THERE ARE PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVES IN APC- KAKA Senator Adegbenga Kaka represents Ogun East Senatorial district in the National Assembly. A former commissioner and deputy governor in Ogun State, he takes TADE MAKINDE and KEHINDE OYETIMI through issues of national importance. Excerpts: YOU were a commissioner; then you became deputy governor and now, you are a senator. Is it the drive to serve your people or the money? I will attribute everything to the doing of the Almighty Allah. If you look at those three positions that you mentioned and even my sojourn with my company, there is a recurring period of eight years. I joined the company where I worked in 1980 and exactly eight years after, the then governor of Ogun State appointed me a commissioner without my pre-knowledge of the appointment. I left by December 1991 as commissioner. Exactly eight years after in 1999, I became deputy governor. I worked for it and I know I deserved it but I never requested for it. I was an active member of NADECO and Afenifere. By 2003, I left as deputy governor. Exactly eight years after again, I came back as senator. I thank God and I thank the people of Ogun State for the confidence reposed in me. Following the repeated killings in Nasarawa State, many are asking the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency there. Do you share such opinion? I am averse to any declaration of the state of emergency as an antidote to the insecurity in the country today. We are under democracy. The police are supposed to ensure the internal security of the nation. The military is supposed to be against external aggression and re-enforce whatever goes on internally. We may inadvertently be truncating our democracy by getting the military involved more and more in the civil administration. We already have a state of emergency in three states. By the time you add Nasarawa, it will be four. When you follow what is going on in Rivers State, some people will soon start calling for a state of emergency there. We are indirectly handing over the rein of power to the military. The question is not about pumping money into security without having a focus about what we want to achieve. Why is it that the police are not functioning as expected? Why is it that all the security forces cannot work together and generate the much needed synergy to curb this? We need to account for every kobo put into security. Look at our economy. The budget for this year is about N4.9 trillion. Out of which about 70 per cent is going for recurrent expenditure. That was before the state of emergency was declared. As at the first half of this year, we were told that over N700 billion had been expended on security. Calculate the extra amount of money that will be shipped in by the Federal Government. Each state affected is shipping in around N500 million every month. Is the achievement being recorded worth what we are having? The state of emergency is nearing three months; we should be reviewing it by now. We should be doing cost benefit analysis rather than just putting money into the pit. While that is going on, some are saying that the budget is not implementable. But they have refused to tell us why it is not achievable. ASUU has been on strike for over two months; others are threatening to join. Does that not deserve state of emergency? There is unemployment everywhere. Nigeria has the cheapest deposit of manpower but there is unemployment. As Nigeria celebrates its 53rd year of independence, many insist that its problem is leadership. You are part of that elite class of leaders... For God’s sake, I am not exonerating myself. We the leadership are culpable. We are under democracy where the minority will have their say while the majority will have their way. Perhaps we should be thinking or aspiring to a situation whereby we have a different party control the executive arm of government while another controls the legislature. Perhaps that will bring some level of improvement. The value system has been completely eroded whereby there is no dignity of labour in the country. Corruption is at the highest level that you can think of. The senate, where you belong, has been accused of being the problem of the recurring expenditure in the country’s annual budget. Why is it difficult for the country to put more money into education? No nation can grow without its people being educated. From primary to tertiary education, our policy somersaults have been hampering a lot of things. We were having a stable tertiary education. All of a sudden, we threw the door ajar for all kinds of people to bring in private universities. Granted that it is good because we have many eligible candidates that cannot be admitted into tertiary institutions. But the question is what is the total number of potential lecturers that we have trained to fill the vacuum that we are creating. You will discover that it is the same kind of lecturers that are being recycled. The private universities are giving the leeway to charge any fee they think is appropriate for them, thus turning education to an elitist commodity. Meanwhile the existing government universities are neglected. The lecturers are being marginalised. We are talking about an agreement reached between ASUU and government. Governance is a continuum. If an agreement was reached, why is it difficult to fulfil the promise? Why don’t we settle the debt? We have money that is being wasted. We should declare a state of emergency on