buhari is not slow he is only working~mohammed

National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, insists in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE that President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has not been slow The All Progressives Congress won the election about two months to President Muhammadu Buhari’s inauguration and yet, no ministerial appointments. Are you sure this party is prepared for governance? I think that view is a bit misinformed. In the first instance, President Muhammadu Buhari came to power just about six weeks ago and it is not correct to say that because certain appointments have not been made, therefore, the government has slowed down or that the APC is not ready for governance. Unfortunately, this view is gaining ground but it is not correct. A party has two documents that guide it when it comes to power, the first is the manifesto. The manifesto is what you put together as your proposals and ideas when you are not in power yet. This government, as soon as we won, we set up a transition committee. That committee was to look at our manifesto and the handover notes that we received and see that we are able to harmonise both. Like they say, you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. Until you are in power, you don’t know exactly the kind of situation or rot you are going to meet on ground. So however laudable some of your programmes might be in the manifesto, until when you are given the handover notes, you don’t really know how feasible they are. In our own case, we were not very fortunate with the level of cooperation that the transition committee got from the immediate past government. I’m sure that everybody knows that we are not making excuses, it’s true and it’s a fact that until five days to the inauguration, we never received any handover notes. So that hampered us. Secondly, the rot we met was unexpected. In spite of whatever anybody is saying, the obligations that were left behind was about N7trn. When you have obligations of about N7trn, then you know it is a very deep hole. I’m not talking about debts or unpaid workers’ salaries, but obligations left in all the various ministries. Beyond the failure to appoint ministers, Nigerians say everything about this government is slow, is it deliberate? Again, why do people say this government is slow? This government is not slow. The government is focused; it is methodological. It is following its manifesto and the recommendations of the transition committee in what it’s doing. People will say this government does not have ministers and a Secretary to the Government of the Federation, but we are saying this government wants people with proven track records of competence and integrity. This is coupled with the fact that Nigeria is a delicate country that is sensitive to ethnic and religious divides. Even when you want to make appointments, you will make it, looking at two issues. One, the APC itself came in as a coalition government of different parties or forces. Two, we have inherited a complex country. All we are doing is to make a thorough and meticulous research before we start putting people in key offices. And in any event, if you look from 1999 till date, it has always taken about six weeks for any administration to name its ministers. Also, this is the first time we are having a real transition. It’s not one President succeeding himself or one party succeeding itself, this is a completely new scenario where you have hundreds of appointments to make, so we have to be very careful. Then again, Nigerians must understand that the fact that you don’t have ministers or SGF or Chief of Staff does not mean that the government is not performing. This government is performing. Policy statements are being issued, things are getting done. But we have this fixation on ministers and their appointments. This Buhari effect has really fast tracked matters and within the six weeks, we have not been idle. Within six weeks, the President has hit the ground running on security. Are you referring to the recent spate of bombings and the lives that are being lost every day? How does that translate into hitting the ground running? Nigerians should look at things in the correct context. What was Boko Haram this time last year? What is it today? This time last year, Boko Haram held territories. But by the time former President Goodluck Jonathan left, our soldiers had reclaimed the territories and we were winning the war. But Buhari came in and Jonathan’s success seems to have been lost… No! It’s not lost. You see, let me tell you something. The achievements will be lost only if the liberated areas have been retaken by the insurgents. What did Jonathan administration achieve? His administration liberated certain territories that were held by Boko Haram insurgents. He achieved driving the insurgents out of Sambisa forest. We have not lost one single territory, not one inch, since we came to power. Anybody who understands insurgency will know that once you dislodge them from their stronghold, they will lack central command and control and each of them will go on suicidal missions. They don’t have the capacity they used to have before to plan attacks. What we have today is each of them operating in silos and I can assure you that by the time the multinational joint task force takes off at the end of this month, and with the new appointments of the service chiefs, improving our intelligence gathering, we are