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Former president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Comrade Peter Esele, speaks with Group Politics Editor, KUNLE ODEREMI and IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the many socio-economic problems plaguing Nigeria ahead of the 2023 general election.
What is your assessment of the state of the nation?
I am mainly an optimist, but I will say things have not been better. We are not where we are supposed to be as, by now, we are supposed to be in a better place.
Why do you think we are not in a better place?
We are not where we are supposed to be, because we have self-inflicted problems. Most of our challenges are self-inflicted: issues like banditry, Boko Haram insurgency, herders-farmers crisis, ethnic rivalry, religious bigotry and others are all self-inflicted. Take a look at the poverty level in the North-West, I am not saying poverty is the chief cause of our security problems, but it does play a major factor. Our country has simply battled with lack of opportunities and, then, the North and South divide. We have often forgotten that if it is okay for the North and the South, then it will be okay for Nigeria. But if it is not okay for any part of the country, it will definitely not be okay for Nigeria. It is expected of us to still think from that composite perspective. Having that understanding that we are all one and the same is also another issue.
Our politicians have also played a big role in the divisive state that we find ourselves. The fact remains that the Boko Haram terrorists, bandits and other insurgents of today were one time political thugs, armed by the politicians just to settle political scores and viciously achieve their self-centered bid. That is why I used the word ‘self-inflicted,’ because everything we are going through right now is avoidable. The truth is that we can all stop our religious bigotry, because if there is no peace, nobody will be able to go to church and mosque. A bullet does not know that this man is a Hausa, while that one is Igbo. It will just crush everyone and all businesses will crumble, forcing unemployment to hit an all-time high. Take, for an example, the children in Ukraine right now cannot go to school because of the war in that part of the world. And that is one country fight against another one, not to talk of us living within the same country, fighting and killing one another.
As you know, the build-up to the 2023 elections is on. Are we on the right track towards addressing some of these issues, so that we can start on a clean slate in the next dispensation?
Our elections and our candidates have always been very tired. And this is also a fall-out of the followership. Most times, we talk about leadership, but my belief is that this doesn’t have to do with leadership alone. It also includes followership, because for the leaders to emerge, they have to be accepted by the followers. So, for us to have a president, it is the followers that will elect who will become our president. Prior to voting, the power resides with the followers. And it is after we have elected someone as our president that the power moves to him, so that he can then shape the country. So, the question we need to ask ourselves is, who is going to be our president in 2023? Then which of the parties are we going to elect and what are their manifestoes? But Nigerians don’t ask critical questions. I want to know the take of the incoming president on the oil and gas, taxation, foreign policy and how he will generate employment. How will he create the enabling environment for our businesses to thrive?
But those who want to be president of Nigeria have so far been talking majorly about themselves. You see, an individual cannot develop a country. It is an institution that develops a country. So, the mistakes we have all been making is that we look onto individuals. In a civilised society, the people there look not at individuals, but at the political parties. What is the difference among the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the Labour Party (LP) as well as the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP)? What differentiates them? If you look at the current president, for an example, what you have now are his ideas. And no matter how good or bad a president is, he can only serve for eight years and when he leaves, we go back again to the poll. So, what you have is a worship of personality, which does not lead to a composite development. Let me give you another example, the PDP in 1999 had President Olusegun Obasanjo and he had eight years. After him, we had the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and then President Goodluck Jonathan.
But if you are to situate Yar’Adua, Jonathan with Obasanjo, you will be thinking that they are from different parties, because Obasanjo was going on power generation, but Yar’Adua stopped it. And this is not supposed to happen. It is just because the party does not have a manifesto and does not stand for something. The truth is if a party stands for something, an individual cannot change it. So, what you have is that the institution, which is the party, does not stand for something. That is why you have the current chairman of APC being a former member of the PDP Board of Trustees. And the current chairman of PDP was a former chieftain of the APC. So, you can see that in terms of ideological difference, there is really none. And that is why our development has been at snail pace, motion without movement as Fela once said.
But as a union leader what can you say about Labour Party compared to the other parties?