electricity, education and agriculture. We are leaving what we ought to be doing and doing what we ought not to do. We, at the National Assembly and the Executive, should stop doing the ephemerals and face squarely the things that touch the lives of the people. There is a clear difference between what we perceive as the needs of the people and what the needs of the people are. Why can’t you cut down on the recurrent expenditure? Is it because you are benefiting from it? I cannot imagine why some people will think that annually we must budget for furniture, computers, as if these things are consumables. At our monetisation year, there is still residual value on the furniture. Ironically, the materials that are used on the furniture to be bought in the New Year are of inferior quality to the ones already in place. Then why are we wasteful? What is it that we are looking for travelling overseas? We should not embark on any trip that the cost benefit cannot be justified. We make so many provisions that bloat the recurring expenditure. It is generally believed that constituency projects are veritable avenues where politicians siphon huge amounts of money. Why is it difficult for the people to see what such money is used for? There are erroneous beliefs that people hold. The idea of constituency projects is not a bad one at all. If you have 360 House of Representatives’ members with 360 federal constituencies and 109 senatorial districts, we can rightly say that those sets of people and the State House of Assembly members in the different states are the true representatives of the people. They know where the shoepinches most in their various constituencies. Don’t forget that there is corruption in the system. It was the Minister for Special Duties who said about two weeks ago that in constituency projects, it is the legislators who choose the contractors. I am submitting here that it is a blatant lie because what the Senate President told all of us was that we should not get involved with the way the contracts get awarded. Ours is to identify. Once it is inserted into the budget, it is the executive that should execute everything to the end. It is only when it is awarded that we can supervise and make sure that we think should be for the people is done. I challenge the minister to name those legislators who have been bringing contractors to them. Not a single contractor is from me. There is a contractor who subcontracted a project to three others. How do you track those people when the job is not properly done, forgetting that constituency project is not our primary job? Many of these projects are not actually awarded. There are fears that the state governors will frustrate their state assemblies from allowing the calling for local government autonomy to scale through. What is your reaction to that? The issue of local government autonomy is neither here nor there. Those who say that the autonomy should be granted have their genuine reasons. Those who say it should not be granted have genuine reasons. I personally voted for the granting of autonomy to the local governments. I want democracy to grow. I want the benefits of development to get down to the grassroots. We have to give them free hands to operate and exercise limited control, not absolute control. When some governors know that their parties may not win at the local government level, they prefer to appoint caretakers. Out of the 774 local government chairmen, I think over 400, if not about 500, are caretakers. We are stunting the growth of democracy. The All Progressives Congress (APC) is regarded as a mongrel assortment of people. There are reports of people who are breaking out of the coalition. You have been accused of imposition of candidates. What plans have been put in place to ensure that the fears of the party faithful are addressed? Those playing politics in Nigeria today are not up to five per cent of the country’s population. The 95 per cent remaining are the electorate. Papa Obafemi Awolowo in 1983 during the UPN convention proposed what he called the dialectical principle when he envisaged the coming together of the best of all the political tendencies and the aggregating together of the worst. Awolowo saw what is happening today. PDP managed their in-fighting in the last 14 years through the instrumentality of settlement. Now such settlements can no longer hold. The best within that party are saying no. Hence the implosion. In our own case, we are having the best of all political tendencies coming together under APC. But in an attempt to do it, you are bound to have the corn and the chaff coming together. It is in the process of implementing our constitution, manifestoes that the chaff will sorted out. We have some pseudo-progressives within the APC. They are people who do not understand what democracy is all about. They cannot even read our constitution and understand. Those ones think that they can hijack the party; how can you hijack a mass movement? We have mechanisms in our party constitution that will weed such people out. We should not shy away from that. By the time we get to the congress, those who think they can pocket the party will be sorted out. Imposition has got nothing to do with APC. Whoever indulges in imposition should be ready for the consequence because where there is no justice there can be no peace, and where there is no peace there can be no unity. The injustice in PDP is what is resulting in the lack of peace and the disunity that is