PROFESSOR Julius Ihonvbere, the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Programmes Monitoring is a man that speaks his mind without caring whose ox is gored as long as he believes in such a cause or struggle. Recently, he fired a salvo at his constituency, the civil society, over the manner they were attacking his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo and some of them replied.
In this interview, he lets Sunday Vanguard into why he spoke the way he did and more importantly, he explained why the reform agenda of the government appears like a bitter pill, but concludes that it is a medicine that will heal the country.
Attack on civil society:
I will not say it is bashing as such, but that is my constituency. That is where I come from and I have no regret about that , I still belong to that constituency and I know the work that I am doing within government is in the interest of the civil society and I intend to keep doing that.
The question of auto-criticism or internal criticism can only come from people who understand the workings of civil society and my credentials in that sector are very clear; as a student , as a teacher, as an activist and someone who spent over 11 years in exile, not because I killed somebody or stole money or anything, but for fighting for social justice and the interest of the Nigerian people. May be in some context, some of the words I have used have been found to be a little harsh or tough on civil society, but it is essentially what is called tough love.
Basically, it is my responsibility, my duty, my historical duty to encourage the civil society on the strategies and tactics of moving forward in a changing socio-political environment. Even before I came back here, when I was at the Ford, I was part of that effort with Olisa Agabkoba and I know that they got money from Ford Foundation to have a conference on how do you re-tool, how do you begin to work effectively in a democratic context.
You might not like whoever is in power or the party in power, but the structures of governance , of democracy are in place and there is a challenge before us on how do we not continue to look irresponsible or disorganized or ineffective, but to garner our experiences, our exposure, our networks and our methods of work in the interest of the people. And what they should do essentially in my view is to take a step back, look at the state, understand the strength and weaknesses and where we are coming from.
Then determine what are going to be the best entry points, what are the best level of political engagements of the system, what are the critical issues that we want to emphasize and what are the priorities in our political programme. So that we take those things that are immediate, medium term and longer term in the interest of the Nigerian people.
I did not see this happening and rather in my view, we are still using the old language, the old strategies which I know are not going to work. Instead, what will happen is that we will alienate everybody. In a democratic system, civil society must have strategies for penetrating the National Assembly, where is it? And we have our people there. Sola Adeyeye is in the House, Abdul Oroh is in the House.
Sola Adeyeye and I, he was secretary of the United Democratic Front of Nigeria and Soyinka is the chairman, I am the vice-chairman, still the vice chairman. We were on Radio Kudirat together, he is in the House of Representatives. What kind of support are we giving to him so that he can continue to raise civil society issues. There are many people who struggled with us but were not in the vanguard.
We did not see them on a daily basis, but we knew they made sacrifices. They contributed money. Many of them are in the National Assembly, how are we going to engage these people. Now in the second term of the president, you can say half of the people there are human rights and pro-democracy activists people who believe in social justice, transparency and accountability, who want to fight a war against corruption, even if it means taking their own lives. How many meetings have we had with these people? What programme have we presented before them?
The art of lobbying is the corner stone of democratic politics in any liberal democracy. Where is our strategy in this regard? So, these are the issues we are trying to raise. To say, let us come together and see how best we can address the issues. Constitutional review? Sure, we believe in it. If you have been listening to the president’s speeches , you will notice a clear shift now in terms of our openness and willingness to work with the civil society to move the country forward. He has anchored the future of his country in the people of Nigeria.
Look at the Ministry of Finance, Due Process, EFCC, FCT, the critical elements and governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. I know Charles Soludo before he came to Nigeria. And these are people who are ready for change, how many meetings have we had with these people on how we can help them to be more effective, how we can protect them from the vampires of the economy who took us to where are today.
Reform Agenda:
I want to appeal to Nigerians to try and see the truth, see the light and understand the issues. They want to enjoy benefits of good government , they have to realize that it cost money and time. All the policies of the government in its reform agenda are designed to empower the Nigerian people. But nobody ever said that there would be no pain. Those who are criticizing the government the most are those whose undeserved privileges have been taken away. And for those people, we have no apologies. People who were used to making money for doing nothing, that is why we have over 20,000 abandoned projects. And you know we are beginning to take the contractors to court irrespective of who they are.
The truth of the matter is that there is not room in Abuja where government officials sit down to say how do we make life difficult for the Nigerian people. No, what kind of government will that be. But if we want change, if we want progress, if we want to move forward, we have to stop doing things the wrong way.
We have been abandoning it for 25 years. If you have 28,000 workers in Ministry of Works and all road contracts are awarded to private contractors, what are the 28,000 workers doing. In your family, in every N1, you make 80-85 kobo of the only N1 you make is meant to buy beer and pay overhead and services and service cars, how are you going to buy furniture, take your children to school, then take care of your health , etcetera.
That is what is happening to the Federal Government. And we are saying it does not work that way. If the FCT discovers 5,000 ghost workers, somebody has been collecting the money over the years. How is the FCT ever going to survive in that way. Why do you want to keep giving houses to people who are already privileged? You give him a car, you give him a driver, you buy the petrol for the car, you give him a house, you pay his telephone bill and they are making phone calls to their children abroad. Go and look at how much the Federal Government owes NITEL.
