SHORT ESSAY 23
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Fuel Subsidy: SLS, Please Stay Off Debate
It is difficult to justify the removal of this subsidy. Personally, i believe that the Nigerian government can afford the 220billion or so required to sustain it on behalf of its people. That is just about $1.4 billion or less, just a fraction of the commission (or earnings) it makes from oil companies annually. That the amount has reached over a trillion naira is not our fault, but that of the government that deliberately fails to carry out its responsibility of checkmating them.
Incidentally, two weeks ago I was listening to a friend from CBN who was trying to educate me on the necessity of removing the subsidy. In the end his explanation boiled down to the sad truth that people benefiting from the subsidy cannot be confronted by the government. They are big, he said.
I told him the government is not honest. I then asked him a simple question that sealed the discussion: "Kai Kabiru! If the government would appoint someone like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to head the NNPC, will he be able to check this corruption and maintain the subsidy at the reasonable level of N200+ billion?" He said, "Yes, he can."
"In fact", he added, "the realization of the extent of extortion came when Sanusi started to question the storage capacities and other facilities of some oil companies whose claims were submitted to him for payment. Sanusi refused to pay them."
I said, "there you are. Let Jonathan be more courageous and have more Sanusis in government. If you want government to work, you must have corruption-free people in it. But removing the subsidy will definitely court trouble in this now highly inflammable country, so big that we cannot even imagine. Allah ya sauwake."
While we do that, we must keep vigil on some novice politicians that are now trying to ride on our anger to gain cheap popularity and access power. This is not about PDP. It is about our being. Other parties will do the same, given the antecedents of their leaders. Every past government since 1984 has visited us with its own version of heartless economic policies without consultation, leading to the ruin of so many homes forever. Though he is the present, Jonathan is not the first and if we will allow some manipulators power, he will certainly not be the last. The difference here is that, like citizens of the 21st century, we are now standing up to it, saying enough is enough.
Some of these politicians were the architects of World Bank sponsored privatization policies that were ill conceived and ill managed. They also designed the present deregulation in the early 2000s under Obasanjo in concert with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The records are there and the memory fresh. Like Jonathan today, they were deaf to the criticisms we wrote then. How would they gain our support today when we know they will do worse if allowed power again? They have written their records in our minds with indelible ink. They masterminded our present state of poverty and insecurity. Their children are abroad studying; ours are here wallowing at home. We will be reckless to trust them.
In fact, the mere participation of such politicians carries the fatal virus that will divide us, with the government and PDP members labeling it as a machination of the opposition. Then the government would buy some people to claim that Muslims and Northerners are plotting against their 'God-sent' Jonathan. In Nigeria there are always an infinite number of people that would swallow that argument, hook, line and sinker. At that point, many of us will withdraw and the government will have its way.
The labour is meeting today. Their resolution will determine when the real protests will start. This nonsense must stop.
I will appeal to Sanusi to please stay off this debate. Yesterday I travelled to Bauchi - a distance of just 100km - and had to use the fuel of N6,500.00 on the bus I carried my children back to school. This is madness and sheer wickedness. We the people are really angry. We can go to any length on this matter, and genuinely for that matter.
The only thing that would quench our fire is for the President to back down. Otherwise, we are ready to take the country high and wild. If this is a joke, please stop it SLS. "The people are like a river," if I must borrow from the wisdom of al-Mutanabbi: "cross it when it is calm, but avoid it when it is violent."
Aliyu
Showing posts with label Sanusi L. Sanusi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sanusi L. Sanusi. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Monday, December 6, 2010
Discourse 312 Revolting against NASS
Discourse 312
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Revolt against NASS
It is clear that the federal legislature does not enjoy a good reputation among Nigerians, judging from public’s reaction to its recent misunderstanding with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor. It was another opportunity for all sorts of sensational reports and misrepresentations in the press against the lawmakers. Even after Sanusi made his clarification at the Assembly, the most comprehensive report that I read on the issue, which was carried by the Leadership of Saturday December 4 (Pg. 19), said in its opening sentence that “…he raised an alarm over the high cost of maintaining the National Assembly, which he put at 25 per cent of the nation’s expenditure”. Wrong. Sanusi did not say so.
Also, in the brief heading of the article, the author said, “The statement credited to Central Bank Governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido that 25% of the nation’s recurrent expenditure is consumed by the national Assembly annually no doubt stirred the hornet’s nest…” Again wrong. Sanusi did not say ‘recurrent expenditure’.
