There have been a lot of controversies since your emergence as the Senate President. Have they not derailed the real business of the house, and your own plans for the office?
On the contrary, some of the things we see now are some of the things that we planned for. Nevertheless, my plan is to stay focused on our agenda. Some of the things we see are distractions. I see some of them as political. But we try as much as possible to stay focused on our agenda. That is why from day one, when l was talking to our colleagues when we were campaigning, l said we must have a legislative agenda; we must have a roadmap - something that we must be measured by. And we must stay focused on what matters to the Nigerian people. My experience in the seventh Senate has helped me to begin to understand what we must do differently.
A lot of Nigerians will tell you that they don’t understand what we are doing in the Senate or in the House of Representatives; that they can’t connect with the reason we are here; or how we can impact on their lives.
What we are trying to do is to come out with an agenda so that largely, we can connect with the people. Let Nigerians know what we are doing here and you can see some of our activities and the level of participation now when compared with the past - whether you look at the ministerial screening or what we do on a regular basis; the kind of feedback from our constituencies, the role that Nigerians play in our processes.
Secondly, we now determine what will be our priorities. If you find out, if you look at the seventh Senate, you would find out that we passed 46 bills in one day at the last hour. What we look out for now is, what are those bills that can impact people’s lives? This is because all bills don’t have the same impact, the same priorities. Let’s identify them. Once we identify them, let’s put them on a fast track.
First of all, on infrastructure, you can see now that we are treating a bill on the Nigerian Railway. The Nigeria Railway law has been there for many years. Nothing has been done about it. We are doing something on it. We identify what we want to do on Public Private Partnership (PPP). We have identified what we want to do on PIB. We’ve identified what we are going to do on leakages generally in the agencies. We’ve identified also the laws that have to do with judicial processes especially the commercial aspect of it.
When you talk about private sector investment, you must be talking about how do you make Nigeria a place that is conducive for investment. And you’ll find out that most of the laws that exist now are laws that have been in existence way back to the 1960s and 70s. Nobody has had time to sit down and address them because largely, there was no agenda and so, I did promise that when we come in, we would look at what would be our objectives; what would be our decisions and we would try to concentrate our time on addressing them.
There is something we do on security now. There is a bill on North-East Development Commission. So, if you begin to study, you’ll see that there is a well thought out process. We even had issues like the suggestion box with the intention to find out what people are thinking just to have a feedback from the public. For instance, there is a lot of borrowing there from the states and some of the laws that we have don’t really help so that we can improve on the implementation. So, we are staying on that message.
Of course, as you had rightly observed, there has been a lot of distractions, but part of the responsibilities is to try and address those challenges and stay focused on why we are here. When we all went to contest to become a senator, we didn’t go there to become part of the leadership, we went to become a senator representing our constituencies. The issue of leadership was secondary and leadership issue will come and go. We will go back to represent our constituencies.
What looks challenging now is that the controversies here revolve around your personality.
I think it is those that have interests from outside the chamber that are raising issues out of the frustration of not being able to control the chamber. You can spare time and come and look at the chamber. We are all focused and united in the Senate. There is no doubt about where the leadership is, who they believe in. I have been saying it for a long time that more and more people are going to see that. The noise that is being made out there is from those who have their own political agenda. If you truly believe either in the change mantra with which we came or you believe in our party or you believe in making Nigeria to move forward, you must believe in a very good relationship between the executive and the legislature; you’ll seek a stable National Assembly.
A stable National Assembly can only come from the position of leadership. If you look at it from1999, a stable National Assembly can only come when people choose the person they want to lead them and when they do that, those who lose must accept that they have lost out. The issue is that the party or the country is put before us. Is it that this National Assembly is working against the interest of this country? The answer is a big no. You need to address this because the issues out there are not issues in the interest of this country. But we’ll continue to focus on what we need to do because a lot of us out there know what is necessary and the senators also know what is required and they are focusing on that.
So, what you are saying is that what we see now is in accordance with your plan?
It depends on what you mean. Is it legislative plan?
Yes.
If it is legislation, yes.
On the bill, do you have a plan to address what was happening in the past when bills were initiated and they stayed there unpassed for years?
