2014 National confab was a job for the boys, says SGF
The
Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David
Lawal, has declared that the 2014 National Conference midwifed by
ex-President Goodluck Jonathan was merely a job for the boys. Lawal, who
was a former National Vice-Chairman, Northeast of the All Progressives
Congress (APC), also said the the 2016 Appropriation Act will be
prioritised during its implementation. He spoke on anti corruption fight
of the administration, board appointments and other issues. The Adamawa
State born Engineer granted interview to selected journalists in Abuja.
Where are we as regards the 2016 budget?
Well, you know that our concept of budgeting is zero-budgeting where
we only appropriate money for key projects that the government considers
important for implementation of its key policies. To that effect, the
Ministry of Budget and Planning has sent out memos for MDAs to submit
their request for capital releases and they have all complied. The
Budget Office has started releasing the capital projects releases
according to the priorities of government. This is because the revenue
of government has fallen by about 47 percent since the budget was
approved by the National Assembly. Budget is a statement of intention,
the implementation is based on the reality of your revenue as the days
go by, and because of that MDAs are required to write and request for
funds only for those projects appropriated by the National Assembly and
secondly, that are of importance, as a priority. Obviously, quite some
projects that are in the budget might not be a priority for the MDAs. As
you are aware, during the budget process, we had this issue of padding
in which the Executive discovered that the National Assembly included
certain projects in the budget and appropriated for them, even when they
did not originate from the Executive arm. So, obviously, such projects
will not be considered a priority for the executive arm of government if
at all they manage to sneak through the vetting process jointly carried
out by the Executive and the National Assembly which eventually
produced the budget. Now, even those that have been appropriated for, in
the light of the dwindling revenue of government would still need to be
re-prioritised. For example, the government might find it very
difficult to implement the constituency projects to the letter because
MDAs might not find constituency projects as critical to the execution
of their mandates and given the dwindling resources, these could be some
of the areas that would suffer during implementation. If the revenue of
the government improves, of course, all capital projects would be fully
implemented, but we do not see that happening soon. So, while the
government is willing to do that, it is obvious that you can only
implement that for which you have money, and I think, to my mind, these
are some of the areas that might suffer non-implementation in the
budget.
The Senate has summoned you in connection with the recently-unveiled list of ambassadorial nominees. What is the issue?
One thing, however, is clear – the
constitution makes it clear that it is the president’s prerogative to
nominate ambassadors, and the criteria he would use to do so is also the
constitutional right of the president. Whatever criteria he chooses to
use is constitutional. Be that as it may, I must say that we are
disappointed that the National Assembly took the decision that it did,
but again we believe that the Senate we know is made up of very
responsible and patriotic Nigerians, there are some past governors who
have governed and known the constitutional provisions regarding
separation of powers. We know the Senate would not do anything that will
bring the country into disrepute because right now Nigeria enjoys
tremendous goodwill all over the globe. It is important to have
ambassadors therefore to sustain this goodwill. Again, a lot of the
travels by the president and government representatives is to attract
foreign direct investment into the country and ambassadors are key to
sustaining this and ensuring that the goals are achieved. The third
reason why we think ambassadors are key is because of the phenomenon of
global terrorism. Almost every nation around the world is facing it, and
all nations are now collaborating with each other to fight this
international terrorism. It is important that Nigerians have
representatives on the ground who would present its interest and defend
it. Delaying the screening of ambassadors even by one day is inimical to
the country, and we believe, senators, being patriotic Nigerians would
not want to cause undue hardship and put Nigeria at an undue advantage
in any regard. We expect that in coming to a decision on this, they
will take into consideration the interest of their own country and not
political or even personal considerations. Of course, we read in the
newspapers some of their concerns such as federal character and so on.
At the last count, my recollection is that out of the 47
diplomats-nominee, 32 out of 36 states and the FCT were represented.
