* Says It’s too late to impeach Buhari

*Those destroying the ATM ‘re sponsored

* There’s sabotage in the system

* Insist election should”t control our lives

Serjus Ogun is a member of the AdHoc committee on currency swap of the House of Representatives, representing Esan South-East of Edo State. In this interview with Olayinka Ajayi, he speaks on how the bold moves by President Muhamadu Buhari would help stamp corruption and usher Nigeria into a better nation. Excerpts:

As we head to the elections, how will you describe the state of affairs?

We are faced with the challenge of currency swap that the Central Bank of Nigeria says should be done every five to eight years but it’s taken 20 years now. But they gave reasons clearly that the old notes are susceptible to counterfeiting and they have too much of it in circulation. They had to bring the money outside the banking sector into the banking sector. So those reasons were cogent enough and were in the process of doing that but side by side, the second policy which is the cashless policy which stipulates a limit to what you can withdraw from the bank. The Nigeria Printing and minting company claimed the CBN contracted them to print over N600 billion as at last week when they met with the committee contrary to the rumor that they only have the capacity to print N300 Billion. But the challenge was that they printed bigger denominations of N1000 notes instead of printing N200 and N500 that ordinary people would use. So the N1000 notes they printed, politicians have bought them. So what is happening is sabotage of the system. The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele when the committee invited him said they had about 30,000 agents in rural areas. So if those once were working , why should we be facing what we are facing today? There are just glitches, let just bare these, we will come out of it. Why is like this is because of those that are desperate to buy votes.

But are you aware the policy has de-capitalise most Small businesses?

Why I am saying we should bear it is because somebody with cancer will not be taking sweet peals. I can tell you that there are benefits to it. Banditry has come down, kidnapping has reduced and corruption may be on his way out but not completely. Even the security agents are not with the president on this. How many ministers have you heard speaking on this? It is because it has now become the thing of the president. So if this can help stamp out corruption , it will be a big bonus for you and I.

Amid the heated polity, do you foresee an election?

The people heating up the polity are the likes of governor Ganduje, governor Baduru and governor El-Rufai. I strongly feel they are trying to undermine the president.

But what about Atiku?

Atiku insisted that they should allow the policy to work. He only condemned the poor implementation. We know that the policy is good but there is poor implementation.

What about the stand of the supreme court?

Despite the Supreme court’s injuction , I am 100 per cent with president Buhari on this matter. It must take Nigerians time to get used to not spending money. For the whole of last week till now, I have not had up to N10,000 cash with me. Why do you think politicians are stealing? If a politician will have to go home with a bullion van, what is his salary? Have you ever asked yourself how much is the salary of the president, What’s the salary of the governor, What is the salary of the senator? The Federal House of Representative member doesn’t earn more than N1 million monthly. But the cost of maintenance of cars of security men is more than N1 million. So should we not be asking questions? Let us be doing electronic transfers so that the authority that is monitoring it would be able to monitor where the monies are going to. It will be easier that way to curb corruption. If truly we want things to change we should be ready to take steps for things to change. But if we are doing the same thing, the same way, we will not get it. The storm we are going through now can be likened to that of Israelite. They never faced hardship but they were being enslaved in Egypt. If they never left Egypt, can you compare what their economy is today? Their fathers took the bullet. Although they wanted to go back to Egypt to eat cucumber but after going through that desert, look at what they are today. In other words; like the Israelite, this is our own desert experience and we will come out of it. If you have been listening to prophecies of men of God, my belief is that I will see a better Nigeria in my own time if Jesus tarries. We have weak institutions in this country. So without strong institutions , how can we change the narratives?

What do you then make of the interpretation that the policy is a vendetta due to past elections lost by President Buhari?

The President has gone round to campaign with his party presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu unless you say an 80 years old man is deceiving himself. He wants to do the right thing and leave with a legacy. If he leaves, and this policy works by curtailing corruption, then he has achieved a mighty legacy because he campaigned with it. They have always accused him that he never fights any battle unless it is not going to affect him. Maybe that is what is playing out. Now is not on the ballot and he’s too late to be impeached. But if it’s a card that will make this country work, we will still appreciate him. So the policy is for us and not so much for him. I believe if we persevere, embrace this policy and support it, it would be to our own benefit.

What do you then make of the massive violent protest?

Look at people protesting and destroying Automated Teller Machines, ATMs, if I do my business across the road, and I use an ATM because there is no money today, I destroy it, if the money comes tomorrow, will the ATM be available for use? No! That tells you that those destroying the ATM don’t reside around there, don’t do business there. There may be an element of criminality , there’s also an element of sponsorship.

Are you of the view that the demonstrations we saw in Lagos, Edo and Ondo are sponsored?