Yes. That is a good point. That is why l talk about priority. Those that are not priority bills may not go through all the processes. But those that are of priority, we prioritise them and they come under our legislative agenda. We set up a committee to monitor the implementation of our legislative agenda. If you watch our sessions today, you’ll see that we took up a bill on the disabled people. We did not have a long debate on it. It is a key bill to us and we took it through discussions and we moved it through the second reading. So, you begin to see that we have a time frame that it must come back from the committee and we are going to pass it so that we don’t have the same problem of keeping it for two years and in 2018, we start rushing.
Are you going to have a time frame for passage of bills, particularly very important ones like the Petroleum Industry Bill?
What we are already doing is that the bill cannot come as it used to be. We have to break that bill down into different sectors. The first part is what l call the institutional governance. Look at the areas that are of less controversy and talk about how to make it more efficient. Then we can go on to talk about the other issues. Hopefully, before we go for Christmas break, that bill will go for first and second reading and go to the committee. If we get that done, it will be part of our achievements if it gets to that stage.
The issue of suggestion box you mentioned earlier. If you followed reactions to the launch, people wonder why in this technology era, you were launching a suggestion box with fanfare!
I think people have different views and what l have observed is that since l have been in the National Assembly, people want to have a level of participation. Whatever level of participation, of course, people have online link by which people can make suggestions. But that is not the only way you can contribute. There is a lot of resources here -staff who have been here for many years who have lots of capacity, lots of knowledge - how do they interact with the leadership? How do they tell the leadership these are some of their views? Those opportunities are not there and you’ll be surprised about how it helps the morale of staff here to believe that they have a Senate president who cares about what they think. In the past, the Senate President would walk past everyone and three minutes, he was in his office. There was no how they could contribute and if you found out, there was no way the staff could say ‘let us review this.’ It goes a long way to affect the productivity of the place because this is a place where there is a lot of experiences and capacity that you can’t buy, that people here contribute, that we have underutilised.
They can say fanfare. We were there for 10 minutes. We cut the tape and that’s all. Look, if they want to criticise you, they’ll criticise you. I don’t bother about it, if at the end of the year, I take people’s suggestion and l implement it, and my staff in the National Assembly will see that they are participating. l believe we have an agenda here. The agenda of the eight Senate is ‘let Nigerians be part of this process.’ One of the greatest challenges we have is that people have not connected with the legislative arm of government. People know the executive; they know the judiciary. One arm that people don’t understand what they are doing here is the legislature and it is because we ourselves don’t make that difference in their lives.
As you rightly said, we passed a law, the process took four years. If you are going to wait for me for four years, then I’m not impacting your life. But in other countries like America, when they were talking about refugees, within 48 hours, the congress met. They passed a resolution. When we get to a stage when we can come in at the beginning of the month and observe certain things that need to be reviewed by the law and at the end of the month, we can pass it, then, everybody’ll start taking this place seriously.
If l say suggestion box, you’ll rush there because you now know that this institution is relevant. The reason we have these views is because we have not got there. We don’t have the landmark that people can say is a legacy that we left behind. We don’t have a National Assembly that can be proactive and can take actions that can impact people’s lives immediately. In all parts of the world, the parliament is so important because policies are not sustainable but when you pass laws, or when you have oversight, you talk about EFCC, ICPC, what we do every day is oversight. That is what we do but we have not strengthened that institution to become important. In other parts of the world, if there are issues, they know that it has to come before you and you are like policing all the agencies of government and your relevance comes into it.
So, anywhere we can act to get Nigerians more involved, I’m committed to it because that knowledge does not only reside in us. The other time somebody sent a message and said, sir, why don’t you look at something simple. He said do you know that lots of accidents happen on the roads. He said when trucks carry goods, some of these goods are not strapped to the truck and when they go on the road, they slip over and people die. I got that from the public and not from 109 senators. Let’s open up this place. If you contribute, then you have contributed to the capacity of the Senate and you have contributed to productivity.
In the past, you had criticised subsidy payment. Recently, a supplementary bill containing subsidy was sent to the National Assembly and you passed the bill. How do you justify that action? Where do you really stand?