going to see that Boko Haram will be a thing of the past. Even attacks on soft targets you have mentioned now had reduced before Jonathan handed over government to Buhari. Today, we have explosions everywhere. So what new thing has this government done? You see, by the time Jonathan was leaving office, a lot of progress was made in dislodging and regaining our territories but it didn’t mean that these attacks were not going on. This time around, all they are left with are bomb attacks; they cannot do the kinds of attacks they used to plan. You keep saying that Boko Haram is weaker but if its weakness can cause so many deaths of innocent Nigerians within six weeks of your party’s administration, what then happens if it is strong? When people fail to understand the imports of statements, it leads to a lot of misconception. The organisation, I said is getting weaker because they have been dislodged from their strongholds, they have been dispersed and they no longer hold territories. It doesn’t mean that they cannot be vicious. It’s just like having robbers who used to live in a room before. If you disperse them without catching them, it doesn’t mean they won’t steal elsewhere again, but it means they cannot sit together and plan how they will rob heavily. Each will steal on his own. What I meant was that organisationally, they are weakened. Earlier you said you admitted that you did not realise the rot in government until you got in. Nigerians will like to know why you made so many promises without having the full knowledge of what was on ground. I think you are missing the point. You see, a political party must have an agenda. It must be able to analyse situations and say what are the major problems confronting my country today. When I get to power, how will I address them and what will be my priorities? That is what they mean by a manifesto. A manifesto also distinguishes one party from another. Are you going to be social welfarist party or what? We in the APC, from Day 1, conducted a survey to get to know the problems of this country and the result of the survey told us that unemployment, corruption and insecurity are the major challenges of this country. So we wove our manifesto around these. That was why we said we would provide so many jobs, tackle corruption and insecurity. But that is one thing; another thing is to say we want to create one million jobs a year because we know that as of today; about 40 per cent of our youths are unemployed. But when you are saying that, of course, you have no idea what kind of money or debt is there in government. So if you now find out that the previous government had left you N7trn debt, it doesn’t mean that you will not go ahead to employ the people. It only means that you must look for easy means of raising funds to do so and that you cannot only depend on the traditional source of income. So it does not mean that a party cannot have a manifesto because it doesn’t know what it will meet on ground. For instance, we have N7trn debt but we are not dislodged by that one bit because we also know that a lot of the money belonging to the Federal Government was never remitted to it. So if government can block those leakages, it will still be able to do as it has promised. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has yet to deny the assertion that between 2012 and 2015, it made N8.1trn and that it only remitted N4.3trn, leaving out about N3.8trn. Imagine what the N3.8trn can do for any government. Also until we came to power, nobody knew that the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company was paying tax. It was what it paid on June 17 this year that we shared among the three tiers of governments. After all, it paid in 2014, what happened to it? In June 2009, LNG paid over $4.7bn as dividend to the NNPC, where did it go to? For us, we are not daunted by the rot, but we have to clear the rot first. But we have to know which leakages to block. If we were not meticulous, how would we even know where they were hiding the money? There was a full page advert on ThisDay on May 21, where LNG said it had paid over $9bn to its shareholders and Nigeria with 49 per cent share holdings took over $4.7bn. These are the areas that this government is looking into and people are now saying it should appoint ministers, appoint SSG. It does not mean that because you have not appointed ministers, you are not working. Some works are even probably better done. But we know that a lot of sectors have grounded to a halt and people are afraid to invest because no one is sure of the policies of the government yet. Honestly, nobody has come out with any proof that the government has slowed down because ministers have not been appointed. Yes, we agree that Nigerians are perfectly entitled to express these feelings but we are also saying it doesn’t equate with nonperformance. Your party has been talking about the rot, the need for patience and all that. But we all knew Nigeria was in a bad state financially even before Jonathan handed over power to you. Are your complaints some kind of excuse for the APC government not to deliver on its promises? I don’t agree. Nobody knew the extent of the rot. See, we didn’t expect that we were going to meet N7trn in debt. So what did you expect? We expected to probably have some debts but you see, N7trn is the equivalent of more than a year budget of the country. We didn’t expect that. We knew there was a lot of profligacy in government but we didn’t