Sanusi used ‘overheads’ in describing the N136.2billion he referred to in his lecture. But it was this form of reporting that enraged the lawmakers who were so furious that they did not investigate to find out what he actually said and even when they summoned him they were not ready to listen to the correctness of his statement.
In reporting what transpired, The Nation made an elaborate cover last week which unfortunately ended with a note that showed the legislature punctured Sanusi’s line of defence. I relied on that report to write my Trivial 2, titled The Day Sanusi Got it Wrong, in which I accused the Budget Office of misinforming Sanusi and him for not verifying the figure. My attention was drawn to the fact that Sanusi was indeed correct, as some Saturday papers showed. I took considerable time to study many of the reports and the 2010 federal budget which I obtained from the website of the Federal Ministry of Finance. It is clear that I was wrong. The figures from the Budget Office were correct, but only without the addition of service-wide votes of N660billion which, of course, are also part of recurrent expenditure. Why the Budget Office excluded the vote is not mentioned in any of the reports that I studied but the lawmakers suspect it is aimed at blackmailing them by jerking up their percentage of the recurrent expenditure.
This controversy, which is a product of a simple misconception, is leading to a sustained condemnation of the legislature by the Nigerian public. If it will end in reducing the running cost the legislature, that would be a great development. The legislature has been waxing its pocket through various means. Its budget has risen from N19billion in 2000 to N154billion in 2010. Each senator is now entitled to a total of N37.5million, and each member of the House N31.3million, as a package of basic salary and allowances. Then comes the most criticized constituency allowance that totals N111.6million for every House member and N180million for every senator, annually. Generally, the constituency allowance is seen as a cooool money, since it cannot be accounted for in most constituencies.
Apart from what they get within the premises of the National Assembly, Nigerians generally believe that the legislators extort the MDAs, which themselves have become a bastion for executive corruption. The lawmakers use their power to approve budgetary provisions by the executive bodies and their role as watchdog over them to share in the stupendous theft. Their harvest from this area could be more than what they receive at the Assembly including the now infamous constituency allowance. We have also witnessed situations where the lawmakers were bribed by the President during the tenure of Obasanjo in order to pass bills, their basic function.
In a country where the average citizen earns less than a dollar per day, the extravagant living of the lawmakers will justifiably attract condemnation from the public and competition among politicians. As a result, less than 30% of them return to the Assembly at every election. The public is also hesitant to support them and is ready to believe anything that would be said, genuine or fabricated, about them. For example, a text message started circulating yesterday that says “it costs the Nigerian tax payer N290million to maintain each member of the National Assembly. A working day earning of a Nigerian senator is more than a yearly income of a doctor; it is more than the salary of 42 army generals or 48 professors and 70 commissioners of police, more than twice the pay of the US president or 9 times the salary of US congressman.”
The Assembly is largely to blame for this bad public image. Instead of focussing on their legislative duties, they dabbled into executive functions, claiming that they will not be a rubber stamp of the executive. So they started adding and deleting budgetary provisions mostly in favour of the departments that would bribe them or for their own benefit. They forced the executive to include “constituency projects” whose funds they spent without much to show. Yar’adua wanted to stop the practice in the 2008 budget but he was pressured to retain them, though, instead of putting it into the pockets of the lawmakers as Obasanjo was doing, he placed the vote under the MDGs in the Presidency. The lawmakers were furious. They have not stopped complaining.
The lawmakers should also not blame the public for any misconception. They have refused to approve the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill in collaboration with the executive because it will empower Nigerians to know, ask and fight for their rights. Many Nigerians will believe the above text message which is almost the per capita distribution of the Assembly's recurrent expenditure among the lawmakers. Though not accurate, as not all the recurrent expenditure of the Assembly is stolen by the lawmakers, there is very little anyone can do to defend them. The situation is worsened by the absence of whistleblowers among them. Not a single lawmaker came out to show the public his payslip in order to douse its apprehension. Everything is shrouded in secrecy.
The FOI bill would have accorded aspirants the information they need to plan, before elections, what they would do in government. That would have shifted our politics from focussing on personalities to issues. But right now, how can a presidential candidate come up with an agricultural plan, for example, when he does not know what is on the ground? All he can do is to make popular statements, like “7-point Agenda”, during his campaign and spend over two years in office planning. If the lawmakers have not been conniving with the executive, which we despise just equally as much, much would have changed in this country.