Let me separate the two. If you heard my remark (at plenary), I said ‘it is painful that there are sometimes that, as leaders, you have to take decisions when you look at the plights of the people and their sufferings, you may have to take a decision at the time. We had two options. Option one was to say we were going to review this bill line by line, to see those vouchers and those payments. If we had done that, we’ll probably be there for the next two months. You all know we are going into the festivity period of December and January.
We all know that these marketers are blackmailing us. But sometimes, you have to overlook that. It’s unfortunate. But what l can assure you is that l haven’t moved from my position on subsidy. I don’t believe in it. Get me right, I don’t believe in the management of petroleum subsidy. That is different from subsidy. There is nothing wrong with subsidy in every sector but the management.
That was my position in 2011, over four years ago now, after two months in the Senate, I rose up. It’s not that a number of Nigerians did not know that this thing was going on. Despite the challenges, I got up and said this thing must stop. It ran me into trouble. That was where (former President Goodluck) Jonathan and I parted ways, but in the medium term, it made significant changes and saved us a significant amount.
A number of people who were part of the process reduced. Yet the leakages are too huge that it cannot stop. Now, it doesn’t even make sense because when we had a lot of money, the price has come down and the subsidy now cannot be more than N5.00 to N10.00 but we are keeping a loophole.
Look at our capital expenditure, maybe N500 billion, then one line item is running to N800 billion. But my appeal is that all of us as Nigerians, we must be on the same page. We should not play politics with it. Let us consider the issue at stake, it doesn’t matter if you are All Progressives Congress (APC) or Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). We must look at ourselves and ask, what is the interest of Nigeria? Let’s not place the executive against the legislature or APC against PDP or one person against the other. Let us look at what is the interest of Nigeria because if we want to play politics, there will be those within the unions that will say we are fighting for the masses.
There will be those in different sectors that will say we are fighting for the masses and at the end of the day, we lose the opportunity because when we address it, government will save a significant amount of revenue and at the end of the day, we ‘ll be happy when we talk about the budget. Instead of the issue of subsidy, if you can have about half a trillion that can go into a sector, it will make a lot of difference. Secondly, if you do not address it, you are not going to see investment in the refineries.
So, how do we resolve this issue of subsidy?
It has to go.
But you said it is only the management that you don’t believe in.
Yes, the management cannot be efficient.
How do you now separate the two?
It has to go. If it doesn’t go completely, it has to go in instalments, maybe the private sector will still have to bring their market price; government can still sustain Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) petrol stations with subsidy. You drive your car and choose, if you want subsidised petrol, you go to NNPC, you queue two to three days, but you get it at N87.00. If you are in a hurry or you believe that ‘look, l want to buy my fuel at N95.00,’ you go to the other station. So, you still can provide for the masses. We might look at the hybrid but that we should not do anything at all and continue like this, I think it will be difficult to justify.
Let us look at the budgeting process. In the past, it had been like a ritual when you just threw something out and what you had at the end of the day had no relevance to the needs of the people. In other words, you don’t have mechanism for needs assessment. So, what is the Senate doing that is going to make a difference from the past rituals?
First of all, I think it is a process itself. I believe one has the ability to understand the process by one’s background as a former governor and Special Assistant on Budget. So, it is possible to drive leadership in that process. So, we’ll work very hard to ensure that we look into the process and see that they are justifiable and we reduce the leakages. Secondly, it is the oversight that is important to ensure that the funds are efficient when you look at the money that are allocated for this process. Is it available? Is it enough? Is it more than what is required? And then we have to get our committees to do oversight. I think that is where really the work is. Before then, we have to go to the medium term framework and be sure that the assumptions are right because sometimes, assumptions are wrong. When you say that you are going to do this based on the assumption of 2+2 and you have not factored in a lot of issues, it is obvious something will go wrong. You have to look at the non-revenue area.
What are you going to do in the non-revenue area? What do you need to do to increase the base of taxation? Today, if you look at our taxation vis-a-vis the gross domestic product (GDP) it is one of the lowest, it is 5-6 per cent. Then we need to look at how much are we going to borrow? What is our debt level? In other countries, it is as high as 40 per cent. We may not get there, then we look at how much we are going to borrow. What is our service level? Then we look at the sector and see what sector where we need to get private sector participation and reduce government expenditure. We need to look at that. There is a lot of work that needs to be done.