tearing everybody apart. The APC must learn from that so that it will not fall into the same category. YOU were a commissioner; then you became deputy governor and now, you are a senator. Is it the drive to serve your people or the money? I will attribute everything to the doing of the Almighty Allah. If you look at those three positions that you mentioned and even my sojourn with my company, there is a recurring period of eight years. I joined the company where I worked in 1980 and exactly eight years after, the then governor of Ogun State appointed me a commissioner without my pre-knowledge of the appointment. I left by December 1991 as commissioner. Exactly eight years after in 1999, I became deputy governor. I worked for it and I know I deserved it but I never requested for it. I was an active member of NADECO and Afenifere. By 2003, I left as deputy governor. Exactly eight years after again, I came back as senator. I thank God and I thank the people of Ogun State for the confidence reposed in me. Following the repeated killings in Nasarawa State, many are asking the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency there. Do you share such opinion? I am averse to any declaration of the state of emergency as an antidote to the insecurity in the country today. We are under democracy. The police are supposed to ensure the internal security of the nation. The military is supposed to be against external aggression and re-enforce whatever goes on internally. We may inadvertently be truncating our democracy by getting the military involved more and more in the civil administration. We already have a state of emergency in three states. By the time you add Nasarawa, it will be four. When you follow what is going on in Rivers State, some people will soon start calling for a state of emergency there. We are indirectly handing over the rein of power to the military. The question is not about pumping money into security without having a focus about what we want to achieve. Why is it that the police are not functioning as expected? Why is it that all the security forces cannot work together and generate the much needed synergy to curb this? We need to account for every kobo put into security. Look at our economy. The budget for this year is about N4.9 trillion. Out of which about 70 per cent is going for recurrent expenditure. That was before the state of emergency was declared. As at the first half of this year, we were told that over N700 billion had been expended on security. Calculate the extra amount of money that will be shipped in by the Federal Government. Each state affected is shipping in around N500 million every month. Is the achievement being recorded worth what we are having? The state of emergency is nearing three months; we should be reviewing it by now. We should be doing cost benefit analysis rather than just putting money into the pit. While that is going on, some are saying that the budget is not implementable. But they have refused to tell us why it is not achievable. ASUU has been on strike for over two months; others are threatening to join. Does that not deserve state of emergency? There is unemployment everywhere. Nigeria has the cheapest deposit of manpower but there is unemployment. As Nigeria celebrates its 53rd year of independence, many insist that its problem is leadership. You are part of that elite class of leaders... For God’s sake, I am not exonerating myself. We the leadership are culpable. We are under democracy where the minority will have their say while the majority will have their way. Perhaps we should be thinking or aspiring to a situation whereby we have a different party control the executive arm of government while another controls the legislature. Perhaps that will bring some level of improvement. The value system has been completely eroded whereby there is no dignity of labour in the country. Corruption is at the highest level that you can think of. The senate, where you belong, has been accused of being the problem of the recurring expenditure in the country’s annual budget. Why is it difficult for the country to put more money into education? No nation can grow without its people being educated. From primary to tertiary education, our policy somersaults have been hampering a lot of things. We were having a stable tertiary education. All of a sudden, we threw the door ajar for all kinds of people to bring in private universities. Granted that it is good because we have many eligible candidates that cannot be admitted into tertiary institutions. But the question is what is the total number of potential lecturers that we have trained to fill the vacuum that we are creating. You will discover that it is the same kind of lecturers that are being recycled. The private universities are giving the leeway to charge any fee they think is appropriate for them, thus turning education to an elitist commodity. Meanwhile the existing government universities are neglected. The lecturers are being marginalised. We are talking about an agreement reached between ASUU and government. Governance is a continuum. If an agreement was reached, why is it difficult to fulfil the promise? Why don’t we settle the debt? We have money that is being wasted. We should declare a state of emergency on electricity, education and agriculture. We are leaving what we ought to be doing and doing what we ought not to do. We, at the National Assembly and the Executive, should stop doing the ephemerals and face squarely the