What do we do with the legislature? There have been a number of suggestions. However, whatever should be done must encompass three things: reducing the number of members, severely cutting down their per capita expenditure, and harnessing their capacity. Their numbers can be reduced by adopting a unicameral legislature. We do not have to become Americans. The number of constituencies also needs to be reduced to something like 109, given the advances in transport, communication and information technology. Their capacity can be improved by raising the basic qualification of eligibility to be a lawmaker and intensive on the job training. Finally, their salaries should be tied to the national minimum wage, may be 20 times of it; that is, if the minimum wage is N7,000.00, a lawmaker will earn 20 times that amount, or N140,000. Then allowances could be similarly fixed as percentages of the basic salary but not exceeding, say, what a federal permanent secretary would collect as a package. I think this will give us a manageable, affordable and tolerable figure. Bodies like EFCC and RMAFC should ensure that the lawmakers do not pouch elsewhere as they do now. It is only then we would know who are really ready for service and who are not.
Needless to say, the executive too needs similar taming, if not more, for the corruption happening there is by far more than the one at the National Assembly. Yes. The National Assembly has a total budget of N158billion or 3.4% of the 2010 Federal Budget. What is happening to the remaining 97% of the budget, or N4.4trillion spent by the executive? We do not see it. We do not feel it. The presidency alone, it was reported by Transparency International in the mid 2000s, accounted for 56% of the total corruption taking place in the country. And i add: it is vicariously 100% responsible for it since it controls the instruments agencies of law enforcement. There is nothing to indicate that anything has changed significantly as at today.
Would the legislature and the executive succumb to these demands? Not until we revolt. And our greatest revolt would be with our election votes. They are the missiles with which we will bring down the fighter jets of corruption. Let us make better use of them.
Tilde
December 6, 2010
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
Revolt against NASS
It is clear that the federal legislature does not enjoy a good reputation among Nigerians, judging from public’s reaction to its recent misunderstanding with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor. It was another opportunity for all sorts of sensational reports and misrepresentations in the press against the lawmakers. Even after Sanusi made his clarification at the Assembly, the most comprehensive report that I read on the issue, which was carried by the Leadership of Saturday December 4 (Pg. 19), said in its opening sentence that “…he raised an alarm over the high cost of maintaining the National Assembly, which he put at 25 per cent of the nation’s expenditure”. Wrong. Sanusi did not say so.
Also, in the brief heading of the article, the author said, “The statement credited to Central Bank Governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido that 25% of the nation’s recurrent expenditure is consumed by the national Assembly annually no doubt stirred the hornet’s nest…” Again wrong. Sanusi did not say ‘recurrent expenditure’.
Sanusi used ‘overheads’ in describing the N136.2billion he referred to in his lecture. But it was this form of reporting that enraged the lawmakers who were so furious that they did not investigate to find out what he actually said and even when they summoned him they were not ready to listen to the correctness of his statement.
In reporting what transpired, The Nation made an elaborate cover last week which unfortunately ended with a note that showed the legislature punctured Sanusi’s line of defence. I relied on that report to write my Trivial 2, titled The Day Sanusi Got it Wrong, in which I accused the Budget Office of misinforming Sanusi and him for not verifying the figure. My attention was drawn to the fact that Sanusi was indeed correct, as some Saturday papers showed. I took considerable time to study many of the reports and the 2010 federal budget which I obtained from the website of the Federal Ministry of Finance. It is clear that I was wrong. The figures from the Budget Office were correct, but only without the addition of service-wide votes of N660billion which, of course, are also part of recurrent expenditure. Why the Budget Office excluded the vote is not mentioned in any of the reports that I studied but the lawmakers suspect it is aimed at blackmailing them by jerking up their percentage of the recurrent expenditure.
This controversy, which is a product of a simple misconception, is leading to a sustained condemnation of the legislature by the Nigerian public. If it will end in reducing the running cost the legislature, that would be a great development. The legislature has been waxing its pocket through various means. Its budget has risen from N19billion in 2000 to N154billion in 2010. Each senator is now entitled to a total of N37.5million, and each member of the House N31.3million, as a package of basic salary and allowances. Then comes the most criticized constituency allowance that totals N111.6million for every House member and N180million for every senator, annually. Generally, the constituency allowance is seen as a cooool money, since it cannot be accounted for in most constituencies.