We are waiting for the executive to come up with medium term framework and 2016 budget. Once we get that, we begin to look at that. But I can assure Nigerians that we are going to be realistic and ensure that we focus on our promises and at the same time, we cannot over promise because at the same time when we were campaigning, the price of crude oil then and what it is now is different. The challenges are different. It is clear now that revenues are not there. It is clear that we don’t have macro-economic stability and you just go for growth, it is clear that there are challenges. So, you have to first of all look at how you can first provide macro-economic stability. Low oil price is bad. First of all, there must be macro-economic stability because if you are talking about investment, people must know you have a stable environment because if you don’t have a stable environment, you are not going to see any investment.
So, you are going to look at that. Then, we are going to look at how you spend the money. When you see budget, a number of people are not impressed because the capacity is not there and when you look at the processes, you approve a budget maybe in March, by the time you advertise, you are in June/July, by the time you think that you are going into the rainy season, you are already in September. So, there are many issues that we are hoping that the executive will do differently this time than the previous government.
One major issue that we really need to point out is that all these years, recurrent expenditure exceeded the capital expenditure. Is there any specific plan to reverse the trend?
As a politician, I try as much as possible to be truthful and be realistic. What we need to do in getting the percentage to reduce may not drastically be to reduce the expenditure but you come gradually down from 70 per cent to 55 per cent. But what you do is push up your revenue so that at the end of the day, your percentage will come down. Government will reduce expenditure where there is a lot of wastage but you find out that just as you do when you are running a company, there is a point where you really cannot reduce expenditure in your company. You say okay, things are bad. ‘We need to reduce telephone bill. Let’s reduce electricity bill. Let’s reduce petrol bill.’ You see, you can reduce that but you get to a stage where you say, we can’t go below this. So, we can achieve five to 25 per cent reduction.
It may be tight but I think what is more important is blocking leakages. Blocking leakages boils down to two areas - blocking revenue leakages and oil production theft leakages. You address taxation that is not coming in. That is also blocking leakages.
When you address those areas, you’ll be able to push up your revenue to 40 or 50 per cent. By the time you do that, your percentages will drop significantly. So when you see a lot of commentators say, expenditure is 70/80 percent, how do we reduce expenditure? What you need to do is to largely push up your revenue.
Look at your total expenditure - personnel, overhead and debt servicing. You find out that the two major components are debt servicing and personnel. The overhead is there. How do you want to reduce your personnel cost? Are we ready about retrenchment? The big answer is no. Let’s be honest. That is why I said we should not play politics with this economic issue. These are strong issues that we must debate as Nigerians. So, that is what is going to happen. You say you want to grow revenue, yet you are going to borrow. Is there any how your debt servicing will come down? It is not. Those two components are not coming down. So, you only have one component - overhead.
So, even if you ban everybody from travelling abroad, ban everybody from doing all this, your plan that the percentage of your expenditure would come down is not working. I’m not saying that the executive cannot do that. Don’t get me wrong. But I don’t want us to raise false expectation and don’t judge me by those issues that can’t be delivered on. What government should do is to promise Nigerians that instead of me running expenditure-revenue of 70/80 per cent, l will run expenditure-revenue at 60 per cent. I’m not saying it is going to come down from just reduction but because I have come down from my expenditure, I have been able to push up my revenue.
You have spoken so much on oversight which is one of the big issues. If you look at the Senate over the years, how will you rate the efficiency of the Senate with regards to oversight? You also talked about fast tracking bills, is that why you increased the number of committees from 57 to 65?
Many of the oversights, for example, let’s take education. Education had only one committee overseeing primary school, secondary school, tertiary institutions, JAMB, NECO, TETFUND, just one committee. And as you said, if we all agree that the oversight committee is not efficient, we need to improve on it. The number of committees we split were committees that we believed that the workload was enormous and we had to ensure better sight of those committees and that was what we had been able to do.
