Bayelsa State Deputy Governor, Dr.Jonathan Goodluck, was recently reported to have said that Nigerian politicians particularly the governors are corrupt. The commentary gained so attention that a particular newspaper wrote an editorial on it. In this interview, Goodluck Jonathan refutes the statement credited to him just as he talked on some national issues.
How true is this story credited to you that all politicians and governors are corrupt?
This is the more reason why I am tempted to take some particular papers to court. I never mentioned the word governors, never. I have the tape of what I said at the function, the bank, Fidelity Bank, whose function I attended, also has the tape. So, when we go to court, the two tapes would be presented . That day’s publication came out on the 26th of October but the dummy of that publication was already in circulation 25th October and distributed in and outside this country. There was another article that was to appear November 1st, the dummy of that article was also already in circulation before it was published November 1st.
I addressed two issues that day at the Fidelity Bank function. As a politician, you cannot go to a function and talk randomly, whatever you say must have some form relationship with what is being done. And since it was a bank function and there was this feeling that politicians are siphoning money . It is only here in Nigeria that people carry cartons load of hard currency. Pounds, dollars , Dutch Mark, these are currencies that you cannot just go and carry in bundles there. And I know that the bulk of the foreign exchange pass through the Central and the Commercial banks, the real currency, dollars, pounds, Dutch Mark and others pass through and if you listen to the tape which of course at the appropriate time will be played before the appropriate authorities, I used the word we. I never said some of us.
If I said some of us, I am exonerating myself and I am talking to others. But I said we politicians are being accused of siphoning money abroad. We are even being regarded as common criminals. I was using the word we. And if it was true that we are siphoning money abroad, that meant that the Central and Commercial banks should take 60% of the blame and we should take 40% because more than 60% of foreign exchange transactions take place through the banks, so if we have micro economic policy that would stop people from carrying this kind of money, it will be good. Central bank can come up with policy to regulate this.
I then moved on to another issue by saying that to raise N25 billion is a problem to so many of our banks and that I listened to Prof. Charles Soludo making a comment that there is a bank in South Africa whose total capital of the bank is 50 billion dollars and he said all the banks in Nigeria, the total capital base is N25 billion. So, I said but if you compare the volume of money we earn monthly in this country, N25 billion would not have been a problem to any of our commercial banks but the problem is that at the end of the month, all our monies are carried abroad through capital flight. Though I did not enumerate that the capital flight I was talking about is through the oil industry whose local content is very low.
The local content for now is less 5%. So every N1billion you invest in the oil industry, it is just about N50 million that is spent in Nigeria for small contract, salaries, public relations and few others while about 950 million is spent out of this country. The Federal and State Government, most of our big civil engineering contracts are handled by foreign based contractors, the company may be registered in Nigeria but the owners of these companies are outside and because economy is not stable, these foreigners that do business here do not keep their money here. So, I said at the end of the month, we, the State and Federal Government pay contractors which of course leads to capital flight.
So, I said any money we earn goes abroad. But I learnt that the newspaper reporter said he had me on tape. I can tell you that no reporter had me on tape. At least if they were so interested in the story, they could have got in touch with me through my press secretary that we want him to expatiate on what he said. But they published the untrue story which only corroborated what the Minister of Finance and the State Minister were saying that governors were diverting their state allocations abroad and that was why there was pressure on foreign exchange at the end of every month. We sent rejoinder to all the newspapers, all of them used it except one which did not use it and they even went further to do an editorial out of the said story. That is rather too bad.
Not many Nigerians are happy with the Federal Government’s on going reforms?
The Federal Government has good intentions for the people. The only thing about the reforms is that Nigerians are skeptical about the reforms and it is so because in the political history of this country reforms have been coming and the people have been sacrificing and at the end of the day, they didn’t see any positive impact of the reforms on them. If you remember in 1987, the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, but at the end of the day, these things did not transform to improving the economy.
If you look a country like China, at a time, they closed their economy to the global system and they were almost cut off from the rest of the world and within that period, they were almost cut off from the rest of the world and within that period, they suffered but they built up so that by the time they opened up, China was a wolrd power, they had enough food to feed their population, they were exporting industrial goods but in the case of Nigeria, you tell people to be tightening belts and at the end of the day, the ordinary citizen could not see why such policies were formulated. If it was clear that fuel price had to go this way and within the frame work, we would get good roads, schools and many other basic things of life.
If you are buying fuel at a higher price and the economy improves, there are so many other areas that the system will directly cushion. The president’s intentions are very good. It is so sad that we are an oil producing country and we are queuing up to buy petroluem products. If the problem is that of the inefficiency of the private marketers arising from price problem, they should increase the price so that we all can stop this issue of queuing up every now and then.
If the oil sector is completely privatised and deregulated, the crisis we are having every now and then when there is increase in the prices of petroleum products will not be there. I am sure that everybody is tired of the frequent increase in prices of petroleum products, let us completely deregulate once and for all, let us get used to it and know that we are going to live with it.
The president, to many Nigerians, is monopolistic and arrogant, would you agree with this point of view?
In as much as one can say people are entitled to their own opinion, Nigeria is a very big country and people assess people differently. There is a philosopher that says there is nothing that is really good or really bad, thinking makes it so. It is the way we think because if you are biased on a matter, your reasoning goes that way. If me, as an ordinary deputy governor, he listens to me and he does not show that hair of superiority to which is extremely superior to me in all aspects of life. By my age, I should be his son but he discusses with me freely.
I cannot, me Goodluck Jonathan, describe the President as an arrogant person. He is like someone on the top of the palm tree, you who is down may be thinking that a bunch is ripe and the person on top is saying it is not rip and you are insisting it is ripe. If he is the person who does not have the patience to ignore all that will get annoyed will say, okay, come and bring it down. It is human. I think the President is trying. The Economic and Financial Crime Commission is an example. It is very difficult as a politician doing what he is doing at the moment. He has a lot of guts.
Corruption is every where in the society but as a politician who is looking for the votes of the people, one would have expected him to play safe but you and I know now that the economic crime in this country is reducing now. Even the 419 people, they are not every where as before. Quite a number of things the president is doing, a number of people will not do it. Whenever you are taking any step to sanitise the system, you must step on 101 legs because some people are happy when there is crises.
So there is nothing he would do that will not have one or two negative effects on one group of people or the other. The man is there, he knows the problems of the people, I am not saying he knows all, that is why he has his advisers.
But he said it is not mandatory that he takes their advice?
That is true. My people will say sleep is a sample of death. Having been deputy governor, you have an idea about the workings in governance. The President could have three different advisers on the same issue? Even if you are the adviser to the county or state, the President or the Governor gets advice from other people on the same subject matter. You cannot say because you are the adviser to the president or the governor and as such, whatever advise given must be taken. Nobody takes an advice hook line and sinker.
The person you are advising has an idea of what it is supposed to be, yours is to compliment. Sometimes, the person may see the matter more than the adviser because of the level at which he is operating. The advisers may not be opportuned to see the other dimensions of the matter he is seeing. There is nobody in this world that takes advice the way it comes, otherwise, he would be a dummy.
