What Nigeria must do to overcome hardship, socio-economic challenges - Lagos lawmaker, Saheed

Femi Saheed, who represents Kosofe Constituency 2 in the Lagos State House of Assembly, believes that despite Nigeria’s numerous challenges, there is still cause for celebration after 64 years of independence. In this interview the banker-turned-politician discussed why the country should retain the presidential system of government and the bicameral legislature. He also emphasised the importance of local government autonomy. INIOBONG IWOK brings the excerpts:

What’s your comment about the state of the nation; will you say we have made progress after 64 years of Independence?

The 64th Independence Anniversary of Nigeria calls for celebration, but it also calls for sober reflection. For a nation to have existed as a country from 1960 to date calls for celebration. We had our time of prosperity in the 1970s to early 1980s. Then Nigeria was a prosperous country, but we had leaders who did not have knowledge on investment and management. Now, from 1990s till now, we had leadership gap of managing Nigeria as a sovereign country. If we had good leaders to take up the country Nigeria would have been great. The number of schools in Nigeria before independence was not much. We have 270 universities in Nigeria as I am talking to you now. We have 139 Federal and state universities and some private universities. Any nation that is investing in education is investing in human capacity and that is what we are actually doing and that will translate immensely to our national diaspora income. The huge bulk of money China makes today is from diaspora income and Nigeria is moving towards that too. Just recently, 264 Nigerians were registered by the British Medical Council, trained Nigerian doctors. It shows that we are growing, but we have deficit in leadership capacity, which is what we need to concentrate on.

It is not that we do not have what it takes to be a nation, but we have resources that have been mismanaged. We lack innovative experience. Most Nigerians misunderstood the fact that Nigeria is not a rich country. We are a poor oil country; some countries are rich oil countries such as Saudi Arabia. The gross earning of Saudi Arabia from oil alone is $350 billion, but the earnings of Nigeria from oil revenue is just $35 billion. The population of Saudi Arabia is just about 35 million. If you look at their per capita income, you can imagine what is available for each citizen of Saudi Arabia and divide $35 billion by 220 million people in Nigeria, you will see that there is problem. Nigeria has what it takes to take us high, while good management and perseverance would position Nigeria as a giant in the world. These are the reforms President Bola Tinubu is putting forward to ensure that Nigeria realises its potentials.

Many people blame politicians as the problems of Nigeria due to corruption. Some people believe that we are not poor, but that we are poorly managed. Giving what we have on ground, can we exonerate politicians?

The political class is a subset of the Nigerian society. The politicians are part and parcel of the Nigerian identity. If they are not getting it well, it means Nigeria as a whole is failing in capacity development. But I will not agree with you that politicians are the bane of the Nigerian problems.

What of the civil servants? These are the people that were trained, and employed to manage a well-structured and consistent system, but the politicians go and come in within four years. If those that were employed and trained are not doing it well, it means something is fundamental wrong with our constitution.

This constitution that we are talking about is not the one that was made by the majority of Nigerians, it was forced on us. This means the structure of Nigeria itself needs fundamental changes, but we have something to celebrate.

There are four types of reforms that we need, we can do infrastructure reform. The country is in dire need of good infrastructure, if the government can come up with a policy on infrastructure, it would be okay. Also, we have economic reform, and democratic reform.

The next one is that we missed it unlike what Russia did. When we were under military rule, Nigeria would have used authoritarian reform to develop the country.

In Ghana, the late Jerry Rawlings used authoritarian reform and the country got so much merits, from that. So, this government could identify whether we need infrastructure reform, democratic reform and it could be structural or economic reform.

There is no nation that does not have its own trials. In 1930, in the United States of America (USA), the country had the greatest depression that affected the country as it is practising capitalism. Also, Russia was practising socialism and it saved the country such that it became the giant of the world at that time. We have good people, the only thing is that we are still at a. experimental stage to find the kind of reform, system and the constitution that will work for us.

We have had different kinds of constitutional conferences and we had one in 2014 under former president Goodluck Jonathan, do you think this should be implemented or we should have another conference?