Now, while the constitution preaches federal character, it does not
always say that every state must be represented in every appointment
except of course, in the case of ministers where the constitution said
there should be a minister from every state, and not in all other
appointments. So, the spirit of the constitution has been fully
satisfied by having ambassadors from 32 states out of 36 plus one. I
believe every objective analyst would agree with this. Secondly, there
has to be merit and qualifications in every nomination. Now, one of the
criteria, I understand that was used was that it is important not to
appoint someone that would soon retire. If you know the processes of
nominating and deploying ambassadors, you would understand that it is
highly unlikely that the Senate would be done with it within the next
two or three weeks. They would need to be presented to their countries
of deployment for checks and confirmation by those countries, and we
cannot dictate the speed, so it could take, in all honesty, probably six
to seven months for an ambassador to be fully cleared and assume his
new post. It would take longer still for him to acclimatize and settle
down in his work. There has been a subsisting policy, not by this regime
alone, that it would be good if someone, for example, has 30 months to
retire, he should not be posted. He would just be settling down before
retiring, and so it does not make sense. A lot of countries have
complained about this. You send an ambassador, and after one and half
year he retires. So, one of the criteria was that the person must have
not less than 30 months to retirement. Again, another criterion that was
considered was your seniority level. You must be someone on GL16/17.
Now, due to no fault of this government, not all states have people in
the Foreign Service Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. About
four states did not make it, however, not necessarily on the criteria
of seniority. There are other qualifications that are required to post
you to go and represent Nigeria. Again, there are specialist areas for
which only specialists are required. There is also the requirement of
gender sensitivity. This government in its APC manifesto promises gender
equality, this is another that was used to the extent that we have
about 12 women in the list of 47, among other criteria.
Again, it is solely the president’s prerogative to determine the
criteria to use to appoint an ambassador while we acknowledge also that
it is also the prerogative of the Senate to approve or not to approve
that nomination. So obviously for all the criteria set up for this
nomination, quite a number of states did not make it. Four state did not
make it but basically if any state does not have anybody among the list
of 47, it is because one way or the other they did not meet the
criteria including the criteria of qualification; qualification in the
sense that all said and done you must have the character, the integrity
and the experience to represent Nigeria even if you meet all the
criteria. You must be change compatible, that is you must have the
integrity, you must have the experience, you must really just have the
qualifications that are required of a representative of Nigeria. These
are only career diplomats fully drawn from the civil service, they are
not political ambassadors, you must also understand that being posted
out as an ambassador is not promotion, if you are level 16 officer and
you are posted out as an ambassador, it doesn’t mean you become level
17. When you finish your duty tour subject to your other requirement of
upward mobility in the service, you come back to where you left unless
while in the service, you have earned yourself a promotion. So it is not
right to think that just because one is appointed an ambassador or
because a level 17 is appointed an ambassador because he met the
criteria while a level 17 officer from the same state who couldn’t make
all the criteria does not mean level 16 officer is now your senior, it
is just a duty tour.
Again we should understand that there are other ambassadorial
appointments that will come from outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
or related agencies, those I could call maybe purely non-career
diplomats. It is obvious the government will use those appointments to
try and balance any lopsidedness in the current list, unless of course,
we again cannot take a political appointee that will meet a criteria
that we will set up for that purpose. It is not automatic that for
example if I cannot find a suitable APC man in Adamawa State I will go
for an APGA man. So I don’t understand the worry while this is just a
first phase that is drawn from career civil service. All over the civil
service, you will see these type of lopsidedness in which some states do
not have certain categories of staff or certain ranks and therefore
when this type of selection comes you will find that the government will
not be able to be equitable just because its hands are tied by the
system. So I don’t see why the Senate is over working itself about
because I don’t think it is lopsided because they haven’t gotten
representatives from 32 states, having worked hard to have gotten gender
equality, having tried hard to get the people with the correct
qualifications; the government can’t be faulted. That is our position,
unless of course maybe the Committee on Foreign Relations have a
different motive for taking the step they took. We at the executive
branch are at a loss and by the way if good faith had been exhibited,
all these information I am giving you would easily have been obtained by
a simple telephone call to my office and to my person. I don’t
understand the stepping down of the consideration which is very
injurious to the country because in the long run it could give the
impression that our ambassadorial nominees are compromised by the
international community. A simple telephone call to me would have
addressed these issues. It is not my fault if we want to make
ambassadors and we can’t find a level 17 officer who has suitable
qualifications from Adamawa state or from wherever. Sometimes, some
people will tell you they have a level 17 officer or they have this and
this. But after deep analysis of reasons that sometimes you need to
protect the reputation and integrity of the person concerned, you will
not mention it. For example, for somebody that has been granted
accelerated promotion on account of his connections, a time will come
when your connections have left or maybe somebody that has received
several queries in the course of his service just because he is a level
17 officer or because he is 16 or because he comes from a particular
state you want to send that person to become an ambassador. All said and
done, we will not reveal all such because of the need to protect the
reputation of any individual who has served Nigeria to the best of his
ability even if that ability is somehow.
