If restructuring means true federalism, then am all for it –Hon. Ogun

Hon. Sergius Ogun is the member representing Esan North East / Esan South East Federal Constituency of Edo State in the House of Representatives on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Though a first termer in the National Assembly, he has distinguished himself in the House through his numerous motions and bills. He recently spoke with a group of journalists when he talked on issues agitating Nigerians. He believes strongly in restructuring the Nigeria nation. EMMANUEL IRIOGBE and HENRY OMUNU were there.

Amnesty for looters
The bill has just been listed for first reading, it has not gone through the second reading for debate, in any case, I learnt that my colleague, Hon. Linus Okorie is the sponsor of the bill.

I didn’t indicate any interest in the bill until I got a call from South Africa from a lady who visits Nigeria regularly; she spoke about the bill, saying its not just enough to present the bill to the people but that the people should be educated on it, she added that it may be necessary for a team to visit countries like Indonesia, Malaysia or India where similar laws already exist.

She spoke extensively about the benefits of the bill. This does not in anyway mean that when people steal money they can now come back and say I have stolen so much while they have kept some aside and want to give back a certain amount.

She stressed the need to get the people on board to understand the meaning of the bill. From my understanding of the bill, some people are outside the tax net, they have stolen money and are not being investigated but given the opportunity they might take advantage of this law to avoid being investigated in the future.

The bill envisages that more looters that are not currently being investigated or may not be investigated in the future will be captured in this net. This is not to say if they come to say they have defrauded the country to the tune of xyz you are just going to ask them for what is left and allow them to go.

If you do that, the cycle will continue. But when someone says l am repentant, am sorry that I did it and this is the whole story, I think such persons should be listened to and whatever can be recovered from them quickly recovered.

If you can grant amnesty to militants who blew up pipelines and killed people and extend same to Boko Haram terrorists who killed defenseless civilians and say they don’t believe in western education, why not those that the system enabled to steal.

From what i gathered, billions of Naira can be returned to the country. Therefore, we should not see it in the light of a person who has stolen and you grant him or her amnesty because the person returned some money.

In any case this is what plea bargain is all about which is practiced all over the world. In the case of a plea bargain the person is already indicted but in amnesty the person comes forward voluntarily.

Hence the recovered funds become extra money to the government to fund critical infrastructural needs. The spirit and intent of the bill is that as amnesty is being granted the institutions are strengthened to avoid the cycle of stealing and availing themselves of amnesty.

Grazing Bill:
When I came to the House of Representatives in 2015, one of my first motions was ‘Urgent need to curb the menace of Kidnapping in Esan South East Local Government Area of Edo State’.

This motion had to be stepped down at the time because it was perceived to be highly sensitive. The motion identified the threat of herdsmen and recommended ranching as a solution to current grazing practices.

Herdsmen were killing and robbing people along Ubiaja-Ewohimi Road on daily basis, even a serving State House of Assembly member was attacked then. You can’t over run people’s farms and not see anything wrong with it.

Rearing cattle is a business and should be seen as such. If you must rear cattle, go to the community heads and acquire a place to do so. It’s a burning issue all over the country not just Edo State and when motions on this subject matter come up, you hear things like the need for increased policing/security. But how many police officers do we have to provide the security and surveillance?

Since the days of former Inspector General of Police, M.D. Abubakar we have been reporting that we have 350, 000 policemen. Given that we have lost many officers in the line of duty, some died of natural causes and some have retired.

The last attempt at recruitment was only for 10, 000 policemen which fall short of the 3.5 million required to effectively police the country. I will recommend that we adopt the confab report of 2014 which states clearly that those states in the North that are predominantly into livestock should practice grazing while other states practice ranching.

Confab report:
If taking it piece meal is what we can get now, it’s ok. But the best option is for us to bring the whole report, debate it and collectively take a position which will become law. That’s the beauty of democracy.

The government spent billions on the confab report and should not allow it to gather dust in the villa. There are quality recommendations in that report that if implemented today can quell the current political agitations in the country.

******My constituency:
When I came into the House in 2015 my predecessor’s projects in the 2015 budget were for construction of 2 (set) blocks of classroom with furniture for one and provision of furniture for a third school.

I was told there was no fund for these projects, I refused to take no for an answer, but aggressively pursued it and delivered all three projects. But in the 2016 budget due to the padding issues, what was thought would be in the budget was not.

On my Constituency project which is agriculture, I had a town hall meeting with my constituents in both local governments that I represent. During my campaign, I told them that government alone can’t do it all, so they should learn trades, agriculture and become entrepreneurs.