You talked about cost, I said no matter what people felt about the seventh Senate about efficiency, just that my motion on fuel subsidy saved the country about half a trillion. That was something. If that was the only thing we achieved in the seventh Senate, it was an achievement because government did not do anything about it before the motion, it was only when we brought it up that government started doing something about it and we saved half a trillion. If we can get the oversight right, the revenue that we’ll save, will far justify what we do. If the oversight committees that we have begun to work, I think we will justify our stay here. You can see that most of the committees that we split were those that we felt that the workload was enormous.
Before now, it was believed that there was no love lost between you and the President and some leaders of the party especially Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But recently, we have started seeing discussions among you and the president and Tinubu. How should that be interpreted?
I think a lot of what you read in the media as I said in my opening statement is not what reflects the reality on the ground. I think that all of us, I will say we are key founding stakeholders of the APC. We all played our roles to bring about this victory at the election. We all positioned the party for the impact we want to make on Nigerians’ lives. I think at the end of the day, the responsibility for all of us is the difference that we want to make. We all put our integrity and reputation into going to Nigerians and telling them that the impunity of the last four years cannot be sustained. We don’t want it to continue. We want a new Nigeria and we are committed to that and I think that that interest must come first in whatever we do. So, most of the interactions you see shows that we’ll help the party to perform. I think that is what we are doing. I think what we saw earlier was that politics was overshadowing the interest of the people.
Look at the Senate. You can see that the minority party will have their views, but you can see that at the end of the day, it is the majority party that will decide. That has always been the interest of the party. But a lot of pundits running the commentaries gave the wrong impression. As far as the Senate, even the National Assembly, is concerned, we’ll work closely with the President.
The issue of the supplementary budget, the committee worked overtime to ensure that they met the one week mandate that we gave them. This showed that in the eyes of Nigerians, we will not allow politics to influence us. I made a comment that what will be key will be the interest of Nigerians that we will always defend and what is the interest of our democracy. What we are doing in the National Assembly now, the president believes is in support of democracy; it is in support of separation of powers which is in the best interest of the country. It may not be in the interest of some individuals; but at the end of the day, we will continue to do that.
But do you think that the President sincerely shares this view?
Which one?
That he would work together with the National Assembly.
Of course, he said it several times. Even the last time we were there (Villa), he said it that he would work closely with the National Assembly. Why will he not do that? It is democracy that we practice. The three arms of government including the judiciary must work together to be successful. Why will you think he will want to do otherwise? I think this is why I say those running commentaries are not right. All these that we are doing underscore the need to work together.
How far do you think the president can go with the fight against corruption?
I think first of all, we must all agree that we need to fight corruption because of the development of our country. One of the stumbling blocks and one of the things that have affected us is corruption. So, I don’t think that there should be a debate at all that we must fight corruption. Everywhere in the world, we hear that Nigeria tops the list of corruption. So, we must move away from that. And I think that for us to fight corruption, we must have an enabling environment, laws that will strengthen that fight against corruption. We must look at the existing laws and strengthen them. We must strengthen the institutions. If we strengthen the institutions, we will reduce corruption.
What we have now about the process of fighting corruption is that it is not transparent. It is very subjective. Politics goes into it. You sometimes see cases where it is politics that is driving the process not corruption driving the process. That is where you know who comes into it. When the process is transparent, the institutions are strong, then you can’t bring in politics. When you have an agenda to persecute and not prosecute, that is selective.
Let me give you an instance now. You’ll think maybe it is because I’m a former governor. From 1999 till date, who are the officials that have either been to EFCC or ICPC, out of all the classes of officials? You’ll find out that they are former governors. Many ministers since 1999, they are not invited. Is it that ministers, or heads of parastatals are clean considering that 50 per cent of the revenues reside in the federal government? So, if you say there is corruption in the country, the corruption must be in either the local government that has about 20 something percent revenue, state that has about 30 something per cent and here (federal government), it is almost 49 per cent. But if you find the record and check, you can count how many ministers in the last 16 years that have had any encounter with anti-corruption agencies. Are you going to conclude that it is only in the states and local governments that there is corruption? The answer is a big no.
