Dr. Vincent Kingston Furo, Amaopusenibo of Bonny Kingdom, Ambassador for Peace, recipient of Distinquished Leadership Gold Award and current President, Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce, Deputy National President, NACCIMA, on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, granted an interview to The Newswriter.
The handsome gentleman, soft spoken and exuding intelligence, took a swipe at the wastages in governance.
Here are excerpts of the interview as conducted by the Editor in chief, Kenneth Amabipi and the Sports Editor, Allanso Jonathan Allanso.
State of the Nation
I must say, the copies I have seen (Copies of The Newswriter), they are rich, rich enough and that attracted me to grant the interview to your correspondent (Allanso Jonathan Allanso) who happens to be a good marketer.
Having said that, it’s my candid opinion, if I am to discuss on the state of the nation and especially the excesses in the presidential government in Nigeria, that if you check our annual budget, what goes to recurrent expenditure, is extremely high, especially where it goes to personal emoluments. So, I am of the opinion, I stand by it, that there is no point having 36 ministers and Abuja, then you have ministers of the state.
It is bogus. We have S.As, we have PAs. I think Mr. President should look into it and tailor it down. He should make it a duty to see that the issue of minister of state is removed. It is not constitutional, if is not compulsory that they must appoint all these 36 ministers, because it is a waste of resources and the money saves from that could be channeled into other developmental areas. He can put it into agriculture, transport, manufacturing and other job creation avenues.
Again, the number of official cars for government functionaries should be reduced. Go to Ghana, go to other African countries, or other places like America, Britain, you name it, the president doesn’t move with more than five or six vehicles. We have the ambulance, the escort car, the spare car, the car he uses and one or two other vehicles. In our own case you see a convoy of vehicles of more than 15. The senate president alone in their numbers, the governors, more than 20. It is absolutely unnecessary. There should be serious attempt to cut down. These .SAs, P.As, this and that, is not helping matters. It is another source of waste. We should look into. There is a lot of tension in the country, unemployment everywhere, hunger in the land. If you put these things into agriculture they will accommodate a lot of youths. Our textile industries, iron and steel industries can be expanded and employ more people.
There are a lot of things to do with money to provide electricity, roads. We need to improve the roads so that there will be free movement, instead of people struggling to use flights that wastes almost the whole day to catch up, people can easily put their cars on the roads if they are good and safe. Maintenance then is another thing. I am happy that the government is talking about improving the rail system, train moving from PortHarcourt all the way to Kano as it used to be before. There will be best use of the roads. Thesex frequent collapses of the roads are due to excessive loads on our roads.
We can make the National Assembly to be part time. Check the cost of running the legislature, it is go high. What is our productivity? What is Nigeria’s productivity level? These are things we should look at seriously.
To me, no state should have more than 15 commissioners and 10 special advisers. Some of the ministries could be merged or at worst, you give an S.A to take charge of the ministry because there is no difference between commissioner and S.A. it is not a must that every local government must have a commissioner.
How about the supporters?
Furo: Government does not mean that you should go there grab and give to supporters. You are there to represent the good governance and development of your localities. It is not to go and bring money and give. What you can do for them is development or if there are peculiar issues or problems.
In your assessment of the President, do you think he can carry out these reforms to revive the economy of the nation?
Furo: It is a question of determination and commitment. He wants to make a change. He wants to make a name. He wants to leave his footprints in the sands of the time. Let’s say he starts with the corrupt officials and the cabal, if he puts his zeal in other areas security, train the trainable, kick out the expired ones among them, get more resilient brilliant youths, properly trained and put them in some of the surveillance arms. Let them do security and monitoring. It is important. Encourage them, equip them and give them insurance. What is the level of insurance? That’s why some of them are scared. Give them incentives. It is achievable. And, ofcourse, discipline. We are full of indiscipline.
I like what Governor Amaechi does. If he is on the road and sees you beating the traffic or driving the other way, he stops and gives order to arrest you.. He doesn’t care who you are. So all of us should be police of our various area of residences. The problem is indiscipline. In Ghana, they are committed; they have discipline and have respect for one another. We don’t have respect for ourselves. The National Orientation Agencies should be able to inculcate, carry out programmes from hamlet to hamlet about the ills and the negative tendencies of our citizenry.
Are you in support of fuel subsidy removal? If yes, why?
Furo: there is nothing wrong with the removal of fuel subsidy. The problem was the handling and timing. If the timing and handling, majority of the stakeholders properly educated about the benefits, we would not have gone into the problems and losses we had in the strikes. If you open up the downstream sector, there are lots of things to gain. We will liken it to telecommunication industry. Remember in the 70s when we have NITEL, it was not easy to get telephone. We pay so much to get telephone. Every now and then a lot of time is wasted by civil servants at NITEL because their phones are not working. Today there is a lot of competition making the price to crash. Now every Tom and Dick can boast of telephone set. It has forced the prices down and a lot of people doing micro business. If that is extended to the down stream sector, there are lots of things to do, there will be business and the private sector will employ more peoples.
The cabotage system will work soundly and you will find out that the price of petroleum product will come down. Gone are the days when foreigners will take the crude out of this nation for N4 per tonne. Our indigenous mariners with similar vessels are prepared to do the same job for less than N3.00 per tonne. There are special people who feel that this country is in their pockets. They will corner everything and share those in NNPC. That’s why you see a small manager is richer than local governments. We should look at this seriously and rebuild this nation.
Will the gains not be mismanaged? Will President Jonathan be a different case?
Furo: You see, let me be honest with you. If in this establishment, the leadership kept mute, it means that they are part of the corruption going on, because nobody has the courage to speak out. Politicians cannot do anything without the civil servants. They showed them the areas, the pits in the jungles and what to do. They are in connivance. That is the truth of the matter. If this new system, what Jonathan is doing and I thought he should have even done this earlier and go after the cabal, the NNPC. If you know what the NNPC do in connivance with foreign companies. We don’t even know the quality of crude that is lifted. That is the truth of the matter. That place should be thoroughly re-organized. Some departments should be closed down. Their salaries are twenty times more than government ministries. They are in a different world altogether. There should be a policing system in place, New York in collaboration with the police and the EFCC. These are the things to be put in place. You can even get some of these unemployed people and train them to go out to monitor what is going on. You don’t just leave it and then put new wine in an old bottle. ###
