Hon Musibau Taiwo Kolawole, the deputy speaker of the
Lagos State House of Assembly and representative of Ajeromi/Ifelodun
constituency, is the oldest member of the House having being there since
1999.
In this exclusive interview with Naij.com, the expert in statistics speaks about the politics of the reduction in price of premium motor spirit (PMS), also called petrol, by the Federal Government.
The Federal Government seemed to have listened to Nigerians by reducing the price of petroleum from N97 to N87 per litre. What is your opinion?
To me, it is exhibition of inefficiency. When you want to do something like this, there must be basis for it. You know that since oil price has reduced worldwide, there should be reduction in pump price. They are not doing anything special. They have not even come up to tell us why it was only N10 that was removed from a litre of fuel. Everybody knows that the oil price dropped from about $100 to $45, and that is supposed to result in more than N10 reduction. It ought to be reduced to about N40 per litre. This is not how to run a nation; you cannot even run a company like this, it’s wrong. You need to come up with analysis to show that the only gain we are able to make from all these fall is N10. That is the transparency we are talking about; and when people say they are corrupt, they would be defending themselves. Nobody is interested in this arbitrary reduction as if they are doing us a favour. The reduction should be based on the fact that there is a drop in the oil price. Unfortunately for us, we are even importing the product. I don’t know why people are celebrating this because there is nothing to celebrate, they are still stealing our money; nobody should steal our money again.
How would the current fall in the price of crude oil affect our budget?
That is another aspect of their inefficiency. When they took over government, how much was a barrel of crude oil? It was in the neighbourhood of $20 or $30, even then we were talking of a boom. A sensible and reasonable person would know that any closed door would one day open. Any unrealistic price in the modern world of ours would be checked later and that ought to have been the basis of our planning. Even if the oil is going for more than $100, we know that the price was about $30; we supposed to have taken some steps and use the excess to build up things that would cushion the effect of the fall because there must be a fall. That is why we are talking about infrastructure. If they had used the excesses to fix our power sector, we would not feel it because the money would have been able to take care of the effect of the fall. What did they do, they spent the money. They said it was their product. They spent the money anyhow; we could not even see the effect of it for almost eight years of unprecedented gain. Gain that supposed to turn the lives of Nigerians positively and take care of our future, they messed it up. No government of Nigeria has benefited like this government has benefited from oil. We are talking of the budget; it is only going back to the normal state. You know the simple economic theory of demand and supply is that when there is high demand that makes it very significant compared to supply, the price would adjust itself. When the disparity between the supply and demand is very significant on the part of supply, the price would adjust itself downward. But the economic theory says that we would look for an equilibrium point, where the supply and demand would balance. That is where we are supposed to be aiming at now. We are not supposed to think the oil price would be like that because there is war in Iraq, there is war in Libya and Saudi Arabia would listen to OPEC to reduce its supply. That is not how we are supposed to plan our lives because we know that all things would never be equal, but if a government now comes up to show its inefficiency and ignorance, then you begin to wonder.
You seem not to be happy with the economy…
Are they not the ones, who said they have grown the Nigerian economy to be the best in Africa not knowing that the oil price could come down? We did not even plan for it, roads we cannot do, there is no single infrastructure that we can point to. They said Lagos State has siphoned the money of the people and that we over-bloated the prices of the roads we build. At least, we are building roads, and secondly, we are not building their type of roads. We are building roads that can last 25 years in Lagos State now and that depends on the level of asphalt that we use and this determines the price of roads. They said they performed well in agriculture whereas in Ajegunle area of Lagos, I cannot see anything they have done. Let us come down to their level and see their performance in agriculture. If you are a cassava farmer and your aim is to get to the end users of the product, then PDP must have scored zero. If my cassava is for producing ‘gari,’ I would need a mill and the mill would be powered by electricity. Where there is no electricity, you would need generating set and you would need to buy fuel to run the set. So, they have scored zero, and if you want to limit it to selling to other people that would mill it, before you can make money to even feed yourself, you would almost die. If you go to a farmer to buy cassava, do you know how much they sell the quantity that would fill a big Cabstar Pick-Up Van, which has six tyres, it sells for about N45,000. How beautiful they can come out and deceive everybody, they are just exhibiting their insincerity.