Apart from what they get within the premises of the National Assembly, Nigerians generally believe that the legislators extort the MDAs, which themselves have become a bastion for executive corruption. The lawmakers use their power to approve budgetary provisions by the executive bodies and their role as watchdog over them to share in the stupendous theft. Their harvest from this area could be more than what they receive at the Assembly including the now infamous constituency allowance. We have also witnessed situations where the lawmakers were bribed by the President during the tenure of Obasanjo in order to pass bills, their basic function.
In a country where the average citizen earns less than a dollar per day, the extravagant living of the lawmakers will justifiably attract condemnation from the public and competition among politicians. As a result, less than 30% of them return to the Assembly at every election. The public is also hesitant to support them and is ready to believe anything that would be said, genuine or fabricated, about them. For example, a text message started circulating yesterday that says “it costs the Nigerian tax payer N290million to maintain each member of the National Assembly. A working day earning of a Nigerian senator is more than a yearly income of a doctor; it is more than the salary of 42 army generals or 48 professors and 70 commissioners of police, more than twice the pay of the US president or 9 times the salary of US congressman.”
The Assembly is largely to blame for this bad public image. Instead of focussing on their legislative duties, they dabbled into executive functions, claiming that they will not be a rubber stamp of the executive. So they started adding and deleting budgetary provisions mostly in favour of the departments that would bribe them or for their own benefit. They forced the executive to include “constituency projects” whose funds they spent without much to show. Yar’adua wanted to stop the practice in the 2008 budget but he was pressured to retain them, though, instead of putting it into the pockets of the lawmakers as Obasanjo was doing, he placed the vote under the MDGs in the Presidency. The lawmakers were furious. They have not stopped complaining.
The lawmakers should also not blame the public for any misconception. They have refused to approve the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill in collaboration with the executive because it will empower Nigerians to know, ask and fight for their rights. Many Nigerians will believe the above text message which is almost the per capita distribution of the Assembly's recurrent expenditure among the lawmakers. Though not accurate, as not all the recurrent expenditure of the Assembly is stolen by the lawmakers, there is very little anyone can do to defend them. The situation is worsened by the absence of whistleblowers among them. Not a single lawmaker came out to show the public his payslip in order to douse its apprehension. Everything is shrouded in secrecy.
The FOI bill would have accorded aspirants the information they need to plan, before elections, what they would do in government. That would have shifted our politics from focussing on personalities to issues. But right now, how can a presidential candidate come up with an agricultural plan, for example, when he does not know what is on the ground? All he can do is to make popular statements, like “7-point Agenda”, during his campaign and spend over two years in office planning. If the lawmakers have not been conniving with the executive, which we despise just equally as much, much would have changed in this country.
What do we do with the legislature? There have been a number of suggestions. However, whatever should be done must encompass three things: reducing the number of members, severely cutting down their per capita expenditure, and harnessing their capacity. Their numbers can be reduced by adopting a unicameral legislature. We do not have to become Americans. The number of constituencies also needs to be reduced to something like 109, given the advances in transport, communication and information technology. Their capacity can be improved by raising the basic qualification of eligibility to be a lawmaker and intensive on the job training. Finally, their salaries should be tied to the national minimum wage, may be 20 times of it; that is, if the minimum wage is N7,000.00, a lawmaker will earn 20 times that amount, or N140,000. Then allowances could be similarly fixed as percentages of the basic salary but not exceeding, say, what a federal permanent secretary would collect as a package. I think this will give us a manageable, affordable and tolerable figure. Bodies like EFCC and RMAFC should ensure that the lawmakers do not pouch elsewhere as they do now. It is only then we would know who are really ready for service and who are not.
Needless to say, the executive too needs similar taming, if not more, for the corruption happening there is by far more than the one at the National Assembly. Yes. The National Assembly has a total budget of N158billion or 3.4% of the 2010 Federal Budget. What is happening to the remaining 97% of the budget, or N4.4trillion spent by the executive? We do not see it. We do not feel it. The presidency alone, it was reported by Transparency International in the mid 2000s, accounted for 56% of the total corruption taking place in the country. And i add: it is vicariously 100% responsible for it since it controls the instruments agencies of law enforcement. There is nothing to indicate that anything has changed significantly as at today.
Would the legislature and the executive succumb to these demands? Not until we revolt. And our greatest revolt would be with our election votes. They are the missiles with which we will bring down the fighter jets of corruption. Let us make better use of them.
Tilde
December 6, 2010
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