The senator representing Kwara Central Senatorial District, Ibrahim Oloriegbe, speaks with TOPE OMOGBOLAGUN about the ninth Assembly, the chances of his party, the All Progressives Congress, in the forthcoming presidential election and other issues
The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has inaugurated the transition committee, which is another reminder that his time in office is almost up. He has said several times that he had done his best, but many Nigerians don’t seem to agree with his assessment of himself. What do you think?
I will say he has done his best, given the context of what I have seen. He started his second term in 2019, and about six months after, Covid-19 came and the global economy collapsed. So, many countries, including the developed ones, had issues. Don’t forget that the mainstay of the Nigerian economy is oil, so Nigeria was also affected. Also, in the Sahel region of Africa, some of the countries have been experiencing war, and people gravitate to where there is relative peace. Some of them, including those who have weapons, gravitate towards countries like Nigeria, build networks with insurgents, bandits and criminals and fight our people. There is crime everywhere. People are being killed in the United States; do we now say President Joe Biden has not done well because of that? Aren’t people still rushing there? However, if you look at the positive side, there is strategic delivery of good governance in areas like infrastructure. Look at the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the rail projects, the Abuja-Kano Road and some others. These are big projects that require money, but despite the economic situation, he was able to deliver them. So, the President has done his best and he is above average. The other accusation and noise about Nigeria being divided are what politicians say. It is about the mentality, because we have had it worse if you look at the trend.
One of the hardships Nigerians have had endured for months is fuel scarcity, and till now it sells for about N400 in some parts of the country. Your party is blaming it on sabotage but many Nigerians believe it’s a product of incompetence and government’s decision to sustain the subsidy regime it described as fraudulent before coming to power. Why this cycle of hardship?
I think it is sabotage. I am a member of the Senate Committee on Gas and so I was able to have a little interaction with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited. The flood that ravaged the country in 2022 was part of the problem. There is also a problem with the subsidy, and to me, we should remove the subsidy and allow things to stabilise, else the economy will be damaged because we are subsidising for the rich and other countries. There is no petrol but there is diesel. Why? It is because the monopoly in the diesel market was removed while there is so-called subsidy on petrol. However, I think the government is on it.
Despite the trillions of naira paid as subsidy, a litre is still sold for about N400 in some parts of the country. What then is the essence of the subsidy?
That is why they should remove the subsidy. If it is that expensive, that means there is corruption within the subsidy system. The National Assembly wanted to remove the subsidy in December, but some people said if they did that, the opposition would capitalise on it unnecessarily. That was why we agreed to leave it till June, 2023 when a new government would have come in and by that time, there will be no election ahead.
High cost of governance has been identified as one of the things draining public funds, and some people have said Nigeria does not need a bicameral legislature, do you agree that is the way to go?
I will not agree to it. First and foremost, the money we spend at the National Assembly is not much. The national budget is about N20tn, and how much of that goes to the National Assembly. If you look at it as a proportion, it is very small (about N228bn). So, the other percentage goes to the executive. Meanwhile, it’s the legislators you expect to have oversight of the executives, so the money is not much. However, in terms of number, our country is big, with about 200 million people. With about 469 legislators in both chambers; 109 senators and 360 House of Representatives members, representing and acting on behalf of 200 million people, to me, it is not too much. It is about having effective representation.
Many Nigerians and analysts have described the ninth National Assembly as one that rubber-stamps everything the executive brings, especially in the area of loan approval which has seen the debt stock rise to about N54tn. Your colleagues have disagreed with that rubber stamp tag; do you really think people have judged this Assembly unfairly?
Yes, because we need collaboration for the good of the people. No bill can become law without the concurrence of the executive. Let me give you an illustration and then I will extrapolate to the general picture. There was no neuropsychiatry hospital in the whole of North-Central, so I proposed a bill for its establishment and I started to lobby the executive to say there was a need for it and they said okay. So, as the bill was going through the normal procedure, I got my governor to write a letter to say Kwara State would be willing to provide a place for this proposed hospital. So, by the time the bill was passed, the consultation with the executives had taken place. For a President to sign any bill, the president would communicate with all relevant agencies to provide advice, which is where a lot of bills die. If the president gets feedback that the bill cannot work or the proposal is not acceptable or necessary or is contradictory to other laws, that could be the end of it. Now, that hospital is working. So, what I’m saying is that if you don’t collaborate and you just pass the law in the chamber, the executive has the right to say we can’t fund it. However, because we collaborated with each other, it makes things work. The same thing for the National Health Insurance Authority Bill, which I sponsored; when it was passed, the President rejected it on good grounds.
Why did he reject it?
We proposed that the agency should be collecting the tax to be used to fund it, but they advised the President that a sector cannot create a tax and retain the revenue and that the appropriate body to collect revenue is the Federal Inland Revenue Service. So, all tax revenues must go to the federal purse, from where you get your allocation. When the bill came back, we did the necessary modifications that the FIRS would collect the tax and it was eventually signed into law. Is that not collaboration for the good of all? We passed the Petroleum Industry Bill and the Electoral Bill and both were signed and they became an Act. These are practical examples of that collaboration.
What about the way the National Assembly has been approving loan requests by the executive?