expect this debt. Two, what did we do when we met this? We didn’t fold our arms. We got in and within six weeks, we were able to arrange a bailout for states. And I’ve heard a lot of uninformed comments about that. Some people say that bailing out states is actually rewarding corruption and I ask ‘do they know that they are talking about human beings? Do they know they are talking about hundreds of thousands of workers all over Nigeria who have not been paid, some for as long as nine months? Do they appreciate that these workers have children who have to pay school fees, eat and tend to medical obligations? You are now saying that simply because you suspect that the governors have been profligate, therefore punish everybody. Now, who says that any governor who was corrupt would go scot free? We are not saying that. But we are saying that 18 states going on strike and hundreds of thousands of people going hungry is a bad situation. So what did we do? We took the $2.1bn which was paid in tax by both Shell and LNG and shared it among the three tiers of government. For those states that are unable to pay salaries, we asked the Central Bank of Nigeria to create a soft loan for them so they can clear their backlogs. Finally, we said we know that most of these states are struggling under debts owed to commercial banks. This means that a huge sum of their money goes into servicing debts every month. So we said go and buy these loans and then restructure it to 25 years so that those servicing debts with about N2bn every month will be paying less than N200m, so that they can be free from the shackles. That way, they can have enough money to pay workers’ salaries, develop health infrastructure and other things. People do not even appreciate this. Yet, we have not been in government for two months, why didn’t the previous government think of this? States like Kogi, Benue and Osun had owed several months salaries. Yet, you still say that this government is just talking, the president is slow, he is not slow. We are not talking, we are working, and we are performing. Look at the new era of transparency. When we came in, about 1,300 megawatts of electricity was being generated. Today, it’s 4,700MW. What did we do? We didn’t do anything. That is the Buhari effect for you. Of course, some clowns are saying it’s because it’s rainy season. Wasn’t there rainy season in 2014? What about in 2013, wasn’t there rainy season? When you look at the head, you take your moral bearing from him. Now, the PDP said the refusal of the President to approve N400m to buy bullet proof vehicles was cosmetic. What is cosmetic in N400m? Let’s face it, the same vehicles that are used by the presidents are what the governors use. Supposing every state in the federation today says we are going to take a cue from Mr. President and not buy new bullet proof cars, we will use the ones our predecessors handed over to us; we will be saving N400m in each of the states. The PDP does not even understand the power of symbolism, the power of leading by example. And you say that is just talking, multiply N400m by 36, what do you get? But some say the President and the Vice President lack the powers to cut their salaries, that only the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission which is backed by the Senate, has the power to do that. Honestly at times, it is as if common sense has taken flight in this country. If I’m your employer and I’m paying you N100,000 every month and you come to me and say Mr. Mohammed, ‘I see your company is facing a lot of trouble and if it does not survive, I would lose my job. Sir, I don’t mind taking N50,000’. I didn’t take it from you, you came to me. What laws have you violated? It’s a different thing if the president says I’m going to cut the salaries of everybody. But if the President and Vice President say they won’t collect the full salary, what they are trying to do is see whether by this symbol, some people will come and say we are also going to make sacrifices for Nigeria. And then we are bad mouthing it as if it’s a bad thing to do. If your wife, for instance, says, I see you are struggling to pay our children’s school fees, don’t bother giving me house allowance for this month. What law has she broken? When some people make comments, I laugh at them as if we also didn’t go to school. President Buhari promised to publicly declare his assets and prune the presidential air fleet, he hasn’t done anything in that regard, yet you say this government is not slow? What has that got to do with being slow? Hear that. Wait, I will answer you. I think the office of the Code of Conduct Bureau said the President can only go public after it has verified the assets he said he has. No, what the CCB said was that it didn’t stop the President from going ahead to declare his assets publicly. No, the CCB said so. No! No! No! Supposing I said I have 10 houses but actually have only one house. Then after verification, it is discovered I have only one house, won’t that be ridiculous? So that was why the CCB said that it should happen after the assets are verified; it is then the President can now make his asset declaration public. But how do you term that as being slow? Then the other one, you ask about pruning the presidential air fleet. So even if I want to sell my car, won’t you value it to know the condition in which it is? Do you think what they want to sell is Akara (bean cake)? Number one, I don’t know when he made that promise. But even if