It’s national embarrassment to be talking of oil theft, says Oshiomhole

 








 

 





Pomp and ceremony heralded the 5th anniversary of the administration of Comrade Adams Aliu Oshiomhole of Edo State on Tuesday, November 12, 2013. It was an occasion to showcase his government’s development strides to the people of the state and leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Signing off the ceremonies at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin City, the Comrade Governor fielded questions from journalists, including Group Political Editor, EHICHIOYA EZOMON.
IT would seem as if he elaborate ceremony to commemorate the 5th anniversary of your government was a waste of state resources, isn’t it?
  We are not like any other government; our selling point is the trust line between the governed and the government and every responsible and honest steward must, as a matter of duty and obligation, account to his master. 
  I am the steward of Edo State. I have the privilege to be entrusted with the management of the resources of the state, which is not made up of a few elite, but also of people in the rural areas, as well those in the urban areas. 
  In terms of election, the people are more in number than the elite. And so, on the occasion of the 5th anniversary and the first year in my second term, as I have done over the past four years, it has become a tradition to face the people and tell them what has changed since November 2008 and today, but more particularly between last year and now so that they follow up the progress we are making.
  If you called that extravagance, well, that would be your choice of words but I call it practical accountability, open governance. In the trade union world, when you are elected at a certain period, you hold your meeting, you give a report of your achievement and where you have challenges, you explain it to the people.
  So, I don’t see what was extravagant (in the ceremonies); I didn’t see people drinking champagne or eating three-course meals; rather, I saw women under the sun and when we finished, a few people came to the Government House for lunch.
  My complaint when I was in the NLC was that politicians make promises at the beginning and in between they don’t render account. For me, at the heart of democracy is the commitment to report to your employers what you have done with the tools with which you were asked to work. And that is what we did today (Tuesday, November 12, 2013) and that’s what we had done in the past four years and God willing, we would do it over the next few years. 
  I want to lay a foundation that a future government would feel obliged, year to year, to tell the people what they did with their mandate.
The issue of borrowing by way of bonds is very much in the news in the states. How much has your government borrowed for its infrastructural development?
  I don’t know about borrowing. I think the only money was in N25 billion bonds, which we perfected in 2011 and every month, we pay about N550 million to service that bond.
  Of the N25 billion, we have repaid over N14 billion, which means the net we have will be under N10 billion.
How have you coped with the shortfall in revenue to states, as some governors had complained bitterly about it?
  Well, I honestly think that it is a shame that we should be talking of oil theft because the volume that is stolen cannot be in jerry cans or drums but in vessels.
  And I refuse to believe that the Nigerian Navy can be incompetent that it cannot police our waterways or the combined force of the Navy and the Air Force cannot even drop a knockout on top of a rogue ship.
  I have argued this in official quarters and I believe that this is a national embarrassment — to talk about the volume of theft of our crude. It is not one of those acts of God (laughter); this is just failure of man.
  I had one of those opportunities to meet security agencies, and I said that the sovereignty of a nation is defined in terms of the capacity of the nation state to use the combined power of its armed forces to defend its territorial boundaries, including the waterways; and that we confessed to the level of theft, Nigeria was the only country going through that.
  We have demystified the State by conceding that small thieves are stronger than the combined force of the Nigerian armed forces. I do not believe that we can tell the world that we can’t control our inland waterways.
  When a woman is cooking for her husband or the family, it is typical that she does the first tasting and she puts some in her hand and probably adds a little salt; and in the process, she could mistakenly take the gizzard in the name of tasting.
  The gizzard is usually reserved for the head of the house because, as you aged, you may lose your teeth. And because the gizzard is boneless, the elders search for it. So, at that point (of the gizzard missing), there would be a local enquiry by the elders in the community.
  Hence, basically, I don’t believe that we should accept that we should lose between 400,000 and 700,000 barrels of oil per day; it is scandalous and it is not sustainable.
