In this interview with KAYODE ADEOTI, a legal juggernaut in the state, an Associate Professor of law at faculty of law, University of Ilorin, Kwara state, Dr. Oba Yusuf AbdulHameed speaks on the recent agitation by some groups in the country for reduction of legislators as well as Ministers emoluments among other issues. Excerpts:
How do you see agitation for the reduction of legislators, Ministers’ salaries by 50 per cent?
I will subscribe to that because the Federal system Nigeria runs, is an expensive one, even in the United States, the prerequisite of office for public office holder is not as high as we have it here. When you run an organisation, you should think first about its resources before considering renumeration for the management. I see Nigeria as an organisation, a setting, an institution… when you spend too much on an organisation that you can’t account for profit, then one need to have a rethink. As we speak today, Nigeria has about 50 ministries and over 500 Federal Ministerial Departments and we are still counting. Everyday, National Assembly commissions one body or the other. It has not dawn on Nigerians that we don’t need that. Now, people are already talking about establishing ministerial department for herdsmen colony. I will subscribe for two opinions; reduction in emolument for occupants of public office holders and reduction of the federal institutions that we have. If this reduction is done, by more than half, Nigeria will still function the way it ought to in recent time, there was a news in the social media (even dailies) that Nigeria public office holders are the highest paid in the world. With the high rate of poverty in the country, Nigeria public holders are not entitle to such affluence they live in. In other clime, you get honoured for serving the public not wealth. In Africa, reverse is the case, this is because they have free access to public treasury and they diverted it to suit their purposes. In the petroleum sector alone, we have NNPC, Petroleum fund, PPA, pipeline vandalisation regulation. In that sector alone, we have like seven ministerial department plus the ministry. We just duplicating headship and we are wasting natural resources.
Since last year, the country has been faced with fuel scarcity and it has continued unabated. Would enactment of certain laws halt the situation?
It is not about making laws, we have enough already, there is virtually no aspect of life that does have law protecting it. We inherited the entire legal system from the United Kingdom due to colonisation. And their law that we inherited is very comprehensive. Reason for scarcity of good education, good infrastructures and the likes is, corruption. In Nigeria as at today, we have four local refineries. There is no regime in the last 30 years that has not claimed to carry out Turn Around Mantainance (TAM) of the refineries but no result at the end. Apart from that, building a refinery is not rocket science, it doesn’t need magic. My amazement is that our president, during His younger days, was the minister of petroleum, and he decided to retain that seat for himself even as President of Nigeria now. With the resources we have, three years is long enough for us to have built a refinery. We have not been able to do this because Nigerian leaders prefer to import petroleum, this is because, there are lot of stages in the process that they are benefiting from, in a corrupt manner, they do not want that problem solved. Niger Republic, our neighbour discovered oil not up to ten years, and they built refinery in less than three years. The country was ready to supply refined crude to Nigeria, but our leaders kicked against this because deal of importing from the US and other countries will not continue. We are witnesses to the story of 1.7trillion subsidy petroleum scam. People will claimed they supplied the product to Nigeria, they will go to the Ministry of Finance in connivance with everybody on the line then collect the money. The problem of this scarcity is corruption. It is cheaper to import form Nija, why are we not doing so? Why have we not studied how Niger built a refinery in less than three years then build ours too.
There was a court suit by an Ilorin-based activist seeking the sack of President Muhammad Buhari as the petroleum minister, how do you perceive this?
There is nothing wrong with the President being the minister of petroleum. The constitution allows the President to appoint ministers to function on his behalf. He is the chief executive, other ministers are assisting him to carry out those executive functions. He has the right, if he so wish to perform those functions directly. The issue is, is the President doing it well? The answer is no.