The issue we are simply saying is that reform has never come easy to any country, there is a cost, there would be pains but I believe that Nigerians have to be patient, they have to support the agenda because the longer term interest of this country is to cut waste, to cut inefficiency, to cut corruption and to cut misplaced priorities. And unless people support this kind of agenda, we will be back to square one while a few people corner the wealth of the nation, build mansions, stock the money in foreign bank accounts and the masses of the people have nothing. There is no place in the world and I challenge anybody to show me one example of where you made reforms for the better and there were no costs.
Why Nigerians pay more for petrol:
There are two issues- one is a simplistic one. Whatever money is made from petrol price does not go into the pocket or bank account of Obasanjo. The excess crude money is shared by all the states for them to deploy to providing the basic needs of the people.
I do not get free petrol from anywhere as special adviser, I buy my own petrol at the price that is put by government and I do not get any allowance for my petrol. So even government people are not shielded from it, we must get the facts clear. Second, we are paying for the indiscipline of the past. For a country that produces oil not to be able to maintain its refineries and those who got the Turn-Around Maintenance contracts are Nigerians.
The president has said only a stupid farmer continues to subsidize failure. We have failed in refinery and he is not going to put more money into it. We have given 22 licenses to Nigerians and non-Nigerians to build refineries, where are they? I do not share the view that in so far as we continue to import petroleum products, the refineries will never work because those who sabotaged the refineries are the people who import fuel.
Now if private people come in and build refineries- I have received close to 10- 15 foreign investors who want to build refineries, I have taken them all directly to the president and the president told them right there, come in, we will give you all the support and that is the solution - to build refineries that will refine our products to stop the importation of these products. But the point is that we can say we are still subsidizing it.
As at today, as we sit here, the NNPC is still subsidizing petroleum products in this country. In any society, there is no product whose price has remained constant in the last five - 10 years. Why are we talking only about petrol, must petrol remain constant just because we produce it. But you know why it is critical -you see, for you to understand the damage that has been done to this country, I think government has not done enough to let Nigerians know this.
Problem with new refineries:
Well, first of all, the investors said the cost of refining here and selling the product would be much higher than the cost at which it was being sold and so it did not make any economic sense. And that is why they were not building the refineries -that is just the simple truth.
However, now that some deregulation is taking place, they are beginning to come in to build because of the 22 licenses given out, we know some of them are already bringing in equipment, doing feasibility and bringing in other foreign partners. So I have a feeling that in two, three, four years, we would be on. The technology of a refinery is not like it used to be, you can build a refinery in six months, seven months, 18 months, it depends on the size of the refinery, there are mobile refineries. You can move it from place to place.
The president has liberalized the sector, whoever wants to build a refinery today in Nigeria can come in and get license . what more can the government do? But please, note the damage Nigerians have done to Nigeria. Cement , paper mills, hotels, airlines, shipping lines, fertilizer, you name it, everything that government invested billions of naira in were ruined by Nigerians. They criminally looted these things and ran them down and we are paying for it because some of them owe salaries of between eight months to three years, not to talk of pension and other allowances.
N25 billion capital base for banks:
It is put in place for the banks to sit up. The strongest bank in Nigeria is the weaker than the weakest bank in Malaysia. It is a third world country like us. Go to South Africa and see the strength and capacity of the banks. There are banks in this country in the last five years that have not given one loan for agriculture or industry. All they do is manipulate COT, foreign exchange and interest rates. I was on a panel that investigated African Petroleum and the basic problems with AP, was their relationship with the banks.
Many of them voluntarily returned over N3billion to AP of over charges, illegal charges, unfair charges, inflated COT, you name it, roll over or whatever they call it which is one of the ways they make illegal money. So , all we are simply saying is, it is not to the benefit of Nigerians to proliferate banks in every nook and cranny. The overhead of many of the banks is scandalous. Salaries they pay to their chief executive for infrastructure, for buildings, etcetera but they do very limited banking.
There are banks in the country that survive only on government money. And many banks are corrupting the system, they are parasatals that have 20 bank accounts because you go there and they would say bring your money here, we do this, we would do this with you. All the government is saying is, let us have real banks-banks that are focused, that are stable, that you can put your money and go to sleep, it will not go under. The president gave an example, he had money with one bank, he went to prison, he came out and the bank was gone with all his money. And when he went there, they said they would give him N50,000. what kind of bank is that.
Power shift in Edo:
The issue is this, we are in a democracy and everyone has a right to present an agenda for the future. Power moves to those who organize for it, who set up a proper network and present an agenda. So you cannot just sit down and say power should shift to you. You have to show that you need power and when you get power, you will use it to help the state, help the people and help the nation. And I think that our agenda today is how do we ensure that in the true spirit of democracy, in the true spirit of the PDP constitution that recognizes zoning and so on, that things are done the right way.
