*Says the president’s mindset on budget is wrong
*’In Osun, only those in perpetual opposition are complaining’

Senator Christopher Babajide Omoworare (ACN, Osun East) is the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter Governmental Affairs. He also serves on the Senate Committee of Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters; Rules and Business; Sports and Social Development.
In this interview, Omoworare bares his mind on President Goodluck Jonathan administration, the Senate, and Governor Rauf Aregbesola administration, among other issues of national importance.

By Henry Umoru & Joseph Erunke

The Senate Federal Character and Inter-governmental Affairs Committee  just concluded a public hearing into jobs-for-sale scam currently rocking the nation. What  did you come out with from the assignment? Secondly, during the motion on that scam, some senators  confessed that  they gave money to their constituents to get jobs. Can the Senate be a judge over its own case, as some senators hands may not be too clean going by their involvement?

I sincerely don’t think that I am qualified to judge my colleagues and, unfortunately, I was not here when the motion was heard. The Senate Committee on Federal Character and Inter-governmental Affairs hasn’t come up with any finding. It is  pretty difficult to ask people to come and testify about job placement, job-for-sale because a lot of them will not come up, and that was actually our experience.

At the same time, we felt it was an opportunity for us to do this holistic work so that, along the line, we will see if there is a  lacune in the procedure or the process which could give room for such jobs for sale. Those who were present at the public hearing know that our chairman actually pointed accusing fingers at our para-military organizations-the Nigeria Civil Defence, Nigeria Immigration, Nigeria Customs and so on and so forth.

He did say that going by the report that had reached us, they (the agencies) were most culpable of all the agencies. It was only the Federal Road Safety Commission that made bold, through its Head of Human Resources, to say that it is not even possible  for anybody that was not qualified or that was not yet fully engaged to enter their payroll because their system was fully computerized, which was one of the insights we now had. If other agencies were that computerized, probably, it would not had occurred.

Criminal matters
The Civil Defence said they had retrieved letters from about 5,000 people and that there were matters even pending in court-criminal matters and we asked them to supply us with information about those involved because we discovered that the petition presented by Senator Ojudu, from Ekiti State with respect to some of his constituents who paid, we discovered that we must do something about the system itself because two to three months salaries were paid to some people before they now said they found  that those people did not qualify, so could not have been given letters of employment.

We were also opportune  to meet a guy that came forward and said, ‘look, I was asked to bring money and I brought money and I got letter but on getting to Lagos where they were training, I was asked to step aside and I was detained on the grounds that I had a fake letter’. We are also looking into that. But the job has not finished yet; we have over three hundred ministries, departments and agencies, MDAs.

So we could not finish the job in two days, we actually took a third day and the committees on Federal Character, Inter-governmental Affairs and Labour met and said we will continue sitting until we go through the process and the procedures of recruitment by all the agencies. We invited some agencies and some ministries particularly because we received petitions.

What matters most is that if anybody has stepped on the floor of the Senate and gives money to his constituent to go and look for job, it is left for Nigerians to judge the person, that’s number one; secondly, it is left for the committee to limit the extent of the person’s involvement so that it will not affect the hearing and the report of the committee and; thirdly, most unfortunately but  naturally, there is nothing anybody can do about it because anybody who has stepped on the floor of the Senate is privileged under the Legislative and Privileges Act.

More employers

And; fourthly, that becomes a matter for all of us because the truth of the matter is that all of us are under pressure to get our constituents  employed. My last count of the CVs I have cannot be less than 2,000.I have been opportune  to influence about 80 people to get employed and, without being immodest, I want to say that probably, I am one of the highest here. And this is without losing sight of the fact that you cannot put everybody in the civil service. The executive arm of government must be up and doing to open up the public private partnership relationship to open up opportunities given to people to set up industries on their own, instead of becoming employees to become employers of labour. You cannot do that by all of us wanting our people to get employed in the civil service; it’s not going to work. But opportunity cannot come to me and I say I don’t have anybody because of my philosophy that the executive arm of government must make sure that we create more employers of labour than employees.

Misunderstanding on constituency projects
I will take the same opportunity when it comes to me and the same argument goes when it comes to constituency projects. Constituency project is an aberration but, for a failing government, you don’t have any option. The only thing we can show for a period of four years is the constituency projects which you have influenced in the constituency arrangement which we don’t do. It is done by the executive arm of government and they make a lot of news over the fact that we determine the projects. Why am I the representative of the people if I can’t determine the projects? In the area of education for  instance, the Minister of Education does not know  Obafemi Awolowo University, I attended Obafemi Awolowo University, I grew up in Ife, I did my primary school in Ife, my secondary school in Ife and university in Ife. It is not possible for her to know my backyard more than me. So if there is any project going to Obafemi Awolowo University, it should not be the executive arm of government that should determine it, it should be us that should determine it.

