among us, do we help the government to identify them?
Even it was discovered that some military personnel give them information that they are coming around. There are some people in the country, who don’t want the nation to succeed. You see a lot of people from Hausa speaking neighbouring countries infiltrating our government. That is part of the security lapses that we have, we allow them because of the language they speak. Even some of them have found their way into the government because of their language and religion.
Don’t you think the government should re-strategise?
Our border is porous and there is nothing that can be put in place to checkmate the bandits coming through the boundaries and bush paths. When you have conquered the bandits in a particular place, like Gombe, do you put anything in place to stop them from coming back? We don’t do that, rather they would leave there and go to another place, and those people would come back.
There is no system in place to ensure surveillance and checks and balances, so we need to do more. Also, our military personnel, don’t they sell us out, don’t they look at religion, language and ethnicity to support the bandits. Also, our political differences make us to see the people in power as enemies.
When somebody gets to power instead of supporting the person, we pull him down. We embrace pull him down syndrome and say he must go down. You can see the Obedient people, for about six months, when Tinubu got to power, they wanted him to fail. They forgot that once he fails, he would not be the only one, everybody would fail and we will all suffer for it.
What of our federalism, it is more like unitary system of government. The United States of America that we copy has state police; each state has a Supreme Court, and others, what is the best way to practice federalism in Nigeria?
Federalism is good, but we only embrace the aspect we want to practice. Federalism is about all the aspects of the country working, that is more or less regional governments. But we want to bring everything to the centre and they would now be sent to the states. In the days of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello, and Tafawa Balewa, we had regional governments.
We had different geo-political zones; Western Region, Eastern Re- gion and the Northern Region. They controlled their resources and took a token to the centre. But because of our political immaturity, we were unable to trust ourselves; we felt everything should go to the centre. Also, due to our political inclination, we believe that the North is backward and they cannot measure up to other regions. But that is not true, the Hausas have gone far more than the South.
In what areas?
In many areas, you see a lot of them in the federal ministries, in the past it used to be South Easterners. When our people went to the universities to study medicine, law and others, they studied other courses to take over the administration of the country. When you look at it, we now said that let’s bring everything to the centre so that development can spread all over.
For instance, they practice Sharia in the North, where they don’t allow alcohol, but in the South, we drink alcohol to stupor, and the North gets the larger share of the VAT from it, so, who is wiser? We said we are practising unitary system of government, we are not practicing either unitary or true federalism; we are in-between. What we should have done is to organise a constitutional conference, where everybody would come and discuss.. We should tell ourselves how we want to rule ourselves.
But we did that several times and we had one in 2014?
No, when we did that, we were not truthful, it was for selected people. We should allow people to send their representatives. Yes, the government can appoint some people, but people should come from the grassroots with what they have been told by their people. If we have not done that, we are deceiving ourselves.
Are you advising President Tinubu to organise another constitutional conference?
Yes, but that should not be now, it should be when he comes back for second term. There are a lot of things to be addressed in the first term, once he has been able to put the country on the right path, then we will see if he can help us to ‘jaw jaw’ than to ‘war war.
What is your view on state police?
State police is good whereby the security of the states would be the responsibility of the state governments and they would be serious with it. But when it comes to politics it is bad because it can be used to witch-hunt perceived political enemies. You can see what is happening in the case of former governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State.
Assuming there is state police, he would be in that state and the state government would not allow the police to arrest him, and we would not be able to know if he actually did what they said he did. There would be scared cows and they would violate human rights with impunity. If there is a connection between the federal and state police it would be good. The state police would be checkmated by the federal police.
That is the way it is in the USA. The federal police are superior to the state police. The local governments have their own police and the state police is superior to the local police.
Can we practice it too?
We can, but we have to be politically mature for it. But now, we are not, one other thing is that a situation where one party wins an election and we don’t want someone from the other party to be part of the government should stop.
For example, former governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, is a member of the PDP. If the government finds him useful, he should continue to be there and let his party be proud of him. He would even want to perform better than the ministers from the APC and this is a challenge and everybody would be on his or her toes, which is the beauty of democracy.
