TUNDE BAKARE
The Convener of the Save Nigeria Group, Pastor Tunde Bakare, spoke to Abimbola Adelakun on the raging issue of Jumbo pay by legislators and whether Nigerians are well represented at all. Do you think we are getting quality representation from our legislators?
It is my considered opinion, having looked at all the circumstances, that the parliamentarians, if I may call them that, are not representing their communities at the parliament. Instead, they are representing the parliament at their communities with their over inflated lifestyle because they go back to the community to show others how successful they have become even though some of them were broke before they got there. So, don‘t even think of them representing us. No, they are representing the parliament to the rest of us; to see why power is sweet and why others should seek power in debased government to partake in the sharing of the national cake as it were.
Is it that they are too many or too few to begin with?
To start with, I want you to recall that immediately after independence in 1960 and in 1963, we had only three regions. The first one, I think, was created in 1964 and that is the Midwestern region. Now, the people of the North had one premier. The whole of the South had two premiers at the beginning and three premier later and the place of agricultural boom: the groundnut pyramids of the North, the cocoa in the South, the rubber and the palm kernel in the central. Oil was not an issue. The western region had television before France and each region was going at its own pace. You can now juxtapose four regional premiers and one prime minister with 36 parastatals; states that are not viable. The greatest employers of labour today are our politicians in the corridor of power.
They can have as many PAs as they like just to continue to squander national resources and these things are not translating into development, infrastructure, education and health care delivery system. It is not about the people. These men seek power, not for self but for service and my considered opinion is this: there are no political parties in Nigeria. There are only political platforms to secure power for personal benefits of those who eventually emerge winners in an environment of extremely rigged elections.
So, don’t say they are many. They are more than many. They are not needful. We have too many cooks in there spoiling the broth.
From what you said, will you advocate a return to that former model where there were premiers?
The presidential system of government is by nature extremely expensive. At a time that the Babangida junta foisted that system on our citizens, their opinions were not sought. There was no plebiscite, no place where ethnic nationalities or what you call zones now, regional peoples, were called together, whether of the three major tribes or the minority groups to say this is what we want. It was foisted on us; including the two- party system of SDP and NRC, which are now history. We are back to multiparty system. We are doing it with a lopsided federation. Nigeria is called the Federal Republic of Nigeria but it is neither a federation nor a republic because now, even few days ago, the incumbent president went to Ife and when they gave him a title that had no meaning, he said he would do his best to ascribe constitutional duties to people who are kings, Obis and Emirs. In a Republic! Are we a kingdom? One of the issues today is the identity crisis in Nigeria. The country is neither a republic nor a federation nor a monarchy nor a kingdom. It is an amalgam of political variety and everyone just picks what he likes.
What do you think of the jumbo pay by lawmakers and the consequences?
Except they pin them down and they tell us what they are earning with either court action or mass mobilisation by our people, until they tell us what they are earning themselves beyond what the fiscal allocation has fixed to them; until we establish that, it will just be news. We are doing our own investigation. Some civil society groups have said we should march but I have told them I do not march recklessly. My assignment is not marching around. We need to investigate.
The consequence is that a time will come when the resources can no longer sustain them and the people will be pushed to the wall. What happened in France might happen here where people had no bread and began to riot. And the queen said to the king, ‘if they don‘t have bread, let them eat cake’ because they were totally disconnected from the society and do not feel the pressure people were going through. It‘s either ‘to your tent o Israel‘ people‘s revolt which can be averted if we can restructure and do things properly before it is too late.
They argue they are an arm of government and there is unnecessary attention on them. They said there is similar waste at the executive arm…
You are still talking about three arms of government that Nigerians didn‘t vote for. They rigged the elections. It was obvious in 2007, late Yar‘Adua said so. Obasanjo presided over the liquidation of the Nigerian patrimony, our collective patrimony. He shot himself in the leg with the third term agenda and he revenged on the nation by giving us a president who had no liver and a vice-president that had no balls. We are in this mess because we didn‘t vote these people into power and they are now voting the resources of our nation for their own personal benefit. Every upper class or middle class Nigerian is now running a self government. The only thing he does not do is to make laws. Self-government, he provides his own electricity with a generator. He digs his own borehole and provides water; and when he cannot create roads, he gives tips to people to mend them because no local government is functioning, let alone state government. The Federal Government is in a blaze and what we have now is zoning and all manner of useless things not related to the welfare of the people of this country.
It is not a government that represents you. What we have is a government of men and not of laws. They are above the law and that is why they can allocate what they like to themselves instead of statutorily, what they are entitled to because no statute could have fixed this jumbo pay. Jumbo recklessness wrecked the American economy and we have not learnt from it and when it happens here, we do not have any reserve to back up this reckless spending.
Should legislators collect constituency allowances?
I think it is absolute madness because the legislator‘s job is to sit down and make laws for the country. They are not supposed to be contractors, going back to dig boreholes or being given money to go and tip the almajiris or the poor dependants in the South so that they will not rise up to demand what is rightfully theirs. Why constituency allowance when you have Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Works to fix the roads? If you have a total integrated developmental plan for every part of the country, what is the need for constituency allowance? But they have to do that to tip those they are robbing and give them crumbs from the master‘s table so that they will not have to kick someday but they will soon find out 2011 is their watershed.
This idea of monetisation policy that will make the Senate President and the Speaker to go with their official residences and cars. What are the overall implications for Nigeria because it will happen in 2011?
What they are doing is, they are saying to Nigeria: we will continue to ensure there is systemic failure. We will graduate and burn the school down so that nobody else comes through this school any more. What they are doing to the Senate President and others to buy his own official residence, they should do it to Goodluck to buy Aso Villa because that is his official residence. You see the madness of it, because these people want to perpetrate systemic failure. You know that is an official quarters. When you finish, you go to your own house or to your village. If they cannot sell Aso Villa and Aguda House to the President and Vice-President, those who sold the official residences of the Senate President and Deputy Senate President to them, and down the line that way, you know they have their brains upside down. They are not thinking through. These are those who want to liquidate Nigeria’ if given the opportunity.
Will legislating part-time solve this problem?
Some have suggested that and perhaps it will so they only come when they are sitting and they are given allowances which could be transportation allowance or what have you. We may get there because there will not be anything to pay anybody. These are not servants of the people, these are lords and masters. The people that preside over Nigeria, according to the Bible, these people that rule over you, hate you.
Have you noticed that when they have UN meetings, only African leaders come in four star shining uniforms and massive Babanrigas while the westerners come only in simple suits? Our value systems are perverse. We build houses we cannot sustain. I will see who will keep Obasanjo‘s house when he dies and goes. Who will maintain it? Humongous waste.
That is why the President will commission the private investments of those sitting in government and what we have is semi-demi completed public projects. How do they come by these stupendous wealth overnight? That is why some of them come out of the government and they cannot live with the community. They have to go far away from home.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/
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