I believe they are sponsored. I got to the one in Benin. I was on a journey of two hours, and we spent six hours. It was not pleasurable at all. Protests can be spontaneous. If for example; a car runs into a commercial bike rider also called Okada, other protests are planned, so you take time to plan it. There is nothing wrong with protest if you are bringing the attention of the government to say look this is what we are going through and that people are suffering but once it has an element of criminality in it, then people should be concerned.

What do you see as the way-forward?

The way forward is for the government to discipline people, when the CBN met with the committee, some weeks ago, we laid our report on the floor of the House, the third resolution we gave the CBN was that they should submit a weekly report of disbursement of funds to the commercial banks. If they say they are giving enough money to the commercial banks but they don’t know why it is not circulating, let us know how much you are disbursing to commercial banks every week. It’s been more than two weeks now, I don’t think they have sent any report. If we say we are national assembly and we are supervising what these people are doing, we have to press further to know who is lying. Is it the CBN that is lying or are the commercial banks hoarding and selling it to politicians? So there’s sabotage in the system. But like I said, if we all work together to make it work, at the end of the day, we will come out of this because there are definite benefits that will come with the benefit of currency swap, also, with the limit in cash re-withdrawal.

We cannot borrow money to print money. Printing money is very expensive and there are things we have learned within the small window that we can do transactions. These are things we should save money from the economy to pursue. That is why we need a good leader that can guide. The cash trap has almost come to an end. Cashless society is where the world is today and that is where we are going to. It’s a transition and the policy is good for us but the people shouting the most are politicians because they are the one sabotaging the policy. If there was no election on February 25, these problems would not have been there. That is why they are telling us to start initiating the policy after the election. Why must it start after elections, and why must elections govern our lives? Election is just a one day event. So everything about our lives should not be centered round elections. We should not allow politicians to manipulate us this way. I remember in the days of former President Jonathan, Naira to Dollar was about N150 for a long time, because we were going to the elections, these politicians were heating up the polity so hard that people started selling stuffs and sending their children abroad that was how Dollars went up to about N190. After they won the election, there was so much goodwill, that didn’t translate to anything that was why it went up further. See what is happening now, the incumbent is leaving, they have started heating the polity again. All we are saying is that it’s not necessary, the election circle should not control our lives. We are over glamorizing political office in this part of the world. If a man’s office is N1million, so why should he spend about N4billion to get to that office when you know in four years, there’s going to be another election and in four years he may not earn N100 million. So there is nothing wrong with the policy, there’s nothing wrong with the implementation and there’s sabotage but if we can persevere, cooperate with the government, believing the government will also be honest to us telling us what is happening, the CBN governor should be reporting to our committee , telling us about the disbursement of funds to commercial banks, but that they have not done. That is the honesty on the part of the government we are talking about. If they are honest to us and we can verify these things , then we can work together, then within a very short time we can resolve it and we would have a better life. Some of the money just goes into private pockets not being available for public good.

What is your view about the functionality of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System ,BVAS, in the forthcoming election?

The elephant in the room is still INEC, if INEC is very objective, how many personnel do they even have? INEC trained personnel are very few, so they have to engage the services of adhoc staff. I complained to a former INEC director that just retired that the adhoc staff that came for my election didn’t know how to operate the card reader then. The head of the unit said accreditation was manual. So the election monitors came and asked why it was manual? I then called the Electoral Officer ,EO, on it and he said anything done on manual is a waste. So I gave the head of the unit the phone to speak with the EO, before she started using the card reader. By 2pm she said voting had stopped. I objected to it and called the EO again, before she could allow those on the queue to vote but imagine I didn’t have a network or I could not reach the EO? But was she not trained like others? There was another scene where they gave what I scored to my opponent. Our monitoring agent was very angry and wanted to beat the young girl up and insisted that she was paid, so I had to calm him down. So these are the same set of people that would handle the BVAS. So how well trained are they? Secondly, how were they recruited and how well do you pay them? So that may be a very big problem otherwise, in other words the BVAS will be the game changer if INEC would do the right thing.

Despite the BVAS, do you foresee over voting repeating like we had in Osun?

I don’t see Osun repeating itself again. That was the essence of doing a test-run. That was the challenge we had with Jega. He had Eki, he had Osun but he didn’t use the card reader. People felt he ought to use the card reader to test-drive. So he went into the general election without testing the card reader then he had issues but now they have tested the BVAS, they know the weaknesses and how to improve on it and they have configured it to work. So it’s only the human factor that we have to consider and the desperation of politicians but a day will come when people will realize that election is not do or die. People have died for politicians and nothing came out of it.

What then is your charge towards achieving credible polls?

If INEC have difficulties, let them say early so that the people and government will know how to tackle it but ordinarily they have said the BVAS is a game changer, so let see it change the game.