This also takes me to the issue of appropriation, which is the burning issue in Nigeria to the effect that of what effect can you, as a parliamentarian, offer the first reading, the presentation of Mr President when we have a joint session? To what extent can we tinker with the proposals dropped by the executive arm of government? And I have always been of the opinion that what the president brings is an estimate. We are the ones to determine but, unfortunately, we don’t have a congressional budget office here which we should have.
So, we are the ones to fully determine this and we are looking into the issue, I don’t want to be a judge in my course, but I am of the view that we will do a good job on the issue of jobs-for-sale scan, you will soon get our report, it may take a little more time than we expected;  we want to give every ministry, every department and every agency the opportunity to come and speak with us. And like I had said earlier, we are looking at how we won’t tarnish the report of the committee.

Is the Senate doing enough in terms of checks and balances?
I respect whatever I met in the Senate, but I feel the Senate can still do a lot more with a view to some basic tenets of governance-freedom of speech, freedom of association and democracy in the true sense of it. Nigeria claims to be a federal state, but are we truly federal? Are we truly over sighting the executive the way we should? But I have also come to realize that it is a learning process, you can’t get there overnight.

Mini-Sovereign National Conference
It is not as if the Senate is actually not doing enough, but we could do a lot more because there are issues that come  to us and we must be statesmen in every respect because we must not put pressure on the system which takes me to the PIB debate we had. At the end of the day, what I think we had, irrespective of anybody’s opinion, was a mini-Sovereign National Conference, when people from all parts of the country could come and say, ‘look, we think enough money has been given to people from one part of the country and they don’t need more money under the host community section of the PIB and that that particular provision should be extracted, should be deleted from the bill’, and the other people will come and say, ‘oh, you guys are the ones that have taken most part of these jobs’.

Don’t forget that Nuhu Ribadu, at a point,  told governors of the North East that “you have so much money and you have not done anything with it’. So, it was an opportunity to have a mini-Sovereign National Conference and I feel we are statesmen, we are senators representing our various senatorial districts but, whether we like it or not, we are senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We always have that in mind irrespective of the back-slapping, the hugging and the shaking that go on the floor of the Senate. You must try your humanly possible best to see that Nigeria remains one while you are fighting for the infrastructural development of social amenities in your senatorial district and I think the Senate President has done very well in maintaining this cordial relationship among the senators but, like I said the other time, we could do a lot more because I am of the opinion that the president is not doing enough, the executive arm of government is not doing enough.

President not doing enough
I have said it on the floor of the Senate that I personally have challenges with the president’s capacity to administer Nigeria, sincerely. He may be a good  man but governing Nigeria means being more than good natured. And a lot of decisions have been taken, but we have a lot of inaction.  I am not a fan of OBJ-former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

However, even if he was going to be wrong, he would take a decision; if at the end of the day, his decision is wrong, let us criticize him for the fact that his decision is wrong. But the incumbent president does not take decisions, he takes too long and I think he does not even understand the rudiments of governance, the rudiments of administration and I think he needs to do a lot more and I think the Senate now stands in a peculiar position. Naturally, the House of Representatives will want to, maybe, bring down the rules, the Senate must moderate and ensure that the rules do not come down. But is the Senate saying that the aspiration of the people is being met?  I am of the opinion that not at all times.

Sovereign Wealth’ Fraud
We do a lot of elder statesmen when we should look at the president eyeball to eyeball and tell him ‘you are wrong on this issue, no, reverse on this issue’, especially on the issue of budget. And I know the president was ill-advised to the effect that you just bring proposal and dump it on our laps and we approve it. Then, why are we going for all these rituals, all these rites called the budget process? So, if he brings the budget, let us pass it the following day and send it to him to sign, if we cannot tinker with it. Why are people afraid of the fact that we are raising the benchmark from 75 dollars per barrel to 79 dollars per barrel when in the past one or two years, I cannot recollect that the cost of petroleum has gone beneath 100 dollars per barrel? Why do people want to have more excess crude just as we argued when it came to the issue of Sovereign Wealth Fund? I don’t have any problem with Sovereign Wealth Fraud or Fund but my challenge is that it should not be taken from the money that belongs to all of us, under Section 152 of the Constitution. It should come from the money that belongs to the Federal Government under sections 80 and 82 of the Constitution, the Federal Government Consolidated Account and not from the Federation Account.

So, I think the Senate can do a lot more by shifting a little bit to the left, the Senate is doing well enough, maintaining stability in Nigeria but the Senate should not dilly-dally when it comes to taking some decisions and talking to Mr President that in this particular respect or in this particular issue, you have not done well enough and we think you should go back on this issue.