The constitutional conference of 2014 would have been an ideal one. So, do we have the financial resources, or the time to have another one. The question is that if it is the democratic wish of Nigerians for us to have another constitutional conference, then the APC-led government would organise one. Just recently, some members of the House of Representatives suggested that Nigeria should go back to the parliamentary system of government, is it not possible for the country to organise a referendum to choose between this and the presidential system of government?

I have said that Nigeria is a country is at an experimental stage seeking for the kind of constitution, or democratic reform that would suit it. We need to identify ourselves as an indivisible country by the word; Nigeria, we can have a unity of opinion. That is what we need.

People have talked about electoral reform, we saw what happened during the governorship election in Edo State with allegations of rigging, vote buying and others; so, what form should our electoral reform take and do you support that INEC should conduct LG elections?

If the financial autonomy given to local governments is anything to go by, I think it’s a good development. You cannot give money to someone that does not have a legitimate right. Financial autonomy is the soul of local government reform. So it all depends on what criteria the government wants to adopt to distribute the funds.

On the election into local governments, if someone has not been legitimately elected by the people, how will he be recognised as the bearer of the torch?

It is only the Supreme Court that has the power to interpret the functions of INEC on that. Electoral reform is an ongoing thing in any country. When an election is organised in one phase, by the next phase you should start thinking of what to do to avoid the past mistakes.

We would like you to talk about our institutions, a lot of conflicts arise among the three arms of government in performing their functions. What is your take?

When democracy started in 1990, the advocacy was not as it is today. The American Independence is about 265 years old and they have tried so many systems, but Nigeria is just 64 years old as an independent country. Some countries might be lucky to get it right at inception, while some countries might not get it right. But for Nigeria to be at where we are, we are still managing, but the best thing is for us to sit down and discuss the kind of reforms that we want. Now, we have local government autonomy, we have the Supreme Court judgement on their autonomy and a lot of committees and agencies are being set up to see that it is well done. We are trying to correct our past mistakes and we will come out stronger.

There is a call that we should reduce cost of governance as we have several ministers and duplication of roles, what do you say to that?

I support the need to reduce the cost of governance in Nigeria because the money is not there to take care of our over-bloated democratic bureaucracy. But we have a system, bicameral system, which has its advantages and unicameral has its limitations. If you consider the understanding of the populace about the roles of the different people in government, you will see that there are misconceptions. If Nigeria could be positioned as a place where employment is well guaranteed, where the natural resources are working for the people, where corruption is reduced, you cannot eliminate corruption completely, even they have it in advanced country, but if we can reduce it, we will see that the amount of gains we will get from bicameral system is higher than that of unicameral system.

Nigeria is a highly polarised ethnic and religious country that every tribe needs to be represented in the Federal character. If this is dealt with, we will have a better country. It is true that we are making progress though we are contending with terrorists, Boko Haram, unemployment and others, but our challenges should be identified and we should adopt tailor-made solutions to address our challenges.

Nigeria had 1,300 companies in 1999, we sold and privatised most of these companies. That was when unemployment set into Nigeria, which is the issue we need to tackle.

We need to create employment in a way and manner that has never been done in the country before. Also, Nigeria is a mono-economy nation, we need to diversify and consider other measures to get money in terms of agriculture, and natural resources. Go to Botswana, the only thing they make money from is meat and diamond.

Nigeria has diamond, have we tapped into it, we recently entered an agreement with Russia on Ajaokuta Steel Rolling mill. We look forward to all these so that most of our guys in the engineering sector would take up jobs there and when this is done, we would be thinking of moving forward.

A new budget would soon be presented to the state Assembly by the Governor, what is your assessment of the 2024 budget of the state?

The 2024 Budget of Lagos State, according to the assessment and the mid-year review that we did, performed maximally, the revenue side is so good and it shows that we did well on tax income and the method of collection is great. Even going by the infrastructure facilities provided in the state, it is amazing, we did the blue line rail, red line rail was also commissioned, the yellow line is coming up.

Even the Lagos State College of Medicine would be admitting close to 1000 medical students to fill the gap of the exit of medical professionals. The infrastructure strides here and there are also there. Even salary increase came up and I believe that we would have it better in 2025.