You have been given another chance to return to the House. What are those things you wish to do differently?
We flagged off our campaign last week and when it was my turn to talk, the reaction was overwhelming. You must be able to tell the people where you have started, where you are presently and what you want to do differently. They would now weigh it whether you have performed or not. When I took over as the representative of the area, what the area was known for were heaps of refuse and cholera outbreak. If there is no cholera outbreak in any part of the country, it must be in one area or the other in Ajegunle. But, today, cholera cannot come to us; you cannot see heaps of refuse again. When we took over, you could count the number of roads that were tarred. If you wanted to count the number of tarred roads then, you would not count anything. But now, you cannot count the number of good roads in the area, they are so many. I told them to go to all our schools and tell me one school that does not have a new building in Ajegunle Area, just one out of the lot.
But that is not your job as a legislator?
Then, you cannot count my achievements because the first law of the House every year is Appropriation Law. There can never be development without the law. That is the law that determines how we spend our money and what we spend the money on. So if the government can be looking in our direction and say they want to do some things, it did not just come there; it is because somebody has done some underground works. I am not a new guy, I was happy, when somebody was talking on a morning programme on television and he was comparing those local governments with experienced legislators and those that change their legislators every election and he gave example of my constituency. It shows that it is advantageous to repeat your members and make them cognate members. Cognate experience affords you so many things, you are known and when you stand up to talk, people would listen to you. You would know how to manouvre and get things done in your local government. An experienced member would not move a motion about a bad road in his constituency, no, you only need to pick your phone and call the commissioner and tell him about the road. A sensible commissioner would not toy with a legislator, especially on the issue of bad roads and when it is too much, you talk to the Governor. When I call the Governor and tell him: ‘I want to see you sir,’ he would say: ‘okay, I would ask them to call you, when I am ready.’ He would definitely call later and say ‘HKT, I am ready now.’ I would talk to him, he would tell me to put it in writing and he would minute on it and send it to the commissioner who cannot reject the recommendation of the Governor. That is the difference between us and them and that has given us out as performers.
You were the Majority Leader before becoming the Deputy Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly. How would the experience affect your return in the eighth Assembly?
I owe everything to God. I know that God has been so kind to me, He has given me the grace. I was making jest of myself one time that when Hon. Solomon Adeola Olamilekan newly came to the Assembly, I was part of those that guided him on the job of a legislator, but today, he has seen it all. I am happy for him. But I am not also retarded; I am growing in experience. My coming back would benefit Lagos State more than they can ever imagine. I look at my experience, exposure and the way I talk, it is no more like before. I am a Mathematician, and I am also a politician. I even prefer to be referred to as a politician and as a legislator. I know I am going to impact more on the society. I have become like a role model, and people use me to campaign in their respective local governments. They would say: ‘allow me to go back again like HKT that has been there several times.’ They look up to me for a lot of things, so I open my brain; I read a lot because I could be called upon anytime to find solution to a problem. If you are caught wanting, they would not like it. My colleague that sits beside me always tells me to allow her to talk first before I talk since I am now well known.
What aspect of education, from the local government level to the federal level, do you think we should look at in the next dispensation?
We need to re-orientate the parents; some of us also find ourselves in that problem. I don’t think some of these private schools are better than our public schools. For you to be a teacher in a public school, you must have an NCE, and when you hold this certificate, you are a teacher. But, most of these private schools would just employ secondary school graduates or even those who did not finish secondary schools as teachers. If half or one quarter of the money you are expending to take your children to those mushroom private schools are used as our contributions to the school under PTA, then you will solve most of the problems in the schools. However, the Lagos State Government has done tremendously well in education; I know where we started from. I know, when I was the Chairman of the House Committee on Education, we had some intervention funds, we had school rehabilitation projects. When we came into government, there were a lot of dilapidated and collapsed school buildings, but today, you cannot see that because government went into school rehabilitation projects and they are working. If you go into our schools, you would see that they are conducive for learning. This particular government has taken a step further with the EKO project, which is building human resources and training teachers. That has shown in the performance of the teachers and our students. The project is complementing infrastructure. You cannot just build infrastructure without building the teachers.
