10th National Assembly Would Not Compromise On Welfare Of Nigerians-APC Chieftain, Stanley Osifo

 

A presidential aspirant under the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 general elections, Mr. Stanley Osifo has advised Nigerians to bear with the government on the removal of fuel subsidy.

Osifo, who spoke in an interview, said that President Bola Tinubu has good plans for Nigeria and that the recent appointments by the president are not lopsided as against the views of some Nigerians. Excerpts:

Some people are saying that most of the recent appointees of President Bola Tinubu are Yorubas and that ethnicity is being played up again in political apportionments, what do you say to that?

It's very funny, appointments go with Federal Character principle. The President is just starting and Nigerians are impressed with him over his actions. He has just started, he has not even spent one month in office. He was inaugurated on May 29, 2023 and within few weeks, he has proven himself. These issues of ethnicity, tribalism and regionalism will not help us in Nigeria. What we need are people that are competent, and that can deliver. That is what we want. 

People expected that by now he Federal Government should have come up with plans to ease the impact of fuel subsidy removal and many people are complaining about the effect on the prices of goods are services, don't you think the palliatives should have come?

The new administration and the labour unions have met and it was agreed that a committee should be set up to come up with palliatives. They requested for salary increase and they said that the government should look into it. It was agreed that the committee would come up with recommendations, so we should not jump into conclusions. The issue of palliatives and others are what the government have said they would look into. But talking about fuel subsidy, you would see that to a large extent a lot of Nigerians saw subsidy as a conduit pipe to steal the country's scarce resources. The removal of the subsidy has led to a lot of savings for Nigeria, which many people don't know. I checked online and I discovered that in the past, Nigerians were said to be consuming about 200 million litres of fuel per day and now it has reduced drastically. You can imagine that Nigeria was paying subsidy on 20 shiploads of fuel and now you are paying for less than 10 shiploads, don't you think you have saved more than 70% of what you would have spent on fuel subsidy. When you take out fuel subsidy you would see that you have saved a lot of money. Some people used to bring in empty vessels and some would bring in fuel and take it back again as they are only interested in collecting money from the government. All these were all that the president stopped. It was even stopped by former president Muhammadu Buhari around December 2022 and there was no provision for fuel subsidy this year. Fuel subsidy was removed months before the inauguration of President Buhari. He only told Nigerians that there was no subsidy in the budget and that it is gone and it is gone forever. We know that there are issues as transportation has gone up. The expected rise is not so much, but with time, a lot of things would come back to normal. For instance, you can see that Dangote Refinery has been commissioned, and it would start functioning by next month or so. Also, BUA is building a refinery in Akwa Ibom State, all these would affect the prices of petroleum products because we don't need dollars to bring in fuel from these places, we don't need to pay for transportation to bring in fuel from another country and so many things that affect fuel prices would be eliminated. Let us just be patient with the government and with time things would get settled and Nigerians would know the importance of fuel subsidy removal.

But don't you think there ought to be sacrifices from all quarters because we heard that the government wanted to increase the salaries of public office holders some of whom already receive bogus salaries?

When you talk of bogus salaries, some civil servants receive as much as N400,000 per month. When you talk of politicians, people think they receive millions or billions of naira per month, but this is not correct. It is not all levels you operate that you receive much money. If you talk of increase in salaries of public office holders, it goes along with the increment in salaries of civil servants. If you look at increment in salaries of public office holders alone, then you are not being fair. What I know is that both the civil servants and the public office holders are being looked into in terms of salary increment. On the issue of the debts of Nigeria, what is important is to grow the economy of Nigeria generally. Nigeria needs what the government is doings for them at the moment.

It is being suggested that some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should be merged, while some should be scrapped to save cost, what is your view on this?

When you talk about saving cost by merging some ministries and agencies, I think we need to look at agencies that have duplicated functions. When you have this, such agencies should be scrapped. But for agencies that have distinct functions in terms of service delivery to the people, I don't think they should be merged or eradicated. An area where the government should also look at is that of ghost workers. A situation, where the government is paying money to people that are not working or fictitious names is where we can save money. We should also look at leakages, where one contract is awarded many times. We cannot just scrap or merge agencies because they have different functions. I would give an example, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Nigerian Customs, National Maritime Agency and some other revenue generating agencies can come under one ministry or agency.

The National Assembly has just been inaugurated and the candidates of the executive; both in the Senate and at the Federal House of Representatives, emerged as leaders, don't you think we will have a rubber stamp 10th Assembly, which the 9th Assembly was accused of?

What do you mean by rubber stamp? People use the phrase "rubber stamp" everytime and it depends on the context. In a democracy, there are key officers and the party would have to decide who is the best among the contestants that would be put forward in an election. We have different kinds of electionsfrom local to national levels and at every point in time, the party would come together and members would vie for different positions. Many people would come out and the party would say that this is the person we feel would represent the party well in terms of ideology, character and so many things they stand for. That was what led to the emergence of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and the same thing also applied when the issue of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) came up. Everybody agreed that Abdullahi Adamu should be the Chairman of the party and that was how he emerged. The same thing happened on the National Assembly. Other members of the party came out to contest for the position of the Senate President before Senator Godswill Akpabio emerged. We had His Excellency, former governor of Zamfara State, Senator Abdulaziz Yari and former governor of Abia State, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu and others that came out to contest for the position. The party sat down and agreed that Akpabio should be the Senate President and the same thing happened in the Federal House of Representatives, where Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abbas should be the Speaker. That does not mean that they cannot talk or make decisions that would be in the best interest of Nigeria. We want those that can look at things critically, those that would not drag Nigeria back. It happens in every civilised society, you can go and check. The party would go for those who can carry out the party's plans, manifesto and ideology. That was the person they presented and asked others to vote for. That does not mean that it would be an easy ride for the executive.