Also, we are facing infrastructure deficit -we talk about power, road, and railway – there is no government that can fund these gigantic projects. It is not possible. If you are waiting for government to fund railway, roads, it will not happen. It does not have the money to do that. I don’t think it is pretending about it. And we all agree that without this infrastructure, our economy cannot move forward. The answer remains to have an enabling environment by law that allows private sector participation in the funding of these projects.
Look at the issue of Lagos-Calabar rail that raised a lot of dust. How much is the money? N60bn. If that amount is what we are struggling to find from everywhere, how will government tackle other pressing needs. If we have an enabling environment, a big Chinese or a UAE company can say look, can I participate? I will provide all the trains, carriages for this route. Give me the route, Lagos to Calabar or Calabar to Port Harcourt, I will fund it and I will make my money from the goods tariffs. If there is a law that allows that you will see everybody bringing his money.
The law that we are trying to pass currently, for the first time, will allow the private sector to even build rail tracks. If we want to concession part of it, the law allows it. These are the things that the existing law did not allow.
On roads, we are ensuring that some of the laws will enable better maintenance of highways and better participation of private sectors in road construction. Look at the Lagos -Ibadan road or the one from Ibadan to Ilorin? Since 1999 when Obasanjo was in power the road has been under construction.
That is 16 years ago. They broke it into three segments in a bid to make it easier.They broke into Ibadan to Oyo, one contractor; Oyo to Ogbomosho, another contractor; and Ogbomosho to Ilorin, another contractor. Till now we are just about to start the last phase. That is Oyo to Ogbomoso. Lagos -Ibadan that is so important to us is yet to be completed. The money is not there.
So it is the law that will enable the private sector to participate in such construction that we require.
If you talk about reforms in any society, they can only be done if there are stable laws that will support that. And that is what we are trying to do in ensuring that all these sectors are provided with an enabling environment that will bring about change in the economy and create jobs for a lot of our unemployed youths.
With the controversies that surrounded the 2016 budget and the dwindling oil revenues, do you sincerely think the budget will be faithfully implemented?
What we have done, despite the power that is given to the legislature by the constitution, is to stand with the people. As part of the cooperation with the executive we ensured that the executive got what they want so that they will not give the excuse that they are not familiar with the budget or that it is not theirs. We bent backwards and even relinquished some powers we have as part of the support. This is a government that has come to change things, we told ourselves that we should as much as possible support it and work with what it wants. There is no excuse on the executive part.
On our part, we are to ensure that the enabling laws are passed. I give you example again with the procurement law that we are amending. It is an effort to fast tract the process by which budget would be implemented. And then, of course our own oversight, we have resolved that we will monitor every naira, every kobo to ensure that they are spent in line with the budget.
I can assure you that we will do that. We will make sure that all the agencies and ministries implement the budget fully. In saying that we have to be realistic and see what the executive does with the challenges it has. Nobody anticipated the disruption we are having in the Niger Delta area. The budget was based on 2.2 million barrels a day. But now it has gone that to as low as 1.6 million barrels.
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