…Federal Secretariat stinks
…says NASS Complex fast decaying
… insists EFCC, AMCON can’t manage assets
Due to lack of maintenance culture most national assets scattered across Nigeria are in tatters and there’s no concrete moves by the Federal Government to actually restore these monuments that trillions of Naira was spent to erect them, Hon Uzoma Nkem-Abonta Abonta spoke to TheNewsGuru.com, TNG’s Regional Editor, Emman Ovuakporie on the way forward via a filed Bill in the House of Representatives. Excerpts:
Not too long ago, I think about 2019, there was a bill on Ajaokuta which you were championing and it got to a state whereby you asked FG for a small amount of money just to complete the Ajaokuta Steel project. What is the situation with that bill?
Yes, the problem of Nigeria has been managing and maintaining our public investments. Seeing the white elephant project and waste suffered in Ajaokuta project I had that passion to ask that this waste ought to discontinue; not only in Ajaokuta alone but in a lot of other infrastructures and investments where we invested much, suffered waste for want of adequate regulation and management of the assets.
Then I move on and did bills to save Ajaokuta and asked for the completion.
Then we needed less than $600million to conclude Ajaokuta. Meanwhile foreigners, “concessioners” were carting away the raw materials of Ajaokuta, Itakpe, whatever out of Nigeria, Indians particularly. So we now said revive Ajaokuta.
That bill, that motion, that legislative intervention spurred President Buhari to approach I think the Russians when they travelled out and came back and told us they are trying to revive it and made some arrangements but I am not sure how far they have gone.
We even made provision in the bill, where the money will be gotten from to revive and sustain Ajaokuta because when you compare and contrast the same model of Ajaokuta built in Malaysia by the same Russians, they have over 35,000 employees and steel is the basis for every nation, there is nothing you can talk without steel.
How can you begin to do industrialization if you don’t have a steel background, is it this building, tell me what is not steel but because we do not know how to manage our public assets profitably well, we are suffering today and that is why I think, if you look at the state of our public assets we have a serious need to have a bureau of public assets management that will be devoid of bureaucracy, a bureau that will not have an overlapping political interests, a bureau that will be business minded, a bureau that will be scientifically and digitally made, who will know the state of things to do.
As we are now, I do not think of a particular bus stop where we can have our public assets managed. It calls for concern and I think we must look at these group of persons that have things to do.
I will give you an example, we have now EFCC, they are empowered by law to go after those who commit economic crimes and frauds, at times they even trace it to properties acquired, estates where the money was used and by the time they seize those things and if it is forfeited, what happens to it? They auction, they sell it.
Abuja alone, if you go all over Asokoro, you will see so many buildings written on them EFCC investigating keep off. Some have been there for 5years, for 10years; the idleness of that property in itself is economic sabotage.
I think that a management should be put in place to manage those things while the matter is going on, otherwise it is being wasted. And even when there is final forfeiture, there should be somebody managing, regulating or converting it also into public assets, there must be adequate procedure to have that done.
So I think that the bureau for public asset is timely, it is necessary so that they will have enough powers to do the needful because if you look now at all the companies now that are privatized, they have post privatization and pre privatization period and if we have all the public assets so to say privatized and there is a growing concern, there should also be new ones to come and there are other assets that are not purely enterprise but they are in public use.
I will give you an example, go to the federal secretariat, it used to be the pride of Abuja but if you go to there now, you will understand that our public assets are being abused massively, nothing is working, the place is smelling.
I ventured into the Ministry of Niger Delta some weeks ago and as I was trying to use the staircase because I was afraid and scared of the lift, it was moving like a vehicle without good tyres, shaking and vibrating and the whole public is left to use one lift while one is reserved for the executives, all are broken down; won’t there be overuse. So it is like a death trap.
Nobody, no ministry, no minister manages that public asset yet we sit down in parliament and put votes, we budget for those things, nobody checks it, nobody sees it.
Roads are also our public assets so to say and now they are going to toll some of the roads again, I don’t know how they want to do it and how they will manage it.
Our problem have been managing of things otherwise the decay we are seeing today is as a result of lack of management and I think now that there should be legislative interventions to come to push this.
Let the executives in their usual manner either decline to give it hearing or backing as the case may be.
But we should be able to have legislative backing, legislative intervention to have the needful done.
And I think too, from the committees, I belong to the privatization committee, so I am talking from inside, in privatization, most of our enterprise and so on are not too going well because of either the people doing it now, the BPE do not have sufficient powers to do extra.
So we don’t have a proper outfit that will look at our public assets and manage it properly. If you build a public asset for example it is believed that it may take up 10years, 20years but in our own case it does not. So the maintenance culture, management culture of assets means a lot.
So what do they do in other climes, have we bothered to study or emulate what happens outside? In UK, do they have public assets management bureau, yes. In US how do they do it, even the Asian tigers, they do it, the Chinese that comes to our aid.