I gave them examples of some rich people in Esan land when I was growing up who were not educated but were traders and merchants. In my budget, I put agriculture there; today we have cleared a 100 hectares of land, though the plan was to clear 200 hectares.

However, what the money in the budget could cover is 56 hectares, but we have cleared 100 hectares. I have tractors on site, planters are there and before the harvest time l will get harvesters. It’s 100 percent mechanised.

We have 200 youths – 100 from each LGA who will be given an acre each; the proceeds from their one acre of farm land belong to them. That’s my own way of creating employment for them, because when you tell them to go and farm, they are not inspired.

In their estimation, their fathers did that and are still poor. We have started training them on mechanised farming. I also think government is paying lip service to agriculture.

My constituency project is agriculture, but during the farming season funds and materials for farmers were not released until after the planting period. And that is why we are where we are now.

Good enough when I discussed with someone in Canada, he promised to build silos in the farm to enable the saving of maize to sell during the off season and we have off takers already.

So, the thing now is to drive it into the consciousness of the youth that there is money in agriculture. People from my constituency embark a lot on the perilous journey to Libya and most of them die on the high sea.

And when you tell parents not to support their children traveling to Europe through Libya, they are not happy. They will ask you if there is an alternative to keep them here. My prayer is that the farm can be expanded to engage Libya returnees.

I want those lost to come back. Even across the value chain, the managing director of Bank of Industry has promised to assist in the value chain and so we have batched them into cooperative groups. Last week some CBN consultants gave them lectures on NIRSAL and the CBN anchor borrowers scheme to enable them key into it.

Clamour for restructuring:
I am in support of true federalism. If that is restructuring then perfect, we claim we are a federation, but in the true sense of it are we practicing federalism? It’s just in name.

If today, we say allow the federating states to be on their own and pay something to the centre, this country will be better for it. I have said it severally, that if we didn’t have to leave our house, but there is food to eat and money, we will be there, is there any incentive to leave the house? But that is what is happening in Nigeria.

At the end of every month, the state governor sends his commissioner to Abuja to collect a cheque. Which work did that state do, zero. That is why to see a governor sometimes in Nigeria is very difficult.

Even if you are coming with business, but he does not need you, he is not interested, whether he gets the business or not, money will come from Abuja at the end of the month, for instance our strength in Edo State is agriculture, we have some oil and gas, we pay tax to the centre and the food we produce, we will sell to our neighbors in the South East because they don’t have too much land, then we will be a very viable state. In an ideal true federal system that is.

This will create competition among states. Again some of the Northern states practice Sharia law, hence no sale of alcohol and no brothels, but you take VAT money from Lagos where they do all these and share to the sharia states, that should be blood money, this is not sustainable.

We say Nigeria is a secular state, yet the government sponsors hajj to Mecca and pilgrimage to Israel. If we are practicing true federalism, the states should function as federating states and pay tax to the centre.

We can cure these defects by a simple constitutional review, stagger the exclusive and concurrent list and we will have a constitution that is not only federal in name but in content and character.

Assessment of Buhari, APC gov’t:
Its zero! I really sympathise with the President. The former President of USA, Obama on his visit to Africa asked Africans to build strong institutions and not strong men. If we can do that, it will checkmate so many things.

For me, the President came in without a template to fight corruption; he came in with the 1980’s mentality to just throw people in jail and get funds to fund the budget, thinking everybody would be happy. But we have gone beyond that.

Though I see a man wanting to fight corruption but even within his inner kitchen cabinet, people are misbehaving. That will break any man’s heart. I sympathise with him.

My prayer is that we can systematically check corruption in this country. For example, the millions of dollars (which has now been forfeited to the government) that was found in Ikoyi in Lagos State, we don’t know the owner till now, the simple thing EFCC should have done was to plant cameras on street light of that estate, somebody would one day come for part of that money.

Former police boss, Solomon Arase during the last year NBA conference in Port Harcourt, said that in other countries you investigate crimes before you effect arrest, but that is not the case in Nigeria.

Even the cash found in a plaza in Lagos, the EFCC would have waited because someone must surely come for the money and then you can effect arrest or you even trail them and have a documented evidence; trail the person to where the money is going to.

It is scandalous to say you saw monies running into billions of naira and you open it up and started counting it for the whole world to see. Lai Mohammed who is the government’s spokesperson said sometime last year I think, that a few persons stole over a trillion naira and he was quoted by the then U.S Secretary of State John Kerry a short while after and then you expect investors to come in and invest in an economy where all these are happening?