I give you an example now. Some weeks ago, the former minister for internal affairs who was in charge of the recruitment exercise in which some people died was invited. When the event happened and people died, nobody called the man. The man was going around, nobody even questioned him. After he left office, they now invited him. If you ask me, it is clear that the institutions are not strong and are very subjective. It was clear that at that time, it would not please the man’s master. So, the institution did not invite him. Then, when the man has no master there to please again, they invited him. You don’t fight corruption like that.
We must also be committed to doing the right thing. When you leave the issues and you start pursuing the minor issues, the sector where we have seen the main revenue base of this country, is the oil sector. And if we say there is corruption and it is affecting our development, major cases of corruption must be from there. But again, go and look at the record, how many times have you seen people who are working in that sector come before the anti-corruption agencies?
So, if we want to fight this corruption, we have to fight it transparently, with all sincerity and honesty. But where we say we don’t like this man, go and pursue him, at the end of the day, the whole corruption process itself, everybody will lose interest in it.
If l may infer, you are saying that corruption case against you is politically motivated?
No, if you want to ask questions about me, ask about me but I’m talking generally. It is important because I don’t want us to think whether it is about me or not about me. What I have said in this Senate, that is why I will take a lot of bashing. If people bring the issue of corruption before me whether it is the issue that I have interest in or that I don’t have interest in, we will address it. All I want to tell Nigerians is, come up with issues you have interest in.
For instance, today, somebody came up with the issue of TETFUND. We said go and investigate it. We in the Senate will not investigate A today and tomorrow, we say we will not investigate B. Any matter whether it involves anybody in the Senate or not that is brought before us, we will look into it and judge us by that. And what I’m saying is that unless we have that transparent approach, then the fight against corruption is an uphill task.
In what way can the legislators help to institute this transparent process? Because if you look at the process for the appointment of the EFCC chairman and members of the commission, the conditions for removing them is the same as the condition for removing the president, yet we still have issues about the way the commission has done its work?
It is caused by interference. Largely, it is interference. We need to look at the processes. How do they investigate? I get a bit disturbed. That is why I said that all of those who have been in the (Federal) executive, how come they have not been guests of these anti-corruption agencies? My own take on that is because there is a very cosy relationship between those agencies and the executive. The states and local governments never had cosy relationships with those agencies.
That is why they can be very brutish with them. But if we can have a way of isolating them, where there is no cosy relationship with any arm of government, then I think it is possible that we can begin to sit down. But if you look at the fight in the last few years, something is wrong somewhere. And I think you are right that we in the course of oversight are not sanctioning them. There are many issues but the point I’m making is that I don’t have all the answers. We need to fight corruption properly.
During the last electioneering, APC said it would wipe away Boko Haram once it seized power. But in the past six months, the issue of insecurity particularly the issue of Boko Haram has been more pronounced.
Do you think it is more pronounced? I disagree with you. I don’t think it is more pronounced. Let us look at the modality and the incidents. I think what we were seeing is sporadic bombing in Adamawa, Yobe, Borno. We have reclaimed lots of places from Boko Haram insurgents. I think you will agree with me. We have been able to push back a lot of Boko Haram insurgents from those places. That is a major achievement. Of course, there is still a lot of suicide bombings here and there and I think that is a lot of challenges now. And I think that is because we have been able to push them away from where they were. I agree with you that some of these bombings we see in different parts need to be addressed.
I think we need to continue to dismantle Boko Haram. When we complete that, then you’ll now have what you want to see. There will be no more bombings here and there. That may not happen immediately. I think it will take many years for us to say we’ll not see bombings. Occasionally, we may have that. But the question is, is it spreading across the country? Have we been able to push them back? I think in that area, we have made significant progress. But l agree with you that there are still places that we can do more.
I think one of the issues is that we cannot win all these wars with guns. We need to try and win the hearts of the people in the area. That is why we want to fast track North-East Development Commission. A lot of people in those places, we need to see how we’ll help them back to their communities; how we’ll rebuild schools. We are also going to try to get assistance from international communities because terrorism is a global threat. I think it’s not fair to leave it for us alone. We also need a lot of capacity. We need intelligence. We don’t have that. So, we’ve got to have a lot of strategies for that.
In the last few days, a lot of people have been arrested over diversion of $2 billion meant for purchase of arms. Were you shocked about this?