Personally, I don’t move or talk based on what people say, but by your actions and what has been written. I am not saying that the Labour Party may not move in that direction, but what I am saying is that the pressure should come from the followers. They should ask the parties what they stand for. I want to know, what is LP’s take on fuel subsidy, taxation, oil and gas? For the first time in history, this country has not benefited from the high price of global oil. Why? Also, what is the take of the parties on insecurity? Nobody should just come and say I will do this and these, he or she has to break it down for Nigerians to analyse. Look at the UK, where we copied our system from, politicians cross-carpeted, but it is very negligible. But what you have in Nigeria is that during every election cycle, people, not the masses, but politicians, who have occupied public offices. And this is because there are no ideologies. In the US, unlike here, you have Bill Clinton and then Barrack Obama, who are still different personalities, but the same ideology. It is the same with Donald Trump, G eorge Bush and all. They all have the same ideology. And that is how you develop a country.
Meanwhile, a society must have an alternative. I believe all the parties must be allowed to exist in our evolution. Personally, I don’t support a one-party system, or a two-party arrangement. Let there just be alternatives, out of which people can choose from. But these alternatives must be based on ideologies. You know how many millions of barrels of oil Nigeria produces and you know the stake of the International Oil Company (IOC), you also know our population and the number of police that are expected to man our territory, so how do you design our security around that? It is not enough for somebody to just come up and say, I am going to guarantee you security? The question should be, how? My 14-year-old son can also take the microphone and say I will guarantee you maximum security, but what separates the boys from the men is the ability to think through problems. But what we have lacked over the years is discipline and structure, because it takes these two, plus mental capacity, to actually think things through.
Are you saying that the claims by the presidential candidates for 2023 elections that they have the background and leadership experience to create a new vision for the country lack merit?
Let me give you one analogy to bring my point to the fore. Kunle, you are a journalist. And I and anybody can also come out and claim to be journalists. But what is the difference that separates you from me? The difference will be your ability to know the right question to ask, to know how to put words together and deliver results. The fact remains that there are differences and anybody can come out to say this or that, but it is by their doing that you will know where the person belongs. For instance, you are trained, so you will now have to tell us how you will use that knowledge you gain from school to address our problems. Many people can rise up to say they want to be the president of Nigeria, but they will need to tell us what they will do when they get there and how they will do it. This is what is missing in our current state, because, we have not been asking those critical questions.
The current administration said that it would turn one Naira into a dollar and people did not ask them how they intended to do this so as to have known that such is not possible. The government initially claimed that there was no subsidy, but since coming into power, it has been paying that same subsidy every year. Right now, the subsidy is even more than our total annual budget. So, what are they now saying? It simply means that the government was not prepared for the task. So, what we need in 2023 is a president that will put everything in black and white, not just someone that will tell us he wants to be president, but also how he will address our most pressing problems. The person must be able to clearly spell out the measures he will take to tackle each of the problems like insecurity for instance and what will be the time-frame that he will deliver on the promises. Whoever wants to be Nigeria’s president must use the three ‘W’s and ‘H’ question formulae, which means what, where, when and how. These three Ws and H must be present in the manifesto of any presidential candidate that wants to lead us. Nobody should just come up and bamboozle us with mere rhetoric.
I once heard the presidential candidate of the PDP speak on what he will do, but I feel being a former Vice-President of Nigeria, he should be speaking with established statistics, data and facts, not just speaking theoretically. He must have solutions and be able to clearly communicate it with proper and appropriate data and facts.
Earlier, you said that in the face of recent realities, we have not been benefiting from the oil sector; why is it so? Or how do you mean?
We were told that it is the subsidy payment that is making us not to benefit from the global oil price rise. And to address that, you have to know firstly, what are the things that we are actually consuming. In the last couple of weeks, there have been disagreements between the Customs and the NNPC. The Customs have come out to say that we lift up about 98 million barrels of crude oil, but only about 60 million barrels is consumed. So they are saying, where is the remaining 38 million barrels? And that is the kind of questions we should be asking those in power. It is when we have been able to know the total amount of crude consumed daily, then we can find out what is the subsidy level and how much of subsidy payment can the country afford? I know some people have said they should remove the subsidy. But right now, the price of gas, which they use mostly, has hit the roof more than four to five times. Now, what are the governments in Europe doing? They are subsidising. So, every country finds its own way of when and how to subsidise and the reason why this is done is to make sure that there is no issue like social dislocation.