We are where we are today because investors are not coming. When President Obasanjo administration came in 1999, what was the price of crude oil, it was under 10 dollars, our foreign reserve was in single digit not up to $10 billion but we were not in a predicament like this. The dollar was not scarce, the exchange rate was not this messed up.

These were mistakes of the past that we are paying for, so you can’t just wake up and say PDP caused this. Even with the capital flight before the 2015 general election because people were apprehensive and left with their money because they thought there would be war.

The dollar was 218 naira to the dollar, after the elections the Naira further appreciated to 215 to the dollar. Given the inconsistency in policies where you can’t withdraw dollar, you can’t pay in certain amount, you can’t take your money out, please who does that? J.P Morgan closed shop, left with 80 billion dollars, that kind of money can’t leave your economy and you remain the same.

George Soros moved £2 billion out of England I think that was in 1991 or 1992 the British Pounds has not recovered from that singular act till date. The only thing I can tell the APC government is that they should pack their things in 2019 and handover the keys of Aso Rock to the PDP.

Regional mobilisation for restructuring:
The South East commission bill that was stepped down before it was taken and eventually voted against in the House came up for 2nd reading that day because of the massive support from the South-South caucus.

Agitation for resource control has been headed by the South-South, we have told the world our story, so let the South East and South West go on with it. We started the true federalism outcry.

Fashola on 2017 budget:
Let me begin by saying that I have a lot of respect for the gentleman, more so there is an ad hoc committee in place to look into his claims, I don’t know if I should comment on this or wait for the outcome of the committee?

I think he was very uncharitable, and made unkind statements about the National Assembly, but again that is the way they all are. They want to cast us in bad light, because he believes he should bring his budget and we rubber stamp it and give it back to him.

That is what happens in the state Houses Of Assembly. We were told that under him as Lagos State governor, the Assembly passes the budget the way it is submitted, that happens in most state assemblies anyway.

He leaves out most items in the same budget he signed into law and introduces new projects as “priority projects” and monies will be moved to this so called priority projects hitherto not budgeted for.

That is what I heard, I wasn’t there, you guys can investigate this, it might not be true, if that worked in the state it will not work in the federal level.

I keep saying that when we fight with the executive it is for the good of Nigerians. If the executive brings the budget and we serve as rubber stamp we would have thrown the Nigerian people that sent us to the House under the bus, we would have broken the pledge and oath of office we took to defend and uphold the constitution.

So if the minister is talking about boreholes and all that, he is the minister of housing and this is part of his work, some of my colleagues domicile their intervention funds in the ministry of housing and some of the projects were sinking of boreholes in their constituency and the ministry has been faithfully executing this, he should go and check the records.

Though, he is now saying it is not a personal issue, but the National Assembly has decided to take him up on all he said to set the records straight. You can’t put N20billion in the national budget without subhead and expect the NASS not to query it, now we have helped you to spread the money because most of it was concentrated in a particular zone to the detriment of other zones and you are crying like a baby. Sections 80 and 81 of the Nigerian constitution address these issues.

The Constitution empowers the President to assign money to any part of the country in the case of an emergency; the Acting President just did that over the flood issue recently, he approved the release of N1.6 billion to NEMA, where did he get the money, from, the budget? The President has the powers to do that and thereafter send it to the National Assembly.

So, why will a minister keep N20 billion for emergency in certain places in his ministry? All that is required in an emergency is to go to the person that appointed you to say look, we have an emergency, he will approve for you and then send the request and approval to the NASS for ratification.

He is a lawyer, he knows. And I don’t even think he needed to go to the press. I don’t know what brought about that, but we will get to the bottom of it.

Quote 1
I am in support of true federalism. If that is restructuring then perfect, we claim we are a federation, but in the true sense of it are we practicing federalism? It’s just in name. If today, we say allow the federating states to be on their own and pay something to the centre, this country will be better for it. I have said it severally, that if we didn’t have to leave our house, but there is food to eat and money, we will be there, is there any incentive to leave the house?

Quote 2
Some of the Northern states practice Sharia law, hence no sale of alcohol and no brothels, but you take VAT money from Lagos where they do all these and share to the sharia states, that should be blood money, this is not sustainable. We say Nigeria is a secular state, yet the government sponsors hajj to Mecca and pilgrimage to Israel. If we are practicing true federalism, the states should function as federating states and pay tax to the centre.