A Vanguard Newspaper Interview Coverage
‘I want seven years for president, govs, not six’
President Goodluck Jonathan, last Tuesday, fielded questions from a team of senior journalists in a televised chat. Excerpts:
Would you say that the ship of state is on course?
That is correct. But let me use this opportunity to thank Nigerians again for the way they conducted themselves during the elections. You will agree with me and indeed most Nigerians and other international observers that people were quite happy with our elections. Nigerians participated in all the villages, people were proud that they had voter’s cards that meant something to them, that they could use it to change the course of history. I can assure you and all Nigerians that the ship of state is on course.
You must be aware of the prediction on the CIA website which states that Nigeria will disintegrate before the year 2015. This is 2011 and some analysts have even gone further to say President Jonathan will be the last President of Nigeria as presently constituted. What is your take on this?
I don’t agree with that assertion. Nigeria will not disintegrate. This is not the first time people will come up with such idea. You must have read the book, “This House Has Fallen”.
Nigeria may have challenges, just like other countries. I remember in 1966 when I was in primary four, when we had the first challenge in the Niger Delta, when the late Isaac Adaka Boro declared secession and the Niger Delta Republic.
In 1967, we had the Biafran war. Ojukwu declared the secession of the Biafra Republic. We had a civil war, but we are back together. So these are major issues that affected the country. It is not just because people are detonating bombs here or probably because there is some level of agitation in the Niger Delta which, of course, is almost under control, then we begin to predict that we would disintegrate.
A country that will disintegrate you can study the psyche of the people. During the civil war, the south-easterners were the bulk of the members of the proposed new country called Biafra. Now the Igbo have investments across the country. Go to the South-west, go to the North.
You’d see that northerners have investments even in my village; as small as my village is, Nigerians from the North, East and West have bought lands. People who want to disintegrate will begin to shift back into their own geo-political zones.
The behavior of Nigerians does not really show that we are going to disintegrate. Look at us- because of ethnic diversities we are beginning to predict that we would disintegrate – but we will not disintegrate. I will not preside over a country that will disintegrate. I assure you that we will remain one united nation.
There is this general fear and insecurity in the land: there are Boko Haram bombings, kidnapping and robbery. We know crime cannot be totally wiped out. But when will Nigeria have a seemingly peaceful situation where people can go about their duties without being scared of being bombed, kidnapped or robbed?
The issue of robbery in Nigeria is a matter of history. This country never experienced armed robbery until after the civil war when light arms and small weapons got into the hands of non-state actors. We experienced our first cases of armed robbery and of course the situation continued to deteriorate till today. The new dimension now is the issue of using improvised explosive devices in acts of terrorism. We are changing our own security architecture because, before this time, the security approach was more of confrontation.
All the security agencies are trained, yes they have intelligence arms but they are more involved in confronting and intimidating but the level of sophistication we have now by criminals is such that you must change the security architecture. We know we have challenges but I can assure all Nigerians that this will be brought under control. Only last week we had the Council of State meeting.
The main thing we discussed for the whole day was security. That was the longest Council of State meeting that we have had and everybody was interested, both the governors and those of us at the center, and we resolved that we must collectively bring the security of this country under control.
The UN office bombing incident; it was not only Nigerians that died, it affected the whole world, that is why the UN Deputy Secretary General had to come down to Nigeria immediately so we can have that network. The security services in Nigeria : the police, SSS and the army are doing a lot of work. Certain things appear slow, but the security operators are on top of the situation. They know exactly what they are doing because they brief me on a daily basis. We are worried about the security challenges in the country, because when you have such major challenges you are not encouraging investors to come in and we are trying to develop our economic environment to attract foreign investors so we must take security seriously. I can assure you that it will continue to decrease. It will no longer increase until we get to a level when Nigerians can move freely and will no longer fear that, at the next moment, a bomb is going to explode somewhere.
The issue of Plateau State is very worrying because Plateau is in the centre of Nigeria unlike Borno or Katsina that are situated in border towns and it has been on for more than eleven years now . Many people think that there should be more collaboration between the states and the Federal Government to curb these crises.
Are you satisfied with the level of cooperation between the states and the Federal Government over the issue?
We are co-operating. We have an elected governor and a House of Assembly in Plateau State. The issue in the state is over eleven years old. These are community issues, mainly economic issues. Probably, religion may come in to some extent. But religion is almost like the wind that spreads the fire. It is not the cause of the fire.
You’d realize that when President Obasanjo was here, he even declared a state of emergency in the state but it never stopped the problem. So you can really see that the methods we are using may not solve the problems because it is a human problem and human beings involved must be brought to dialogue. We had a lot of discussions before we got close to the elections and we will continue with that level of discussion.
Nobody wants to believe they are wrong or that both sides are wrong. Nobody has the power to kill whether you are a Christian or a Muslim, you cannot kill, so both parties are wrong and we are dialoguing with them and we would go out fully to enforce the law.
One of the major challenges of Nigeria is power generation and distribution. A lot of people are wondering, you talk of all sorts of mega watts, when will Nigerians have uninterrupted power supply for seven days a week?