Some economic experts have said the government should remove the petrol subsidy. But doing that will put the price of petrol to about N450 per litre. And with what Nigerians are going through right now, can you bring that economic shock by asking them to be paying such a humongous amount for fuel? Can you imagine what will happen and the kind of calamity it will bring, especially when the people are not even aware? People have always claimed that we, the labour, are against subsidy removal. But what we have been saying is fix the refineries first and this will reduce the pressure on forex, which will make our currency to start having its actual value. It is then we will now be in a position to decide how many per cent of the subsidy we should take off.
I have always said that if we want to stagger the removal of the subsidy, we can do that, but we must first discover who is stealing what. They have told us that a lot of the products go to Niger, Chad and others, but are the products flying? You do have a car and a car tracker. In the country, we have been very afraid of technology, because it would distract and expose corruption. One time, the government disclosed the amount of crude oil that is being stolen a day, and when I did the conversion, it amounted to about 10,000 trucks a day. Please, how will 10,000 trucks go to Chad from Nigeria and come back the following day? It just doesn’t make any sense.
So what do you think is actually happening?
It is simply a by-product of the corruption in the system.
But why is it difficult for the government to checkmate this and apprehend those behind it?
It is not difficult for the government to do this. For instance, there are some of those trucks that take about 300,000 litres. So, if you say you have a truck of about 300,000 litres of petrol, how many trucks do you think will move about 10million litres of fuel that it won’t raise eyebrow? The challenge we are facing is that there are people in the system, who are benefiting and they are all also very powerful. You have to give credit to the current GMD of NNPC, because for the first time in almost 10 years, the corporation account was audited under his tenure, which made us to know that they have not been making money all these years. That is someone who is ready to look inwardly and criticise himself just for the society to grow. Another aspect is oil theft. The NNPC cannot stop it. Crude oil theft demands adequate security. You will recall that sometimes ago, a vessel was arrested at Equatorial Guinea with 3million litres of Nigerian crude. That crude at 100 dollar per barrel is 300million dollars. So how do you think that 3million litres would have been stolen without the connivance of the security and those at the terminal? So, what you have is a well-coordinated cabal, which comprises both state actors and non-state actors colluding to defraud Nigeria.
This scenario that you have just painted, what does it portend for the security of this country?
It is the biggest danger that we have as a country and that is why anything goes, because when you talk of the security of a country, its underpinning factors are the values of the society. In Nigeria, our societal value is not based on who you are, but on what you have. So everybody wants to get as much money as they can get. So nobody is interested in the genuine development and transformation of the country, because the society also has not provided security. People don’t know that life itself is a chain. If someone is a pensioner and he has retired, but you did not pay him his pension, remember that there is one young man out there, looking at the pensioner and the suffering he is going through and he will be telling himself that I don’t want to go through this process. So while he is serving, he will be accruing as much wealth as he can amass, such that his fifth generation will never be poor again like the struggling pensioner. There was an incident that happened sometime in Benin. A police officer was shot by armed robbers, but immediately after his burial, they evacuated his families from the police barrack and no alternative was made available for his family. Mind you, other policemen saw that inhuman treatment given to their deceased colleague’s family.
There was one time I worked for an oil company. I worked for many years and during the years, I worked out my head for the company, because I know that if anything should happen to me, my family will be well-taken care of and that all my entitlements would be paid immediately my family presented my death certificate. But in this country, a man who works for the government will not be paid for six months, yet you won’t see him complain. In fact, he will be leaving fine, simply because he is stealing and looting the public funds somewhere. So, he won’t bother whether the government pays or not. So our environment itself does not create the room for people to be dedicated and committed.
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