By Paul Odenyi

President Goodluck Jonathan was unable to convince members of the National Assembly on the imperative to remove the subsidy on petrol at a recent meeting, according to Hon. Bimbo Daramola, a member of the House of Representatives, present at the parley. Daramola exclusively spoke to Sunday Vanguard. Read on…

Let us begin with the meeting between the president and members of the National Assembly at the State House. How did it go?

First and foremost, a few of our members felt that we should assert ourselves as an arm of government after assessing the implication of having to go to see Mr. President in his own turf. But reason prevailed and members felt this is not about Goodluck Jonathan, it is about the Presidency of this country, that, most likely, the president will be talking to us about Nigeria. This is the superior argument that made us to go and listen to Mr. President.

The National Assembly, particularly the House of Representatives that I have the privilege of being a member of, we know too well that we will not be parliamentarians if we are not Nigerians in the first place. And then we felt that whatever the president will be talking about will be anchored on our country which is very dear to every one of us.

As we prepare for 2012, a number of issues are on the ground and we felt that Mr. President will have the opportunity to broker an amity, close ranks with us and make our relationship seamless. Then we will be able to see his side of the story. Like I said, a few members said, no, he should come to us because that is the way it should be. We prevailed on them and so Mr. President had the opportunity to speak to the 469 members.

That would be the first time the president was addressing the joint session of the National Assembly even if it happened in his on turf.

Well, everyone of us who made it to that meeting must be representing a vital constituency in this country. So, you may say that he was talking to Nigerians but, because we did not have the media in attendance, it could be compared to what we call executive session in parliament.

Hon. Bimbo Daramola

He presided and there were some of his ministers and the anchor person was the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator Anyim Pius Anyim. So we wanted to extend the courtesy to the president to show we are not in adversarial relationship but we must have a relationship that recognizes that we have a nation to administer.

As the executive and the legislature, one thing that binds us together is that we must collectively address the nation’s problems. On the strength of this, we went to meet Mr. President.

What we heard earlier was that it was the Senate that really wanted to see the president as a result of the issues raised at a sitting of the Upper House. How did the invitation extend to you at the House of Reps?

This is not the first meeting between us and the president. As the vice chairman of one of the committees, I was privileged to, alongside a few chairmen, meet the president about two months ago. It was Dr Okonjo-Iweala (finance minister and coordinating minister of the economy), who spoke to us then about the intentions of the president vis a vis the 2012 budget. So, when this invitation came, it was impromptu and some members, smarting from the past experience of chairmen going to meet Mr. President, felt we needed to be very careful about this one.

The invitation was all-embracing. Whether this invitation was at the instance of the senators or not, I may not be able to clarify. For some reasons, it was extended to us. I think that if it was at the instance of the senators which grew from their executive session over security concerns in the country, then it should be seen as an attempt to kill two birds with one stone.

If it was at the instance of the senators, the president may have decided, ‘let us all meet’, because, indeed, the issue of security has also been discussed at the House. The first motion of the seventh House of Representatives was moved by me and was entitled, “Emerging Threat to Internal Security and the Need for Establishment of the Department of Homeland Security in Nigeria.”

It was modeled after the United States. The same challenge, the point at which America got in 2002, when President George Bush Jnr needed to frontally take on the issue of internal security as a result of the upsurge in global terrorism, we have also reached that point.

And members also felt that these are some of the issues that we need to see and resolve. That bill is in the pipeline in the House of Representatives and maybe the president must have said whatever we discuss on how to increase our security infrastructure, the House of Representatives must be carried along.

At the end of that meeting, what impression did you come out with on the state of the country?

Without wanting to divulge what happened, when the meeting started, Mr. President spoke to us about deregulation and then the thrust of his 2012 budget. The issue of subsidy removal, as it has turned out, is one of the planks of the 2012 budget. He wanted to have a soft landing for that because the National Assembly is the hurdle he must cross in his pursuit of this policy. There were mixed reactions.