That is why I am not going to talk about mega watts. But I can assure you and indeed all Nigerians that we are working day and night to improve the power sector. We launched the power sector roadmap. Launching the programme does not bring power immediately but you must follow up with actions.
A lot of projects are going on. We have a lot of turbines that came in through the NIPP projects-what happened is that when these contracts for the NIPP were awarded, for the turbines to generate power, turbines need gas – in some of the places where the turbines were located, the gas infrastructure was quite far away; sometimes over 200 kilometres away or more. So when the turbines were procured, the contracts for the supply of gas to the turbines were not done.
That is why even now we still have some of the turbines in the wharf. We are now making sure that all the turbines are installed, contracts for gas to the turbines have been awarded, then of course you also have to install machines that will scrub the gas because if the wet gas enters the turbines, it creates problems. At the same time when you generate power, you must also evacuate the power.
As at the time the contracts were awarded some of the rights of way had not been acquired. To acquire right of way is extremely difficult even though we have the land use decree especially when the infrastructure passes through areas that have been developed. I can assure you that we will continue to improve on the generation, we will continue to improve on the distribution. Our target, like we have said, is that government must do away with generation, government must do away with distribution. We will partner with the private sector to handle transmission. We have not reached there yet but by the time we get there, the private sector involvement will be enhanced.
Talking about the issue of selling of power, another issue of concern is the incessant increase in tariff. People felt won’t it be better if the government finishes the reform in the power sector before it charges the appropriate tariff other increase?
Even last July, there was an increase in tariff yet there was no improvement in power supply. We are improving in power supply now, the increase in tariff?
If you look at the tariff we charge on power in Nigeria compared to other nations, Nigeria is still extremely low. If you must encourage the private sector to come up and invest in power then definitely you must charge a tariff that is not too high or too low. That is why there are regulators. We have the electricity regulatory commission to regulate it. You cannot just wake up and charge anything. They are to regulate. Any tariff that is being charged now is still very low compared to the continental average in Africa. I am not talking about outside Africa.
The man who earns N18,000 a month may not agree with you on that.
The man who earns 18,000 will be happy if you double the tariff and give him 24 hours of light. Because , Nigerians spend so much on power and lose so much because of our power problem.
Nigeria is infamous for corruption and it is also infamous for bureaucratic red tapes which at the end of the day doubles the cost of doing business. We have lost big companies to neighboring countries.
What are you doing to ensure that foreign direct investment actually grows in Nigeria and that investors are confident that the cost of doing business in Nigeria is brought down significantly?
I agree with you. The cost of doing business is very high and beside the cost, quite a number of things are not clear to some people and that is one of the things that the economic management team is looking at. We agree that we must bring the cost of doing business down. We must make sure that we have the best global practice. The Economic Management Team is made up of people in government, the private sector, and also governors. The thing is to look at the whole issue of our economy, the whole issue of investments, the whole issue of trade and what we must do as a nation to make sure that we encourage the private sector. It is for government to create an enabling environment for the private sector to build the economy of any nation and that is what we are doing.
Many people are touchy about the price of cement. Lately you held a meeting with stakeholders and they agreed to bring down the price of cement. At a point, a bag of cement was 1,350 naira, now it is back to about 2,000 naira. When will it be back to a manageable level and sustained so that people can build cheaper houses?
The issue of cement is an issue I’d relate to an issue like tumor or a boil on the body of a child. If you want to excise the tumor or the boil to bring out the pores so that the boy will feel better, the child will resist the scalpel, the surgical blade of the surgeon but the child needs that pain. The government then felt that what is in cement?
The imported component of cement is very low. We have enough raw materials to produce more than enough cement that we need in this country but because our infrastructure is weak in terms of roads, power, cement manufacturing outside Nigeria is cheaper, so you can import cement very cheaply and bring it into the country.
Yes, Nigerians are buying cheaper cement but there is no job for the people. The Federal Government then found out that to encourage the local production of cement, we must restrict the importation of cement to encourage our companies to produce and allow the companies that are producing cement to import the difference in terms of the proportion. So, there is this fear of monopoly because those who are manufacturing the cement are those who are importing. So the assumption is that they can create artificial scarcity so that they will make more money.
It is a problem that for the past six years or more since the Obasanjo administration came up with that policy, we have been managing. But the good news, from the information before me, is that by the first quarter of next year, we would be producing enough cement and, as we progress into the middle, up to the last quarter of 2012, we would be talking about exporting cement. Last week, I sent for the minister of transport, to do something about our train network because the present design does not include the cement factories and I said that cement is very heavy and if you haul cement using trucks, the cost will still be prohibitive.
A lot of Nigerians believe that there is too much grammar on this economic issue. You know the economy is improving, we are doing this; micro and macro economy. The micro and macro for the common man is employment. Are there jobs? Recently, analysts are saying maybe we should not be doing it the same way it has been done before because it has not yielded anything. With your new agenda, are there new strategies and time lines for employment generation for the youths which in a way is the only way the common man will know that there is improvement? .
I agree with you. I always tell people that I don’t like talking about growth indices. In terms of growth indices, the Nigerian economy is not doing badly but in terms of unemployment, because of our huge population, the figures are still poor and we agree that if we have so many unemployed youths and the economy is growing, then it is not a very palatable story.
