Honourable Mohammed Sani Kutigi represented Lavun/Edati/ Mokwa federal constituency of Niger State in the 7th House. In this interview with RUTH CHOJI, he is of the view that the current administration should concentrate more on salvaging the nation’s economy rather than making excuses.

Would you support the devaluation of the naira?
As a member of the House of Representatives on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party I am very much concerned with the state of the economy. We have to look at what direction the people leading the country now are going and the actions they are willing to take to revamp the economy.
As a concerned citizen, I believe the policies of the government should be such that will benefit the entire people. Let me give you an example, if as a human being, you are leading or heading an organization and health wise, you are not well. I think the first priority will be for you to get well before coming to lead the people. So what this administration should have done was to sit down and look at the economy and see where things have gone wrong. If you look at it, since the inception of the administration, it is just about excuses .Then the talk about fighting corruption has taken the main centre stage as their first priority. No one is thinking about revamping the economy. So to devalue or not, we have to look at the indices, we need to look at what is causing this problem. We have key issues here, oil prices have gone down, non-oil exports are struggling and direct foreign investment is shrinking.

Is this peculiar to Nigeria or it is a global phenomenon?
To be truthful, with the crashing of oil prices in the international market, any economy that did not diversify is facing these problems.

Isn’t that an indictment on the PDP because they ruled for 16years when oil was sold very high and nothing to show for it?
Let me give you an example, I don’t like to push blames. I have worked in virtually every sector of the economy except for oil and gas. When the head hunters go out to look for capable hands to manage any multinational organization, one of the main criteria they look out for is capability and capacity. When you look at world economy, where multinationals change their CEOs, where you don’t perform, you are shown the way out and when a new CEO comes in, he comes in with his strategy on the way forward and never relying on what the past CEO did or didn’t do. The new CEO will fully believe if the old CEO had been performing, there would have been no need for change of guards. When you look at APC, one of the most highlighted campaign terms they used as an economic goal was, ‘there will be job creation’. They said they will create three million jobs immediately they come in. It meant they knew the state of the Nigerian economy and how to go about salvaging it. So what we expected them to do was to sit down and think of how things could be salvaged, not to sit down and still continue to pass blames while the situation is spiralling out of control. The moment you sit and continue to pass blame, it shows that the capacity and capability to deal with these imminent issues is not there. It shows you don’t know what you have come to do.

What will it cost Nigeria to get the economy back on track?
I am happy with this question because as an opposition party man who is very much familiar with the APC covenant, they had clear cut plans on what they were going to do to revamp the economy theoretically. But since they came in, the CBN has only been using fire brigade approach to see if they could salvage the fall of the naira. They went as far as poling in over eleven billion dollars ($11bn) from their reserves to defend the naira. But when they realized its ineffectiveness, they tried to bring in short term polices which still never worked. The naira has continued to depreciate by over 50% since they took over from the PDP government. There is still no economic plan in place.

What is your assessment of the fight against corruption?
People will think I am being biased but from what you have said, have you seen EFCC arrest those within the APC or arraigned before the courts on corruption related charges? Recall that over 55% of major APC members were from the PDP.
The National Assembly alleged that, the 2016 budget was padded. Were you surprised when the revelations came out?
When people say the budget is padded, I don’t believe it is true. The people who are supposed to work on the budget did not do it. The president should be held responsible for what happened to the budget because you can’t present a budget proposal to the Nigerians legislators without going through it. The questions that abound now is that, the minister of Budget and National Planning must have presented an executive summary to the entire executive council for their initial approval instead of a line by line perusal by the president and his team before its presentation to the National Assembly. Recall it took him six months to appoint ministers; it took him almost eight months to present the budget. So there was ample time for him to scrutinize it and pick out the discrepancies because, these are serious mistakes. It is not by sacking the director budget that makes it right. The president owe it to the Nigerian people to come out and apologize because the budget is a national document that will sustain the livelihood of the Nigerian people and also ensure they reap the dividend of democracy. When you look at the budget and see the discrepancies, it is serious. People were happy at first because it was a six trillion naira zero based proposal that would defy the countries austere economic circumstances. It would have defied all Nigerian economy’s problems. But it became the biggest blunder of this administration. Look at some of the discrepancies, five million for computers for News Agency of Nigeria and others; mysteriously becoming three hundred and ninety eight million, you have ten billion for ministry of education that was attributed to typographical errors, significant errors were notice mostly in the state house budget. Three billion was given for State House clinic capital projects compared to what was given to the entire seventeen government teaching hospitals we have in the country, two hundred and fifty million was earmarked to buy cars tyres. for God’s sake. Twenty seven million for buying C-caution and fire extinguishers, are you telling me that the cars in the state house did not come with all this? Are the cars in the presidency and state house tokunbos? They are brand new. All the cars are fitted with all this as basic requirements at time of purchase. What are you budgeting this money for? Various sums in hundreds of millions were repeated under different sub heads. You have bogus costing of over fifty-three million repeated over fifty two times, thirty seven million plus repeated over three hundred and eight times. Budget for vehicle and computers repeated twenty four times to the tune of forty six billion and you will also notice that different ministries with their MDAs brought different prices for the same vehicles, like Toyota Hilux, MDA A will quote seven million, (7M) B will write thirteen million (13M) for the same type of vehicle, MDA C will write for the same car, twenty seven million, so seven hundred and ninety five million was set aside to update a website of a ministry. Is this change mantra the Nigerian people yearned for?

Since Honourable Yakubu Dogara and Senate President Bukola Saraki took the mantle of leadership in the National Assembly, it’s been one issue after the other and it has been reported that some members even took the Speaker to court over the House rules, the Senate also seem to be having its own issues. What do you make of this?
I am no longer part of the House so I won’t want to pre-empt them but be that as it may be, it will be better if all the Members come together as time is no longer on their side, as such they should be thinking about the Nigerian people and how to help them overcome the various challenges bedevilling the country. So the earlier they sheath their sword, the better for them. I am a PDP member and I think this is an APC issue. When the center cannot hold, things will definitely fall apart. This is inter- party politics playing out in the National Assembly. During our time, we had issues but they were not similar to this. So we will allow APC to solve its issue. But truly time is on the side of no one.

The PDP, they seem to be finding it hard to stabilized since they lost the general elections. What will it take to bring back the glory of the party?
I think things are on cause. The only thing that could bring back the glory is when we all sit down to do the right thing. I intend to remain in PDP because I own all I have in politics to the PDP.

http://www.leadership.ng/features/512441/apc-fix-economy-stop-complaining-kutigi

Welcome to the Wailers Club of Nigeria (W.C.N).


Buhari doesn't hearing the truth.

Hope he doesn't dig your dossier and accuse you of crimes you know nothing about.

The development of the economy is the first thing on the mind of every Nigerian.

Mtsww... I think say na d better kutigi sef.

If APC had any ideas, they would get to work and not complain. A bad workman blames even his work tools.

I thought the real Legal luminary... Justice Kutigi

Kutigi should focus on his legislative duties and stop WAILING.....