The way it was received would not be satisfying to the president. I am sure he would not have been satisfied with the reactions he got. Don’t forget that the National Assembly is the last gate keeping post for Nigeria and, if anything slides at this point, then we may be imperiled. We may begin to say that the horse is out of the stable and so we are in trouble. We made that very,very clear, especially members of the House of Representatives.

We made it clear to the president that we must be very careful on that issue and that it was something that we would take more time to discuss, not one to be exhausted within one hour that the meeting lasted. But beyond that, Mr. President used the opportunity to address what the Senate President raised about the security of the nation. He wanted the president to address the issue at that meeting.

He tried to acquaint the parliamentarians with what he is trying to do. He went to into the historical trajectory of violent crimes in Nigeria. He spoke about the Niger Delta and the pogrom there, he dovetailed into the Boko Haram issue. I think he is reasonably convinced that his government is trying to deal with it. To me, he can still do a little bit more.

Encountering the president at this level, and given the reasons he gave for his planned removal of fuel subsidy, how convincing were they?

Mr. President did not sufficiently convince me or my other colleagues in the House of Representatives. I don’t want to be graphic on what happened there but I am telling you that it was a faux pax. I don’t think he achieved any purpose. I don’t think he moved the story forward. I would say that his reasons did not appeal to members of the House of Representatives.

He tried to say and, indeed, make it clear to us that if he does not take out the subsidy, Nigeria will go down. In his own words, Nigeria will crash. I don’t think that was the right thing to say but I believe very strongly that the nobility of the intentions of Mr. President may not be questionable. Like he said, it is not about Goodluck Jonathan, it is about Nigeria. We are on the same page on that score.

The truth of the matter, however, is that there are so many ways that lead to the market. His strongest argument was that it was becoming difficult to sustain the high subsidy regime on fuel products. He said if we go on this way, Nigeria will be in deep trouble. His words: ‘Nigeria will crash’. The truth of the matter is that we need more money, but there are many ancilliary issues that will need to be sorted out. Removal of subsidy is not an isolated event.

This is an economy that is mono-product and driven by the same product, we would expect that anything that happens to this product will resonate across the length and breadth of the country. What the president did was all rationalization. He said the guys who move the product to the market don’t actually use PMS, that they use diesel. This is simplistic rationalization.

He also tried to say that the subsidy we are talking about does not profit Nigerians but a pocket of cartel in the industry. And people immediately rose up to say, ‘Mr. President, why are you saying this? If it is a cartel, you crack it’. Abdul Ningi, I remember, said it clearly that he was the most powerful president in the black world, and that is the truth.

And if we are confronted by a cabal or cartel, then it is about time we deal with the issue decisively. And, today, we are trying to give this reason for taking such a decision that will affect the masses of our people. He also tried to talk about the issue of bunkering, that it was also being resolved and all of that.

People also said, ‘ okay, if you take out the subsidy, what becomes of the amount of money you may eventually raise?’. He tried to tell us that there was a committee headed by the vice president and that they were working on what will be committed from the revenue from the removal of subsidy and that they had gone eighty percent and all that.

To me, that is not sufficient to begin to push this idea of removal of subsidy. The strongest of the arguments is pure simplistic and rationalization. Issues like the removal of subsidy must have cogent, articulate, verifiable, clear cut arguments for and against.

You must be able to say, ‘ Yes, if you do this, we gain this and that’. Abdul Ningi tried to raise the political and security consequences of the push particularly at a time when you have the Arab spring and all that. Removal of subsidy should not be left in the realms of conjecture and simplistic rationalization.

Let us leave the president and his work and look at your own work. How has it been?

Initially, it was very exciting but when I tried to aspire to come to parliament, I think my assumption was that we will be able to fasttrack things. The truth of the matter is that, in this country, we don’t have the indulgence of time. We must be able to fasttrack the process of getting back to normalcy.