Well, the figures are mind blowing. I can tell you that this was what we saw in 2011 and 2012 when some of us were commenting that the issue of corruption in the last Jonathan administration had reached a level that we had not seen before and most of us said ‘look, whether Jonathan wins second term or not, l don’t want to be part of it’ because if we had crude oil at $100 per barrel and at the end the day, we were not saving, this kind of situation had been going on. As a matter of fact, we must do all to recover this fund or future generations yet unborn will pay for it. The figures are staggering or frightening if they are correct. I don’t have any document on that. It is when we are able to get some briefings from the agencies that one will be able to get the true position.
Some of these corruption issues, how did they escape legislative oversight?
They are security issues.
There are some of them that are not security issues.
But the one we carried out on NNPC on the missing $20 billion, we exposed NNPC. We probed it and it was clear and where the committee reported that some of those things were not true, I didn’t sign the report and I made my point clear on that. But unless I don’t know about it, any issue that comes before this legislative house, we are not going to cover anybody up. This is what we call real economic sabotage. It is not a local government issue where we talk of N10 million. This is a real economic sabotage. This is what I call cosiness of corruption. If it was the Senate that was controlling this type of money, it would have stopped. Action would have been taken but those anti-graft agencies were timid to say we are probing National Security Adviser (NSA) or Chief of Army Staff or the Presidency. Meanwhile, these things have continued. That is why I said we must strengthen these institutions.
But National Assembly also has a key role to play in this.
Yes. We have a key role to play. I’m not pushing it to the executive only. We in the eight Senate will have a role to play.
Recently, in exercise of your oversight function, you invited former EFCC Chairman. I believe you saw the reaction that followed.
If there is sincerity of purpose...people will always be running commentaries, asking why they are doing this or that. What I am putting before you is that we will ensure that the interests of Nigerians come first. If there is a blackmail that the only reason they did it is this or that, I may be criticised over allegations of victimisation.
You have a matter before the Code of Conduct Tribunal and some of your colleagues have cases at the EFCC, won’t these create a moral burden for the Senate that we expect to strengthen those institutions?
I think they are two different issues. I speak for myself. When I was a governor, there was an investigation going on. I finished serving as governor in 2011. In 2010, when Nuhu Ribadu came to the Senate, he said there were six states that he could give a clean bill of health to and Kwara was one of them.
I left office in 2011 and nobody came to ask me any question about Kwara. In 2013, nobody came to ask me any question. It was when I started talking about fuel subsidy that all of a sudden that people said they investigated Kwara. Up till now, nobody has come to tell me there’s anything. In 2015, I became Senate president. So, to me, it’s clear in my mind that there’s no burden here. What is burden? Is it about fighting corruption? I have shown by my antecedents that I was the only one who stood up to expose the largest fraud in this country - N1.6 trillion subsidy. So, the issue of burden has nothing to do with the Senate. When you fight corruption, corruption will fight you.
On the issue of whether I have the moral right to do what is right, l don’t think I will allow this thing to disturb me because they are not based on any substance. Yes, there are some senators that may have one or two cases. Is it because they have cases that if they see corruption in some agencies that they should not do what is right? In the eight Senate, as I have said, we have taken a position. How many of such cases, maybe five or 10 out of 109. It will be unfair to say that because of five or 10 senators that Senate has a moral burden. Nobody is saying we should condone corruption. What we are saying is that if we want to fight corruption and sustain it, it should be done in a transparent manner. When you use politics to fight corruption, the society will never get better.
Look at the former Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde. Was he not the one telling people that when they were invited, they should always go to clear their name? Where is he today? Now, he’s running here and there, looking for lawyers to defend him. So, it only shows the insincerity of our society. All that I’m saying is that let us be judged as a National Assembly.
If you see cases that have been exposed and we begin to cover people based on that, then you should come and challenge me that I’m not providing leadership here. Even without being in this position, a ministry that is directly under the President, I can expect that the President should come out and say this is wrong, I don’t think I will be afraid to do what is right when those challenges come before me and I want to assure you that as I said earlier, if I’m not the Senate president, I won’t have any business with Code of Conduct Tribunal.