things that touch the lives of the people. There is a clear difference between what we perceive as the needs of the people and what the needs of the people are. Why can’t you cut down on the recurrent expenditure? Is it because you are benefiting from it? I cannot imagine why some people will think that annually we must budget for furniture, computers, as if these things are consumables. At our monetisation year, there is still residual value on the furniture. Ironically, the materials that are used on the furniture to be bought in the New Year are of inferior quality to the ones already in place. Then why are we wasteful? What is it that we are looking for travelling overseas? We should not embark on any trip that the cost benefit cannot be justified. We make so many provisions that bloat the recurring expenditure. It is generally believed that constituency projects are veritable avenues where politicians siphon huge amounts of money. Why is it difficult for the people to see what such money is used for? There are erroneous beliefs that people hold. The idea of constituency projects is not a bad one at all. If you have 360 House of Representatives’ members with 360 federal constituencies and 109 senatorial districts, we can rightly say that those sets of people and the State House of Assembly members in the different states are the true representatives of the people. They know where the shoepinches most in their various constituencies. Don’t forget that there is corruption in the system. It was the Minister for Special Duties who said about two weeks ago that in constituency projects, it is the legislators who choose the contractors. I am submitting here that it is a blatant lie because what the Senate President told all of us was that we should not get involved with the way the contracts get awarded. Ours is to identify. Once it is inserted into the budget, it is the executive that should execute everything to the end. It is only when it is awarded that we can supervise and make sure that we think should be for the people is done. I challenge the minister to name those legislators who have been bringing contractors to them. Not a single contractor is from me. There is a contractor who subcontracted a project to three others. How do you track those people when the job is not properly done, forgetting that constituency project is not our primary job? Many of these projects are not actually awarded. There are fears that the state governors will frustrate their state assemblies from allowing the calling for local government autonomy to scale through. What is your reaction to that? The issue of local government autonomy is neither here nor there. Those who say that the autonomy should be granted have their genuine reasons. Those who say it should not be granted have genuine reasons. I personally voted for the granting of autonomy to the local governments. I want democracy to grow. I want the benefits of development to get down to the grassroots. We have to give them free hands to operate and exercise limited control, not absolute control. When some governors know that their parties may not win at the local government level, they prefer to appoint caretakers. Out of the 774 local government chairmen, I think over 400, if not about 500, are caretakers. We are stunting the growth of democracy. The All Progressives Congress (APC) is regarded as a mongrel assortment of people. There are reports of people who are breaking out of the coalition. You have been accused of imposition of candidates. What plans have been put in place to ensure that the fears of the party faithful are addressed? Those playing politics in Nigeria today are not up to five per cent of the country’s population. The 95 per cent remaining are the electorate. Papa Obafemi Awolowo in 1983 during the UPN convention proposed what he called the dialectical principle when he envisaged the coming together of the best of all the political tendencies and the aggregating together of the worst. Awolowo saw what is happening today. PDP managed their in-fighting in the last 14 years through the instrumentality of settlement. Now such settlements can no longer hold. The best within that party are saying no. Hence the implosion. In our own case, we are having the best of all political tendencies coming together under APC. But in an attempt to do it, you are bound to have the corn and the chaff coming together. It is in the process of implementing our constitution, manifestoes that the chaff will sorted out. We have some pseudo-progressives within the APC. They are people who do not understand what democracy is all about. They cannot even read our constitution and understand. Those ones think that they can hijack the party; how can you hijack a mass movement? We have mechanisms in our party constitution that will weed such people out. We should not shy away from that. By the time we get to the congress, those who think they can pocket the party will be sorted out. Imposition has got nothing to do with APC. Whoever indulges in imposition should be ready for the consequence because where there is no justice there can be no peace, and where there is no peace there can be no unity. The injustice in PDP is what is resulting in the lack of peace and the disunity that is tearing everybody apart. The APC must learn from that so that it will not fall into the same category.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:17:23 +0000
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