Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Political Matters, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, was elected senator for Ekiti Central Senatorial District in 2011 on the platform of the  Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN and later became one of the All Progressives Congress, APC Senators in the National Assembly after the merger before the 2015 polls.

In this interview, he spoke on national issues including the padding of the 2016 budget and the attendant controversy.

By Bashir Adefaka

On opposition and criticisms of government’s policies and style

In a democracy, there must be opposition. You cannot but do without opposition in a democracy. In fact, in a way it is very positive for people to point out what you are not doing right to keep you on your toes.

Meaning that all the criticisms are justified?

The time they had we don’t have. There is no alternative to planning except you have to do a fire brigade approach. You must sit down, gather your cabinet and all your aides and look at what the problems confronting the society are. We want to solve problems not only for the immediate but also for the future. We may not have gone out for the opposition because the government has been busy planning time and again.

It is close to one year the administration came to power. When will the planning be over?

*Ojudu

You can’t imagine the kind of problem the government met on the ground. What was met on the ground is 10 times what we thought was wrong.

Tiding up the budget

Now, all the planning has been wrapped up and if you look at the budget as it is, how to solve the problems, not only for today but for tomorrow, has been encapsulated in the budget.

We should just wait for it to be tidied up and then we run according to the budget.

As political adviser to the President, how would you react to a recent threat by PDP to make governance difficult for President Buhari, if Senator Bukola Saraki is removed as Senate President?

If the only programme they have for Nigerians is to make governance difficult for a President, who wants to bring us out of poverty, who wants to bring us out of squalor, who wants to make the poor to have better life, then, good luck to them.

Nigerians are conscious. They know who their friends are. They know who their enemies are. Those who are critical of Buhari are not saying that he has stolen money. They are not saying he doesn’t mean well. They are only saying he is not going fast enough.

On the NLC and Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN’s lamentation that President Buhari’s delay in signing the budget is hurting the economy.

I don’t agree with that. How I wish they NLC and MAN know what I know. And I keep telling my friends that the fact that there is a controversy around the budget also is indicative of the fact that there is change in Nigeria. Under previous governments the budget would go through the ministries and the budget office padded, then to the National Assembly and the National Assembly would also add its own padding. They would give the highlights of the budget to the president and he signed. As he was signing they were adding more to it and there were billions of naira free out there for people to share.

But this President is saying, “No way. Whatever leaves my ministry and passed to the budget office must be the one that gets to the National Assembly and must be the one that comes to me fully without any padding before I sign.” That is change for you.

It is going to be tough for you to have said there is no way any longer for people who have made a career of padding budgets, taking money out of the system and putting it into their pockets building all kinds of mansions, transferring abroad to all sorts of things. But this man said, “This is not going to happen.’’

I will give you an instance, in one of the key ministries, a businessman came with a bogus bill owed by that ministry and went to the minister and said, “look, they are owing me two billion naira. I want you to help me make provision for it in the budget so that I can collect my money.” The minister said, “I do not know about this debt. We want to do things for people with this budget.” And the man left, went to some elements in the budget office and got them to agree to pad the budget with that two billion naira.

So, when the minister now appeared before the relevant committee in the Senate and found out that two billion naira had been brought into his budget, he said, “look, I am not going to take this. This is not my budget. We are going to withdraw this and I will come and show you what we sent to the budget office and what was sent to the National Assembly.”

In the past, it would have been allowed. So, the man who went to where they padded the thing would have promised to let go with some millions of naira.

Was this also experienced in the 7th Assembly when you served and what did you do, if yes?

Yes. When I was in the Senate I kept shouting, pointing out some of these paddings but nobody listened to me then. They were even faking so much that they would go and revive some of the dead agencies of government and they would allocate billions of naira to those agencies. One way or the other, money would be taken out based on that.

Ministry of works

In my state in 2013, they budgeted for the construction of five roads in Ekiti State and I picked up the budget, looked at the details. How could you say you are building a road in Kebbi, a town in Nasarawa State and you put it in Ekiti State? Apparently some groups were playing games in the ministry of works. And I shouted and cried out to the minister that, “This is wrong! This is theft!”

They called me in and tried to pacify me but I said, “No. What you should do is, if there are roads to be constructed in Ekiti, construct them in Ekiti. If there are no roads to be constructed in Ekiti, remove these items from the budget.”

Severally things like that happen, at all levels of the preparation, presentation and approval of the budget. So, the President is saying this is not going to happen. People involved are not yet used to this new way. They are still fighting. They are still kicking and they have their plans. May be you want to tell somebody with building in Dubai that he wants to complete based on what he is going to make from this budget. Everybody who is involved is angry. That is why you are seeing these. If they absorb this new system of doing things this year, seamlessly, the budget will be passed next year without any controversy because they would have been used to this new system.

So, the fact that this controversy itself is coming out is to show that there is a change in place.

On the unending fuel scarcity in the country

What is happening is the issue of profiteering but the government is doing something to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

On continuing poor power situation

Talking about power, when our economy was buoyant we needed to have solved this problem all the years.

This government came in, stabilised things as soon as it got in. But the government started to fight corruption and tried to say, “Look, there are things that will not be acceptable to us,” people again started sabotaging the power plants and facilities; the gas pipes powering the plants, people started sabotaging them.

Protecting the infrastructure

Escravos, a big structure that supplies gas to most of the power plants in Nigeria, they went and sabotaged it. It is under repairs now. They did several other things to make the government look bad to the world.

Government is not only repairing that now, it is ensuring and looking for a means to protect all of these infrastructures so that we will not be thrown into darkness.

It is also working assiduously to look at alternatives: solar power, wind power, and even to see the possibility of powering satellite power plants by coal. Rather than move gas, you move coal to these plants so that even if they sabotage the gas plants, the coal plants will be on and firing.

What is your take on comments that part of the challenges the government is facing is that leaders of the ruling party are not on the same page with the government on many issues?

It is not correct. What people are saying is normal. These party that is in power is an amalgamation of different parties, different view points and different ideas. Those people from PDP have their own idea of doing things. People came from ANPP, CPC, ACN, a number of others came as individuals to join the coalition that formed this government.