It will be recalled that the petrol pump price reduction was announced on Sunday, January 18, by the minister of petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke. The Nigeria Labour Congress criticized the N10 reduction in the fuel price as it does not amount to the 33% reduction in fuel prices globally, though the congress praised the government for the initial reduction.
In this exclusive interview with Naij.com, the expert in statistics speaks about the politics of the reduction in price of premium motor spirit (PMS), also called petrol, by the Federal Government.
Hon. Musibau Taiwo Kolawole
To me, it is exhibition of inefficiency. When you want to do something like this, there must be basis for it. You know that since oil price has reduced worldwide, there should be reduction in pump price. They are not doing anything special. They have not even come up to tell us why it was only N10 that was removed from a litre of fuel. Everybody knows that the oil price dropped from about $100 to $45, and that is supposed to result in more than N10 reduction. It ought to be reduced to about N40 per litre. This is not how to run a nation; you cannot even run a company like this, it’s wrong. You need to come up with analysis to show that the only gain we are able to make from all these fall is N10. That is the transparency we are talking about; and when people say they are corrupt, they would be defending themselves. Nobody is interested in this arbitrary reduction as if they are doing us a favour. The reduction should be based on the fact that there is a drop in the oil price. Unfortunately for us, we are even importing the product. I don’t know why people are celebrating this because there is nothing to celebrate, they are still stealing our money; nobody should steal our money again.
How would the current fall in the price of crude oil affect our budget?
That is another aspect of their inefficiency. When they took over government, how much was a barrel of crude oil? It was in the neighbourhood of $20 or $30, even then we were talking of a boom. A sensible and reasonable person would know that any closed door would one day open. Any unrealistic price in the modern world of ours would be checked later and that ought to have been the basis of our planning. Even if the oil is going for more than $100, we know that the price was about $30; we supposed to have taken some steps and use the excess to build up things that would cushion the effect of the fall because there must be a fall. That is why we are talking about infrastructure. If they had used the excesses to fix our power sector, we would not feel it because the money would have been able to take care of the effect of the fall. What did they do, they spent the money. They said it was their product. They spent the money anyhow; we could not even see the effect of it for almost eight years of unprecedented gain. Gain that supposed to turn the lives of Nigerians positively and take care of our future, they messed it up. No government of Nigeria has benefited like this government has benefited from oil. We are talking of the budget; it is only going back to the normal state. You know the simple economic theory of demand and supply is that when there is high demand that makes it very significant compared to supply, the price would adjust itself. When the disparity between the supply and demand is very significant on the part of supply, the price would adjust itself downward. But the economic theory says that we would look for an equilibrium point, where the supply and demand would balance. That is where we are supposed to be aiming at now. We are not supposed to think the oil price would be like that because there is war in Iraq, there is war in Libya and Saudi Arabia would listen to OPEC to reduce its supply. That is not how we are supposed to plan our lives because we know that all things would never be equal, but if a government now comes up to show its inefficiency and ignorance, then you begin to wonder.
You seem not to be happy with the economy…
Are they not the ones, who said they have grown the Nigerian economy to be the best in Africa not knowing that the oil price could come down? We did not even plan for it, roads we cannot do, there is no single infrastructure that we can point to. They said Lagos State has siphoned the money of the people and that we over-bloated the prices of the roads we build. At least, we are building roads, and secondly, we are not building their type of roads. We are building roads that can last 25 years in Lagos State now and that depends on the level of asphalt that we use and this determines the price of roads. They said they performed well in agriculture whereas in Ajegunle area of Lagos, I cannot see anything they have done. Let us come down to their level and see their performance in agriculture. If you are a cassava farmer and your aim is to get to the end users of the product, then PDP must have scored zero. If my cassava is for producing ‘gari,’ I would need a mill and the mill would be powered by electricity. Where there is no electricity, you would need generating set and you would need to buy fuel to run the set. So, they have scored zero, and if you want to limit it to selling to other people that would mill it, before you can make money to even feed yourself, you would almost die. If you go to a farmer to buy cassava, do you know how much they sell the quantity that would fill a big Cabstar Pick-Up Van, which has six tyres, it sells for about N45,000. How beautiful they can come out and deceive everybody, they are just exhibiting their insincerity.
You have been given another chance to return to the House. What are those things you wish to do differently?