I’m sure that most Nigerians know that. When you start to go to 13 years to find issues against somebody and at the end of the day, the issues there are semantics documentations, it has nothing to do with facts. But I want to assure Nigerians that we must fight corruption. We are determined on that. We must ensure that we use our ability as the eight Senate and the National Assembly. We must be productive and we have started despite the distractions. You’ll see that as time goes on that we will show that to Nigerians and that is what we want to be judged by.
Don’t you think the President was trying to say that by your trial, l want you to do what l want?
But what does the President want that we don’t want? We cannot work for the President as an individual. We are working for Nigerians. We are working for our party. If I don’t believe in some of these things or the Senate does not believe in it, we will not agree on them. Even the subsidy that you are talking about, it is because we believe in it. If we don’t believe in it, we will not agree on it. I think we should not personalise those issues and as we go along, you’ll see that we are working for Nigeria and we are working for our party.
That is why I commend some of the senators here. Most of them enter into the chamber, you enter as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. When you say you do something, you are not doing it for the President. You are doing it for Nigeria. We all voted for him because we believed that ‘this is the best man to lead Nigeria.’ So, we must give him the support because if you don’t give him support, it is not only him but all of us as Nigerians that will not see result.
That is the kind of blackmail you will get (that we are not giving him support). People will start saying that. I don’t blame Nigerians. They are so pessimistic. That was what we got when we were fighting Jonathan. People said it’s a lie. People will say ‘when Jonathan calls them and gives them something, they will go back to PDP.’ I can go and bring the literature of that time. People never thought that we would go through this exercise because people thought that it could not happen.
I can see a lot Nigerians becoming sceptical. But I can promise you that from what I see, we will engage the players most of the time. I believe that a lot of people want change.
They don’t want business as usual. Now, whether what we will attain will satisfy Nigerians or not, Rome was not built in a day. We may not get to where we should get to but I can assure you that we will depart from what used to be. And I think we are making progress. This session that I am having with you, we will sit down every quarter to review where we are. And as I promised also, by next year, we’ll open up the issue of finance. You’ll see what goes to the House of Representatives. You’ll see what goes to the Senate. You’ll see what goes to Nigeria Institute of Legislative Studies. You’ll see what the capital budget is because at the end of the day, out of the challenges that we have ahead of us, it is negative issues that they talk about.
As I said that even if it is one motion that we pass, l will say that this what we have done and there is no going back on that. I want Nigerians to take us up on that and once you start, you know you can’t go back on it. We are opening up and you can take us up on that. And it is very easy to say ‘you promised this, it happened. This did not happen.’ You’ll be able to assess us. I think we should focus on those issues.
It is too early because we have heard it before. We have seen it before. I am confident because I know myself. I’m determined and I believe in it and I am very dogged. I’m so keen that I want to leave some legacies in the National Assembly. Anybody in Kwara State will tell you whether he likes me or not that what I met and what I left were two different things. I have come to the Senate and I am determined that when I leave, I’ll definitely leave something better and that is going to be in the interest of Nigerians.
In Kogi State, your party is in serious crisis. What is your take on it?
It is a difficult situation because we had not found ourselves in it before. The laws did not even think about it. That is why on our own part also, we must begin to look at those things and see how we can take them up. But you see, some of those laws, no matter how perfect they are, cannot cover all the scenarios.
This is just one of such scenarios. Unfortunately, the gubernatorial candidate died and the election was inconclusive. It is either you go back and conduct fresh primaries or you look at the option of who came second in the primary or who was the running mate? And you take a decision. It may not be satisfactory to everybody. There is no doubt that some will say ‘no, let’s do another primary. Some will say let’s consider the person who came second and others will say let’s look at the running mate.’ And everybody can defend his position. But the party has to take a position and I think that is what the leadership of the party has done.
Does that tally with your own case?
I’m a loyal party man (laughter) and I am always saying it regarding the matter of the National Assembly, the party never met. You can dig out the minute where the party met and announced zoning to another zone apart from my own. But in this case, the party met. The chairman announced the decision of the party. Everybody should comply.
As I said, it is a difficult decision because you cannot satisfy everybody.
By the time your tenure runs out as the Senate President, what would you like to be remembered for?
As one who piloted the affairs of the Senate that made connection with people and made real impact on them.
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