Now we borrow everyday from Chinese or World Bank, as we speak now there is a request for borrowing on the table of the parliament, these assets been built by this borrowed money, have you thought about the management, we’ve not.
So by the time these Chinese will complete all these assets call it railway, airport or whatever name you want to so call it, by the time they finished it and there is nobody or group of persons with requisite knowledge, competence, experience, devoid of politics to manage it, it will go to dilapidation.
You said making the executives to know, if they decline, are you thinking of a private member bill?
There is even a bill before the house called public assets management. The bill seeks to repeal BPE and turn them into public assets managers because when they are enterprise, it seems that efforts even though not even adequate got concentrated on managing ongoing enterprises that were not doing well.
But enterprise is not enough, assets in comparable to enterprise and our own assets, if you look at that their bill, it is devoid of bottle holes, bottle necks and bureaucratic traps.
They serve as a mere secretariat to NCP even when they are negotiating deals, what they want to sell, they have no powers on their own. If government got no business doing business, why will for example VP sit as the chairman of NCP. With all his busy schedule, what will he now do, he will ordinarily depend on the advice of bureaucrats he may wish to approve. So he will lack the knowledge may only wish to approve or refuse to approve depending on how he feels that day.
So we are thinking that the whole place will be restructured, the committee on privatization, having gone round, having checked the problem, including settling deals is filled with bottle necks, that is bedeviling things.
So we are thinking that if they become assets managers which includes but not limited to enterprises, assets and all what not. That is why I asked, what will AMCON do for example by the time they will be expired. AMCON is a framed up bill or act that will last so so period and so so period.
In trying to do their work, they come into assets seized from debtors and at the expiring of time it gets converted to either depending on what type of asset, because AMCON now is a public venture than being a government whatever. So if they finish liquidating, if they cannot sell to liquidate, what happens to it?
EFCC in the course of chasing criminals in quote or what they recovered from criminals, if it is forfeited it becomes public. Is EFCC trained in the act of managing assets, they are only trained in the act of fraud discovery and chasing debtors.
Or we are saying they should also have assets managers among themselves, which will also make their job confusing.
So we are saying there should be a body for the management of our public assets whether you call it utility or you call it enterprise and above all, powers, administrative competence should be bestowed on that body.
Right now we have BPE, infrastructure regulatory commission, they regulate infrastructure usage. So we need to pay emphasis on it, even the states should emulate and get such body to manage the state, up to local government public assets.
I don’t want to talk about the states I am a federal lawmaker but if you go to the states, you will see that most of the state assets are nothing to write home about.
Lagos state for example today, you will not say they are finished, you can see it is one of the states that are working plus Anambra that appears to be working; if their public assets are not properly managed you won’t imagine the kind of confusion that will be in Lagos.
So Nigeria should also do a larger thing, it is not just building, it is not just creating the public assets, they ought to be managed well for the benefits and the betterment of the public.
How will you assess the National Assembly in this direction concerning assets management?
If you look at the National Assembly and our asset management you will see the urgency for us to move and pass this bill. If you are privileged to be in Nigeria for the past 10years, you will see a deterioration going on. Not too long we told you …to enter the lobby, it was leaking and flooded.
The assets here are on the decay. Half wing of the national assembly, there is no air condition. I sat throughout as petition chairman without AC, the whole of that wing was not working because they couldn’t get the parts to fix that.
Look at our public waste, the corridors, the toilet, they are depreciating every other day. At times we will whitewash the whole building as if all is well, all is not well. So if you think here is public, it is an asset and must also begin to look at it very well. So holistically we must have that bureau to look at it.
The FCDA manages this building even though it is public assets, what do you think will happen to FCDA, do you think they will give up?
No, I am not saying FCDA should not, but somebody should be able to say have you done this thing well, I am not saying they should surrender their rights but somebody should be able to ask the questions apart from legislators.
Anything described as public assets have to come under the purview of superintending or management or whatever whosoever does it. But the issue is can we look at it?
If it is public and it is an asset to the public, then we should be able to do so to the benefit of the public, to minimize waste and cost.
For example our highways are public roads and should be properly managed, maintained, you don’t wait until it collapses totally but you fix it. Somebody has to be in charge.
FERMA is in charge of federal highways?
Somebody should be able to say FERMA are you doing this maintenance or not, how much did you get, what did you earmark. More so they are now trying to put toll gates in some highways to collect the money, that money should be invested back in the area.
How come the toll gates in Lagos are making fantastic money and the road is working because it is privately done and driven. So we must use this bureau to even champion Private Public Participation (PPP) and PPP can only come if there is a set up, organized bureau, they know if they invest they get.
If you have this PPP, people will do your major roads and collect their money in 5years and motorists will be happy to pay N20 and pass on a smooth road, it will save their tyres, it will save thier thyroid, it will save them man hour and the man who invested within 3-5years will collect his money.
And within that period the government will say if you collect 100%, give me 30% and you take 70% until you recover your money. In the marine sector, it is called amortization, they develop marine at their cost and pay government some.
