SURE-P, waste of funds –Salami
JUNE 2, 2013
Senator Bayo Salami
In this interview with TUNDE ODESOLA, a former Vice-Chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Steel and Water Resources, and leading member of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Senator Bayo Salami, speaks on the clamour for true federalism and the mounting challenge of governance
What is your opinion of governance in Nigeria?
Upon the country’s return to democracy in 1999, everybody thought we were going to practise true federalism but we never did. When you talk about true federalism, you are talking about optimising individualism in each Nigerian; you are talking about moving away from the unitary system of government. The problem with us today is that we are neither practising federalism nor the unitary system of government. What does the centre represent? Whose interest does the centre represent? The centre represents an aggregation of the states. Once a president emerges, he is the president of Nigeria and not the president of any political party. If you want to construct a federal road in Osun for example, all the Federal Government needs to do is to agree on the design and other structural considerations and channel down the money to the state concerned instead of giving in to a consultant from another state. It is high time we began to think outside the box if we want to make progress in this country.
If Nigeria continues with the way we are going, we may be far from achieving what we desire. It is pointless for the Federal Government to deny Lagos State the authority to distribute electricity. A government that knows the importance of electricity to socio-economic growth will not mind who provides it, will not politicise such an essential commodity. Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, has demonstrated that he has the capacity to work outside the box through his numerous projects. He has called his government an unusual administration. We need urgent measures by the government to stem the slide into disorder and chaos.
How much of this change did you bring about when you were in the National Assembly between 1999 and 2003?
When we went into the National Assembly in 1999, we went with so much hope that it was a new beginning after the late Gen. Sani Abacha’s iron-fisted rule. Nigerians had so much hope that we were having a new start and that things would change for the better but at the end of the day, we discovered that not much had been achieved. We achieved so little because of the retrogressive governance we practise in Abuja. We pay lip service to practising federalism but there is no country in the world where democracy is practised the way we do in Nigeria.
In which areas would you say Osun State is performing differently from other states?
I don’t want to sound partisan, arrogant or immodest. But if the truth must be told, Aregbesola has taken Osun to an unimaginable level in a very short time. Every part of Osun is being developed simultaneously.
Osun is now a huge construction site, where all manner of infrastructural development is going on. An Osogbo indigene visited home last month and he couldn’t recognise the Old Garage because the whole place has been transformed. When he alighted from the bus at Old Garage, he asked people around that he had alighted mistakenly but he was told that he was in Old Garage. Osun began the O-Yes scheme (Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme) in which 20,000 youths were employed in its first year.
Another 20,000 have been employed in the second year. Oyo State later came up with its own Yes-O and I was in Lagos last week when I saw A-Yes; it was Abia Youth Empowerment Scheme. This is the beauty of democracy and true federalism – when you see something good being done by a state, you can replicate it in yours in so far as it answers a yearning of the people. This happened in the Second Republic when states competed to serve the people.
But the Federal Government too has the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme… (Cuts in)
The Federal Government is not a serious government; there is no need for the Federal Government to engage in Sure-P. The Federal Government should replicate Sure-P through the state governments. We create unnecessary replications in this country and waste so much money, manpower and time. There is the possibility that we wouldn’t have all these insurgences that we have around if we got our acts together. In areas where poverty is prevalent, you find insurgence. When you look at the indices of poverty in Borno and you look at insurgence in the state, you will know that it is not a coincidence. You cannot solve the problem of poverty unless you give people education and gainful employment. There is a correlation between what is happening in Nigeria and poverty. Solve the problem of poverty and all other things will fall into place.
The opposition has criticised the Osun State Government over the enormity of infrastructural projects going on in the state at the same time, saying the government is biting more than it can chew. Do you agree?
The greatest gift you can give to any human being is hope. When a human being does not have hope, his situation is worthless. What this government has given to the people of Osun is hope. The greatest gift of this administration is hope in all ramifications. Our youths now know that they cannot wake up in the morning and start thinking of what to do for the day. I was amazed by the O-YES programme. I’m sure when they were drawing that 20,000 youth empowerment scheme, little did the implementers knew that there was no facility in the whole of Nigeria where 20,000 people could sit for a training. Upon realising this, they toyed with the idea of training about 7,000 in each of the three senatorial districts of the state but they soon discovered that this was not feasible too. Subsequently, they had to resort to training the 20,000 cadets in the 30 local government councils of the state. They are given N10,000 monthly. Some people call this money stipend. But of you multiply 20,000 by N10,000, that is N200m injected directly into the economy of the state monthly.
This is not the kind of money people earn and go to Ibadan or Lagos to spend because you have to use it to provide for yourself in your locality. Such money will circulate within the state. There is O-Reap which is government’s intervention in rural agriculture empowerment. We have O-Schools initiative, which is massive reconstruction and development of the education sector. The way the state government checked flooding, which had swept people and goods away during the Olagunsoye Oyinlola administration, was astonishing. Flooding was completely checked and people did not have to panic during rainfall anymore.
What’s your view about the issue of insecurity in the country?
The essence of government is to ensure the security of lives and property. The Boko Haram menace and militancy emanated from poverty. If you have a wrong leader at the helm of affairs for eight years in a state, the effect of the ineffective eight-year rule might not be noticeable during the period. Without mentioning names, this was what happened in Borno State and the spiral effect is all over the country today. I want you to go and look at Borno State in the last 20 years; a government came in for eight years doing nothing and what you have has affected the whole country. The menace first started in Borno and now Yobe. Yobe was created from Borno, it later spread to Gombe. As long as you have one central police, Nigerians will not be protected.
In the United States, New York has its own police different from the police of Maryland. There are some areas where they can’t afford the police, but they still have sheriffs. Each state government should have its own police.
This is the essence of community policing. As long as you are going to have an instruction from the Inspector-General of the Police in Abuja, Nigerians will continue to live in fear of insecurity. Yes, some people would say that when Nigeria had local police in the past, they were misused. The question to ask such people is: Should the government jeopardise the security of 160 million Nigerians because one man at the helm of affairs in a state is going to misuse the police? Another point is that an individual could only rule a state for a maximum of eight years, so he has only eight years to have control of the police. After eight years, he is open to investigation and the wrath of the law. The law will take its course eventually. If one or two governors who misused the police are jailed, others will sit up. We should not personalise government.
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