that is true, a man has four years to spend in office and you want him to do everything within the first four weeks? What is this inordinate haste about? But with the pace at which the President is going, how will he deliver on his promises to feed school children, steady the Naira, pay graduates stipends and the rest? I’ve just told you now that what we discovered in four weeks is that money meant to be paid into the federation account had been paid elsewhere. When that money can be put where it belongs, what do you do with it if not to use it to execute your projects? I’ve just given you two examples. I know that there is a new era of transparency in Nigeria today. So we are not really daunted by challenges but let Nigerians know that we have met a very bad situation on ground. It’s not an excuse for us not to perform, though. We do little things but people are not appreciative of them; small drops become a river. Your party promised to fight corruption but it seems this government is satisfied with having people return parts of their loots. Who is prosecuting them as Nigerians are waiting for the fight against corruption to start? It has started already. The laws have been there; they were not just applied. How come that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has suddenly woken up? Most of the cases that are now being tried had been on before we came to power. About a week ago, we were told that a former governor had to forfeit so many assets to the state. Now, we have seen a new EFCC. We have seen a new Code of Conduct Tribunal. Things are moving, the Buhari spirit is there. Buhari is not a judge, he can’t jail anybody. Let the system and the institutions work; that is all we are saying. Don’t you think that Buhari’s aloofness has come back to haunt him and the party considering the National Assembly crisis? All I will tell you about the National Assembly is that we are working towards resolving it. The party has a crisis on its hands and it is working towards resolving it. What about the alleged rift between Buhari and a chieftain of the party, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu? Some people somewhere are feeding a lot of stories to the world about a perceived rift between Asiwaju and President Buhari and I can tell you that it doesn’t exist. There is mutual respect between the two leaders. When you are in politics and there is nothing to write about, people will write about all kinds of things. But you surely can’t deny that there is a Northern agenda to cut down Tinubu’s influence in the party which manifested in the National Assembly crisis? That is absolute bunkum. You see in APC, we don’t think in terms of North, South, West, East, no. The whole of Nigeria fought for the victory. It’s a national mandate and it cannot be reduced to an ethnic or regional mandate by anybody for whatever interest. I’m a member of the party’s National Working Committee and I don’t think in terms of North, West, East or South, no. When we were fighting for this mandate, we sought everybody’s support, we can’t get there now and start saying it’s a Northern mandate or a Southern mandate. People say the APC leadership should be ashamed for making an issue out of the National Assembly crisis when in 2011, the APC supported former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, against the directive of the Peoples Democratic Party. Yet, the PDP let it go. I think you are comparing apples with oranges. It’s not the same thing. They all disobeyed party directives, what is different in that? Leave us to resolve the issue. I can assure you that the party will resolve the issue. So when can we expect the list of ministerial appointments which the APC failed to use the two months it had before inauguration to prepare for? When you set up a transition committee to go and give you an agenda and restructure government, you have to wait for that transition committee to come back before appointing ministers. I remember that the committee did recommend reducing the number of ministries. So supposing the President had nominated 29 ministers and the committee says you should have only 19, what happens to the other 10? So we have to wait. There is so much importance attached to nominations by the public and less attached to governance and the workings of the government. But again, we can assure you that sooner than later, key appointments will be made including those of ministers. But how will the President deliver on his promises and his party’s manifestoes when the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, don’t belong to the same caucus? I have said it here that I would rather not comment on National Assembly crisis. Some experts still wonder why this government failed to consider the negative effects of pumping so much money into the economy with the bailout, one of which is inflation and the Naira slump. Did the APC-led government overlook this? Look at the exponential effects on the economy. People have more money to buy more goods; the manufacturer will produce more and employ more people. But for God’s sake, we are talking about human beings. We are not talking about statistics or numbers. We are giving people a lifeline, people who had no source of income for nine months. Their relations have been borrowing, but when we now created a lifeline for them, people are complaining. I think the essence of government is to take care of the welfare of its people, which is what this government has done.