I don’t want to paint a doomsday picture but things are not easy. Things are not right. It is like a woman who has cancer of the womb, you take it out. The way we are going in this country, we make it appear as if everything is going to wait until we get ourselves sorted out.

I am thinking  and believe that the true face of democracy is not the executive arm of government. The face of democracy and the system of government we run is actually the parliament.  There is a number of things I believe strongly that we must have to change. And I think the immediate thing for us is for the parliament to bite as well as bark.

As a result of the picture you are painting, do you have bills, motions that will help in the direction of remedying these issues?

There are a number of things we have tried to work out. I raised the motion on the N30 billion for the conclave of bishops, I mean the Federal Executive Council (FEC) . I call them the conclave of bishops because they have this feeling that they are all knowing and they own this country. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila is working on something which I will support fully to the effect that the resolutions of the two chambres of the National Assembly should be binding on the Executive.

This is because 85% of our work beyond over sighting is about motions. So, if we look at issues and committees look at issues and they end up as motions and resolutions and they do not have binding effect, we would have succeeded in wasting legislative time, and our time.

If that is the situation, you will not be excited about this job anymore. So whatever you care, this is a job that is most serious. We are not here on picnic. Nigerians have invested so much in us. This is an institution that must service Nigerians and Nigerians must get tangible and intangible benefits from it.

As a member of the House Services Committee, what reforms are you are putting in place to ensure that the uneviable name of that committee in previous sessions does not rub off on you badly?

I believe that the new chairman of the House Service Committee, my leader and friend, Hon Yakubu Dogara, is a man of high ethical standards. I overheard him telling somebody that things have changed. If that was the way they used to do things in the past, that it will not continue. He said that things must follow due process.

In that committee, we have met severally since we were inaugurated, not one person in that committee has gotten one favour in terms of patronage, contract or anything. We even bring our resolutions in the committee to executive sessions. Unfortunately, we have an albatross, an overhang derived from what happened in the past. I think Nigerians should begin to see this set of members of the House of Representatives as newbreed.

What do I mean? Among the list of things we have on our list that members may need include options of desktop, laptop or Ipad. Do you know that members in one voice said nobody should buy Ipad, laptops? Any representative that does not have a laptop does not deserve to be in the House. Then we got to the issues of desks and all that.

Before, what they used to do is to buy in block, 400 pieces of anything that we agree to buy. But this time, the Speaker and members of the leadership said, no, buy as needed. So, you find out that offices where you already have television sets will not have to get new TVs anymore.

Offices where you had desks, you will not get new desks. This is part of the reforms the 7th House of Representatives has adopted. Don’t forget that our so-called running cost has been taken down by as much as 63%. And our people are still going on and doing the job.

This is inspite of the fact that an average legislator in Nigeria is under heavy burden by his constituents. You have all sorts of requests coming from your constituents by the second: Money for school fees, money for hospital bills, money for feeding, money for everything.

There is nothing that our constituents don’t ask for from us. My salary is N490,000. So, where are we supposed to get this money from? But people are still talking. I think this House has tightened our belt to the point that it is hurting.

What do we expect in the first quarter of 2012?

Nigerians should be ready for austerity, very challenging times within the next couple of months. Whatever Mr. President decides to do with fuel subsidy, either taking it off or retaining it, will have far reaching implications. Don’t forget, if they have more money, they may be able to do so much of good work. But the truth is that people don’t trust them any longer.

If you have demonstrated some level of insincerity in the past, it will be difficult to get people to trust you again. If you have blown up your chances in the past, nobody is going to give another chance. The gap between the leadership and the followership is so wide.

The only thing that can close that gap is trust and trust is not take and drink, trust is earned. I believe that in the months to come, it will be tough. This year (2011), practically, no projects were executed. You have seen the state of our roads, extremely horrible; educational standards are low. So in the months to come, I want to tell Nigerians to brace up for some austerity.