We flagged off our campaign last week and when it was my turn to talk, the reaction was overwhelming. You must be able to tell the people where you have started, where you are presently and what you want to do differently. They would now weigh it whether you have performed or not. When I took over as the representative of the area, what the area was known for were heaps of refuse and cholera outbreak. If there is no cholera outbreak in any part of the country, it must be in one area or the other in Ajegunle. But, today, cholera cannot come to us; you cannot see heaps of refuse again. When we took over, you could count the number of roads that were tarred. If you wanted to count the number of tarred roads then, you would not count anything. But now, you cannot count the number of good roads in the area, they are so many. I told them to go to all our schools and tell me one school that does not have a new building in Ajegunle Area, just one out of the lot.
But that is not your job as a legislator?
Then, you cannot count my achievements because the first law of the House every year is Appropriation Law. There can never be development without the law. That is the law that determines how we spend our money and what we spend the money on. So if the government can be looking in our direction and say they want to do some things, it did not just come there; it is because somebody has done some underground works. I am not a new guy, I was happy, when somebody was talking on a morning programme on television and he was comparing those local governments with experienced legislators and those that change their legislators every election and he gave example of my constituency. It shows that it is advantageous to repeat your members and make them cognate members. Cognate experience affords you so many things, you are known and when you stand up to talk, people would listen to you. You would know how to manouvre and get things done in your local government. An experienced member would not move a motion about a bad road in his constituency, no, you only need to pick your phone and call the commissioner and tell him about the road. A sensible commissioner would not toy with a legislator, especially on the issue of bad roads and when it is too much, you talk to the Governor. When I call the Governor and tell him: ‘I want to see you sir,’ he would say: ‘okay, I would ask them to call you, when I am ready.’ He would definitely call later and say ‘HKT, I am ready now.’ I would talk to him, he would tell me to put it in writing and he would minute on it and send it to the commissioner who cannot reject the recommendation of the Governor. That is the difference between us and them and that has given us out as performers.
You were the Majority Leader before becoming the Deputy Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly. How would the experience affect your return in the eighth Assembly?
I owe everything to God. I know that God has been so kind to me, He has given me the grace. I was making jest of myself one time that when Hon. Solomon Adeola Olamilekan newly came to the Assembly, I was part of those that guided him on the job of a legislator, but today, he has seen it all. I am happy for him. But I am not also retarded; I am growing in experience. My coming back would benefit Lagos State more than they can ever imagine. I look at my experience, exposure and the way I talk, it is no more like before. I am a Mathematician, and I am also a politician. I even prefer to be referred to as a politician and as a legislator. I know I am going to impact more on the society. I have become like a role model, and people use me to campaign in their respective local governments. They would say: ‘allow me to go back again like HKT that has been there several times.’ They look up to me for a lot of things, so I open my brain; I read a lot because I could be called upon anytime to find solution to a problem. If you are caught wanting, they would not like it. My colleague that sits beside me always tells me to allow her to talk first before I talk since I am now well known.
What aspect of education, from the local government level to the federal level, do you think we should look at in the next dispensation?
We need to re-orientate the parents; some of us also find ourselves in that problem. I don’t think some of these private schools are better than our public schools. For you to be a teacher in a public school, you must have an NCE, and when you hold this certificate, you are a teacher. But, most of these private schools would just employ secondary school graduates or even those who did not finish secondary schools as teachers. If half or one quarter of the money you are expending to take your children to those mushroom private schools are used as our contributions to the school under PTA, then you will solve most of the problems in the schools. However, the Lagos State Government has done tremendously well in education; I know where we started from. I know, when I was the Chairman of the House Committee on Education, we had some intervention funds, we had school rehabilitation projects. When we came into government, there were a lot of dilapidated and collapsed school buildings, but today, you cannot see that because government went into school rehabilitation projects and they are working. If you go into our schools, you would see that they are conducive for learning. This particular government has taken a step further with the EKO project, which is building human resources and training teachers. That has shown in the performance of the teachers and our students. The project is complementing infrastructure. You cannot just build infrastructure without building the teachers.
It will be recalled that the petrol pump price reduction was announced on Sunday, January 18, by the minister of petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke. The Nigeria Labour Congress criticized the N10 reduction in the fuel price as it does not amount to the 33% reduction in fuel prices globally, though the congress praised the government for the initial reduction.
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