What has delayed the appointments of people into Federal Government boards?
Let me tell you; it took some of the previous governments two years
to make board appointments. Now, the issue of board appointments is
moving faster than in previous governments. We need to do it very
diligently. Up until September, only the president and vice president
were running the country and their hands were too full for them to get
engaged in board appointments. Then the SGF, Chief of Staff and quite
some few others came on board, and it is the OSGF that co-ordinates all
of these. The president approved the setting up of a committee late last
year to do this. The first thing the committee did was to set up
criteria for people who would merit being on a board in an APC
government. We needed to get all the parastatals whose boards need to be
constituted. Then we did what we called ceding, in the sense that we
needed to share the boards in an equitable manner among all the states
so that each state, as much as possible, would have its own fair share
of board chairmen and board members. I think we started with close to
400 or 500 parastatals. It was not a mean job with board membership of,
in those days, I think five to 6, 000 people -chairmen and members- from
all the states and we decided to cede them in such a way that when it
comes to a state, the board membership must also be representative of
the local governments there. So, first, we ceded among the zones, then
we said okay, maybe north east zone has 20 chairmanships and 1,000 board
membership, then we go back and share the chairmanship in an equitable
manner according to the weight of the parastatals because in government I
understand there is Category A, B and C boards so that you do not end
up with only Category C or A; so it is not a very simple job. While we
were doing this, the government had to also look at the Oronsaye report
which recommends the scrapping or merging of some parastatals. There was
a White Paper by the former government on the implementation of the
Oronsaye Report. So, this government decided to study that report which
had very good merit in it because a lot of the parastatals were just
doing nothing or were doing what others were doing.
So, in considering the Oronsaye Report, is there any likelihood of carrying out the merger or scrapping of parastatals?
Look, the Oronsaye Report is domiciled here as the Secretary to the
Government of the Federation. They did a good job, not necessarily that
everything is acceptable. What happened to the Oronsaye Report was that
they made their recommendations and took it to the Cabinet. By the time
the White Paper came out, it appeared that only 40 per cent of the
recommendations were approved for implementation by the White Paper. It
appeared that every minister started defending his staff. So, for
example, parastatals recommended for scrapping suddenly found themselves
in the survival list, because government is like that. So, the Oronsaye
Report was completely mutilated during the White Paper. While the
activity in itself was commendable, as a government, it is only natural
that we look at it in the context of our own objectives. So, we are
looking at it. A lot of hardwork went into it, and we would like to
study it and implement it in agreement with our policies.
Are you most likely to also look at the 2014 Confab Report in that manner?
Well, the government has not taken a decision on the 2014 National
Conference. I understand that some Nigerians want it implemented but the
government has been too busy with key areas of governance to talk about
an exercise that we thought was essentially diversionary and a sort of,
maybe, a ‘job for the boys’, because if you remember, it was reported
that almost everybody in the committee got N7 million, and we consider
it essentially as job for the boys. They probably produced a document
that is good and commendable but I mean, this government is too busy
with very more vital areas of governance, and we are not intending to
spend our time reading reports. The exercise of governance is not about
reading reports. The reports are here, so many volumes that for example,
it would take me like seven days to go through. Economy needs attention
I wonder what happens to my work while I am reading it; while the
economy needs attention, unemployment is there, insecurity is there,
people are blowing up pipelines and so on.