  I am even more worried about the amount of environmental damage long after the oil must have dried up. We may never have the resources to fix the consequences of the environmental degradation arising from the illegal refineries.
  And those foreigners, with their Nigerian collaborators that bring their ships here to cart away oil as if Nigeria is a banana Republic; I wonder what they say when they get home!
  I think it is a national embarrassment.
We copied from Lagos to advance our development
WHEN you were addressing the crowd, you spoke about copying certain processes from Lagos State, especially in the area of financial re-engineering. What is the peculiar situation of Edo State?
  What I hate is that people don’t like to say they copy except when you talk about America and Europe. What I’m saying is that there are a lot of good things happening in the Nigerian environment and sometimes, you don’t need to go out to find what works and adopt it.
  There are a couple of things we copied from Lagos: The Land Use Charge, and Consumption Tax. I’m sure that some of you, at one time or the other had travelled outside Nigeria. Even those of you who had not traveled, but just watching debates in other countries, central to every election debate is tax policy, and tax defines the character of a government.
  The left wing government would want more taxes so that they can take from the rich in order to provide a robust social safety net for the poor. The right wing party believes everybody for himself and God for all of us. They can build private roads and send their children to private schools and fly private aircraft but for the government that is pro-people, you can fly your jet but you must pay tax. 
  Look at the intra-city tram, which would have been done many years ago; it’s now happening in Lagos. Imagine if somebody had made up his mind to do 30 years ago what Fashola is doing now, life in Lagos would have been a lot more comfortable than it is! But we recognised that, the fact that we failed in the past is no reason we should fail now.
  Things have changed in Lagos. Ojuelegba used to be where we recruited our area boys when we wanted to make Lagos a bit less uncomfortable for the big people plying the roads. The last time I passed Ojuelegba, I couldn’t find area boys. Oshodi has been cleaned up; it was something that I could copy.
  As a result, I can say I went to Lagos, to proudly copy what works and I came back to Edo, to re-engineer our tax system. We raised our locally generated revenue from about N285 million and at a point, we hit N2 billion, and we didn’t need to depend on Abuja to be able to do everything that we needed to do.
  It requires courage, clear thinking and a level of determination to be able to get the people to realise that citizens have obligation to the state to pay taxes so that in turn, they can become real stakeholders to do the things that we are doing in Edo State.
  If we are going to expand and carry out urban renewal like what they did in Lagos, you do need to sometimes get rid of certain things in order to restore the right of way and expand the roads.
Agreements are enforceable under labour laws
HOW would you react to the continued closure of Nigerian universities?
  I have a particular difficulty on this matter and this is why I have not commented on it, and I don’t think I really want to comment on it because somehow, I helped in mediating, between the Federal Government and ASUU in 2009 the very agreement that is in dispute.
  All I will say for now is that under the Nigerian labour laws, agreements are enforceable because both the Trade Union Act and Labour Act recognise the status of collective agreement entered into between an employer and employee.
  The key issue is that both sides should act in good faith because making any statement for and against either side might not promote the course of peace.
You had signed — some critics would say with reckless abandon — the death warrants for the execution of condemned felons. Why would you do that?
  I am sure you are familiar with the fact that the governor has the last input when a criminal or a suspect is apprehended. It goes through trials; the charges are laid before the court and he (suspect) is invited to come and defend himself before the prosecutors, to establish the guilt (or otherwise).
  Then the judge makes up his mind whether the case has been proven or not. Where he is convinced, he has that judgment and the suspect can appeal up to the Supreme Court.
  If the Supreme Court is convinced that the person is guilty and hands out the death penalty, it is the requirement of the Constitution that the governor assents to it.
  If the Supreme Court found out that 20 people were guilty of murder and it sentenced the 20 people to death and the governor, in line with the constitutional requirement, signed the sentences, what is reckless in that? 
  When a reporter files a story, it goes through newsroom: the sub-editor and the line editor look at it, and the editor signs up the paper; is that a reckless process?

- Guardian

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