For some time, the country was not generating enough revenue because of the impact of Covid-19. We had to inject money into the system for the economy to be better because the economy went into recession. So, we have to approve loan requests, because if we don’t, even you will be affected because one way or the other, you are connected to the government. In approving such loans, we used to call the executive and relevant agencies of government to come and defend it and sometimes we didn’t approve them. Let me add that the last (eighth) Assembly that was confrontational with the executive could not achieve most of the bills that were very important, like the PIB and the Electoral Bill. If we didn’t collaborate, the Electoral Act that is now applauded wouldn’t have succeeded. Lastly, the President was elected and National Assembly members were also elected. Of course, we have to carry out that oversight function but we can’t be going in different directions. We must meet in the middle. So, the issue of being a rubber stamp is not acceptable.
How many bills have you been able to sponsor?
So far, I have sponsored 10 health-related bills that are critical to the improved performance of the sector, in addition to about six other bills that are not related to health. Out of the 10 bills, nine have been passed by the Senate, out of which the four that had concurrence of the House of Representatives had been assented to by the President. I am pleased to say that I checked and I think in terms of private member sponsorship of bills, I am currently the highest. So, we give gratitude to God. It is not usually easy as ABC; for a bill to go through second reading means you must prepare your lead debate, your colleagues must support it, it must go through public hearing and the feedback must be favourable and then you report back on it.
Would you tie these to your background?
It is not only because of being a medical practitioner, my background and experience as a health system specialist helped. In about the last 20 years, I have been operating within the National Health System. I was part of those who drafted the National Health Act, which was the amendment bill that was passed by the Senate. I have worked with non-governmental organisations in the health sector. I have also worked with the Federal Ministry of Health, not as a civil servant but as a consultant to ministers. Also, I was a member of the Kwara State House of Assembly and I was the majority leader between 1999 and 2003. As at the time I came to the upper chamber, I set for myself what I called a three-level agenda; primary, secondary and tertiary. These are representation, which benefits my constituency; oversight, for the benefit of the health sector; and legislation, which is what I can contribute as a legislator to Nigeria’s growth, development, peace and progress.
The NHIA Bill has been signed into law by the President, but it has yet to be implemented, what is causing the delay?
I think the question about implementation is for the Minister of Health, but yes, as the parliament, we have oversight of them. I think the implementation has started; only that it has not reached a large scale. It will take some years, and what could have helped is the funding for vulnerable groups. It is only one source that is now being implemented which is what they are getting from the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, which is provided for in another law. Unfortunately, there is paucity of funds and because we are borrowing to fund the budget. My hope is that the incoming government will provide the funding through supplementary means. However, some of the policies and changes that are required of them have started. During the budget presentation, I engaged the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and we were able to agree as to what can be done. Of course, we will continuously engage because they have bought into it and there is a standing agency with a director-general who is on top of the situation.
You won’t be returning for the next Assembly, and some people have argued that politicians lose their relevance after they leave public office, what’s next for you?
I am not a professional politician. I am a professional in politics. My postgraduate degree was not even in medicine but in leadership and management. Yes, I have been in politics since 1986, but I will go back to what I do best outside politics, which is public health. I have a lot of skills in health systems and I consult for many international organisations. I have worked both in Nigeria and abroad. Of course, as a politician, it is not only when you are elected that you can serve your country, opportunity for service may come through an appointment, but that is not a certainty. However, the possibility is very high because I don’t have any doubt that APC will win the election massively. APC is everywhere you go; I mean on ground with people not just on social media. So, if APC wins and I’m invited to serve, of course, I will do that. I’m working for the presidential candidate of our party to win, not necessarily because of what I will gain from it, but because I believe, as a leader and stakeholder in this country, that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima as a team will deliver a better Nigeria.
There are concerns about the health of your candidate, given his gaffes at campaigns, do you think he has the mental strength to be the president of Nigeria?
My answer is yes, because I have been with him closely. But before I go into that, as a medical doctor, let me say that some tests need to be conducted on an individual to know their mental capability, not just by looking at them. If you look at the rigours of electioneering and the schedule of the person who wants to be a president, many people will do far worse than those things you cited. I’m saying this with all sincerity. I contested an election four years ago. About this time, I didn’t sleep until 2am to 3am most of the time because of my schedule. That was me contesting in only four local government areas comprising 52 wards. For somebody that is contesting in 774 local government areas, the schedule is very heavy. Despite that, would you say somebody that moves around the country, sometimes covering two states in one day, is unfit. The last time I went, I left home at 7:30am and got back home at 8:30pm. I was tired; I switched my phone off. When a person stresses themself to that extent, there is a possibility of what you mentioned. He doesn’t have enough sleep or rest. Sometimes, the body will demand that rest. For a person like that, your mental alertness could be affected slightly. He may be sleeping for just two hours. But the other question you didn’t ask, which is on the flip side, is that if he is doing that now, what if he becomes the president? It will be less, because he would have appointed a lot of people to do a lot of things for him. Of course, the buck will stop with him but before things come to him, they must have been synthesised. Do you see the current president going to the states every day? No, a serving president will not do that.
With the division in your party in Kwara State, do you think your party can win the elections?
Yes, there is a consensual agreement at the national level, so it won’t affect votes at the presidential level.