Now Buhari in his own wisdom, good advice to those who gave him, came with executive order 7 which says fix the road and I will give you tax rebate until you recover and that is why MTN is now doing Enugu-Port Harcourt road, Dangote is doing somewhere he does his cement business. I hear also the Transcorp group is trying to do same; so people are buying into that.
They will do the roads for you and if their tax is 10million a year they could pay you 2million and they will be doing that until they recover the cost as agreed, that is public private participation.
So this bureau now in maintaining this will encourage public private participation but it must be done professionally not politically. You give it to experts who can grow it properly.
So don’t borrow money to put in public assets that will be destroyed and so that is why I think it is very needful to do that because of would I say poor legislative intervention or not having enough powers that forces to bite it out we are suffering. So I think that legislative interventions should be needed anytime, any day.
I also filed a bill not to long which I called procedures in petition. We do a lot of demonstrations that are not necessary, causing havoc and public issues because the public have not laid down rules where you can get petitioned.
We are in a digital age, if we had had procedures for public petition, EndSARS would not have arisen.
I now proposed like in other climes, if people submit petition be it online and you have 100,000 signatures parliament must abandon every other thing and hear it because all those youths that entered the roads, would have signed and once you have the prescribed figure 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 spread all over the country, parliament shuts down to hear that petition and nothing else.
Then flooding the roads, will not be because of demonstration however peaceful it is, will turn out destructive. But if they have other ways of channeling their grievances you will see that they will not go to the road and the youths will advertise it and everybody who agrees, you pen down your signature online and once you hit that figure, government have no other choice, is it not happening in the US? It can also be used to recall some members.
So if we don’t have sufficient legislative interventions we can’t have good governance.
So what has happened to this bill sir?
It has been filed but it has not come up for second reading yet. So these are the things I am thinking that I can only promote governance through good bills, good legislations. There is nothing we can do but to do the needful and we look at what happened in other climes and then we try to import it meaningfully and situate it to our clime. So if we have our assets management correctly then we are there.
AMCON may be doing a different thing to take out companies from insolvency, they are trying to recover bad debts even though most of the debts are paper debts they are not debts and that is why their books keep piling.
But I am saying they have no role in managing assets and if there are any assets left with them at all at the time of recovery they ought to surrender it to who can manage it for the public.
The infrastructure regulatory agency has their own peculiarity with what they are doing, how do they sustain it to do it; do they need more powers to get it done and so on.
Bureau of public enterprise handles enterprise in their management and so on. We are also thinking of altering their nomenclature and expanding their scope so that they will be able to now do the needful.
And I make bold to ask, what is obtainable in other climes that move, that go ahead, that are surviving. Are we going to pick up the bad things only, can’t we imitate the good things and situate it to our Nigerian factor how it will help us work.
You said the parliament appropriate money for the maintenance of these public infrastructures like public buildings. What do you think about such funds, what do you think should be done about those funds; are you thinking perhaps of an investigation to ascertain how much has been budgeted, whether it has been used well for the maintenance of these public facilities?
Well without mincing words, I will say yes. When they come with their budget they will tell you office maintenance, office equipment, as if the staircase is not part of the maintenance, if the elevator is not part of the maintenance, even painting, they are in a state of decay, we should also ask for the money.
But my primary purpose here is to even say forestall, to forestall that what do we do, is to create a body omnibus or whatever they call it who can look at our enterprises and assets management.
The committee on privatization deemed it fit to sponsor a bill on the whole of them. We have done the first reading, the debate will soon come forward, second reading. While we await that but we must of course public hearing and stakeholders should be able to come and say this will be useful and this will not be useful so that we can look at a comparative and superlative advantage from other climes and see what we can do. Part of our problem is maintenance, surviving and so on.
Is it not a thing of shame that Nigeria today doesn’t have any carrier when all the small countries have their national carriers and they are doing very well, so what is happening but yet the number of private jets all over the world, it is more in Nigeria; so we can maintain private jets but we can’t have our own carrier.
It is because we don’t have the adequate people to manage our public assets or those we create to do it don’t have sufficient powers to so do, how come.
Now Chinese are doing us railway and so should we ever pay, God help us and they leave us, what happens?
Before our railways used to be called India Railways, they had good gauge and all what not and when the Indians left, what happened, it crashed.
And we are using Chinese, except they think that Chinese will take us over we become an appendage of Chinese, Nigerian-Chinese country but if they also leave when we pay, what will also happen?
So what I am saying is that we should now have the culture of managing public assets, we must develop it adequately otherwise whatever we do now will disappear tomorrow.
If we do not, that will be basef on eligibility, experience to get it done, devoid of federal character or sentiment, people trained adequately for it.
So we are promoting, we are championing legislative interventions to have assets management bodies. I was privileged to be a member of public privatization, I was also privileged to even be the vice or the deputy chairman of that committee and there I was able to garner that we need in fact to have that bureau.