How true is the allegation in some quarters that you are
responsible for the travails of the Deputy Senate President, Ike
Ekweremadu?
Let me tell you, the Office of the Secretary to Government is the
punching bag of everybody, and that is how it should be. My own
understanding of the present government in relation with the opposition
is such that the integrity of our president has been established over
his almost 73 years as solid; you cannot assail it. So, the only option
left for you as a ‘dirty’ opposition since you must attack the
government is to attack those less known. And those less known that are
easy targets, that they think when they attack them, they are attacking
the president are the SGF, the Chief of Staff, Minister of Petroleum and
the CBN Governor, for one reason. These are appointive positions; they
are not elective. Probably, they think that “oh, if we make him look
dirty, the president would sack me.” In my life, I have seen Ekweremadu
for, maybe twice, and the second one, was incidentally, in a church in
Yola. I do not understand the psychology of, when you are accused of
something, instead of defending yourself, you waste your time hunting
for who could have been the cause of your travails. If they remove
Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President, how does that personally
benefit us? Of course, while I was in the party then as National Vice
Chairman, it was the party position that because we are the majority
party in Parliament, that we should produce all the Principal Officers.
To that extent as an APC member, I am not happy that APC has not
produced the deputy senate president. It is an aberration, but the
senators decided, which is their constitutional right, to create the
aberration. The solution, if they need any solution would lie with them
not BD Lawal, not SGF because I am not a senator. I am the SGF. So,
whoever tells you that I am responsible for the travails of Sen. Ike
Ekweremadu is burying his head in the sand rather than running.
When is the president going to start dealing with corrupt persons in APC?
Let us be very sincere and reasonable. Obviously, to my mind, the
preponderance of corrupt people would be in the PDP for one reason; they
have been in government for 16 years and they were the only ones
enjoying the booty, and they were doing it in a flagrant manner. Tracing
my own (political) genealogy for instance, from ANPP to CPC and now
APC, we were not getting anything. Nobody was giving us contracts. PDP
were the ones in government; they were the ones the president was
approving money for sharing; they were the ones that took government
money to fund their election. This is the truth. APC had no access to
government money to fund the president’s election. It got to a stage
when PDP saw it clearly on the wall; you remember they even shifted the
elections; it was so clear they were going to lose, and so they thought
they could buy it. Throughout the last tenure of the Goodluck Jonathan
campaign, their goodwill among Nigerians was on the decline and they
were spending, and it got to a stage that they did not care about
following the due process anymore because they thought they were in
power and they thought they could buy their way through and remain in
perpetuity. So, they became even careless about the manner they were
taking the money. Remember Nigeria even borrowed $100million from the
international market to fund the war on Boko Haram and they simply
shared it. APC did not go to borrow anywhere. We were not sharing oil
wells. We had no access to NNPC funds. So, if these agencies were
converted into agencies for looting and pilfering, it is obvious that
even if we had corrupt men in the APC, they did not have the opportunity
to steal, and that is assuming we had. I cannot, in all honesty, say
that all of us in APC are saints, but the truth is, we did not have
access to funds to steal in the first place, and so we did not have
opportunity also to reject the stealing. So, let them roast in their
stew. Let them carry their cross. They can make all the noises and try
to deflate APC, but our hands are clean by providence. Look, let us face
it. If they arrest you, why don’t you say, ‘I shared the money with so
and so persons’ and then let him turn out to be in APC? Those that they
are arresting, it is from the interrogation that the information burst
out. Let them leave us alone. This is just the beginning. They will
return our money by the time we finish digging their soak-aways and
bringing down their (overhead) tanks; we would recover our money.
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