HOPE CYNICS WILL ONE DAY BE HUMBLE
ENOUGH TO APOLOGISE TO PRESIDENT BUHARI--
FEMI ADESINA
Mr Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and
Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, was on
Channels TV to field questions on state of the
nation from Mr Seun Okinbaloye during Sunday
Politics programme(March 27, 2016).
Excerpts
Q: The queue for fuel is still persistent because I
was on queue for 5 hours to get N5, 000 fuel
before I was able to refuel.
A: You got fuel eventually. That is what matters at
the end of the day. There is hope.
Q: We have seen too many queues at filling stations
in less than a year of President Buhari’s
administration. Isn’t it bothering this administration?
A: You seem to forget very early that before this
administration, it was like that. It is an endemic
Nigerian problem and is not peculiar to this
administration.
Q: Should we now live with it right now?
A: If it means living with it for awhile, we have to,
until it gets better because it is not going to be by
a sudden flight, it is going to be a methodical and
systematic process, but we will get there.
Q: It takes ordinary Nigerians to just have hope
when they have to face the rigour of queuing for fuel
for their ‘I pass my neighbour’ generator to power
their home appliances.
A: That is sad and regrettable, but it is the reality of
the moment. We have to live with it for awhile but
we know that better days will come.
Q: You have heard the comment of the Minister of
State for petroleum, Mr Ibe Kachukwu about the fact
of the availability of fuel and a number of Nigerians
have taken him up for it. Even the national leader of
the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has said that
his statement is not acceptable, when will the
queues go away?
A: The Minister is the one who has the authority to
give the actual position, he has given it and I think,
it is what we should believe.
Q: That the queue will stay another month?
A: He has more brief….
Q: What is the official brief from the President?
A: There won’t be another official brief apart from
what he has said.
Q: The President should have a better brief because
he is the chief executive of the state. People are
suffering across board. In some states, fuel is
N130 per litre above N86 official rate.
A: Once you don’t have a control of all the
variables, such things are bound to happen. We
lived in this country 16 years of PDP, even before
then, there was the military rule, the process of
refining petroleum locally was virtually short-
circuited .The refineries were there and were
allowed to run aground and when you don’t have
the variables under control, anything can happen. It
used to be that NNPC imports 60 % petroleum
products, at a point it crept up to 70% , now it is
almost 100 per cent. When a situation like that is
on ground, anything can happen. Once, there is a
slight hitch, it throws the process into a tailspin.
Once you don’t have complete control, things like
that can happen.
Q: The President is the father of the nation and if
your children are going hungry, he should be able to
tell them ‘wait till night, I will bring you food’, when
are we expected to see relief in our filling stations?
A: The Minister of Petroleum said in weeks and that
amounts to May. I think the Minister spoke with
candour, maybe he didn’t weigh the words but he
said the truth at the end. Would people rather prefer
him to say in two weeks and it doesn’t happen?
The month of May is how many weeks away?
Maybe about five weeks. I think, the Minister should
not be crucified for his statement.
Q: So, Nigerians will suffer for another few weeks
and probably buy it higher from people who are
hoarding it?
A: If that came from the Minister of Petroleum, we
should believe him and I think that word was
modified thereafter, when he said it would be a
couple of weeks, not May. The truth of the matter is
that Nigerians including me may need to wait a
while more before normalcy returns to filling
stations. But will normalcy return? Yes, it will. Will
Nigerians get out of this rough patch eventually?
Yes, we will get out of it.
Q: The President has apologised to the nation a few
times on some key issues and Nigerians are
wondering if apologies will solve some of these
issues? And some critics in some quarters have
said that Nigeria needs a strong direction in terms
of economic recovery policies, especially some of
the governors.
A: I know what you are driving at. Some of the
governors have a right to their opinions, we don’t
join issues with them but then, if the President
apologies to the nation, it is a problem and if he
does not apologise, it is another problem. With
Nigerians,head or tail, you often lose. Would you
rather that he does not apologise when things have
gone wrong like that…
Q: Nigerians will never want him to apologise but
for him to fix the problem. Which is much better.
A: Because Nigerians always want a magic wand
and it does not necessarily work like that. …
Q: The president and his party during campaign
promised almost magic…things that are unrealistic
A: Mark your own words… almost magic. But not
magic.
Q: The president promised that by end of 2019,
there will 10,000 megawatts, looks like magic
A: it doesn’t look so
Q: is that realistic?
A: Don’t forget that about four weeks ago, Nigeria
had 5,070 megawatts of electricity with a promise
that by December 2016, another 2,000 megawatts
would be added, which will make it 7,070
megawatts. If at the end of 2016, we have 7,000
megawatts, what makes 10,000 megawatts not
possible by 2019?
Q: That 5,070 that you mentioned because we are
back to less than 3,000 and many Nigerians are not
aware.
A: You know what happened? After we had that
5,000, we had a vandalism in Bayelsa, we lost
about 1,600 megawatt, thereafter in Delta, we lost
another 1,000 megawatt. If some Nigerians are
crying over power outage, they should hold those
people who vandalised the installations responsible.
But 10,000 megawatts as the president has
promised is a possibility by 2019.
Q: Again, does this nation have a clearly defined
economic policy direction?
A: Now, let me illustrate with this, you have a
government in which the number 2 man, the vice
president heads the economic team, the finance
minister, Trade and finance minister, Minister for
budget and National planning, Central Bank
governor, Economic Adviser to the president, and
yet people still keep asking for an economic team?
What else do they need?
Q: The economic direction is what Nigerians are
asking for?
A: Yes, are they not the people that will fashion out
the direction?
Q: We want the direction and the average Nigerian
doesn’t want to know the people in the team but
where we are headed to as a nation?
A: It is clear were we are headed to as a nation and
those people manning the economy will tell you
where we are headed. I am not an economist but I
know that the direction in which they are headed is
that there are luxuries that we cannot continue to
indulge in, those luxuries are being weeded out.
Essential forex is being warehoused and saved in
the real sector for more productive usage.
Q: After the Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka
asked for an economic summit, few days later,
there was an announcement of economic retreat.
Would you say that retreat was fruitful at the end of
the day?
A: I will just like to correct the sequence that you
just went through. Prof Soyinka asked for an
economic summit but what happened was not what
he asked for because before he asked for a
summit, the National Economic Council had
decided to hold a retreat. And don’t forget that the
president at an interview in Qatar had said if
someone people want to sit and hold a summit, the
government is not averse to it. But what happened
last week was not what Prof. Soyinka canvassed
for. The National Economic Council had decided to
hold that retreat before Prof. Soyinka spoke.
Q: Do you think that retreat was fruitful?
A: Well, to the best of my knowledge (I was there
at the opening ceremony, the other two days, I was
not.)A report is going to come out on that summit
and thereafter, we will be able to judge. I know
where you are driving at because a governor has
been saying some things and he has rights to what
he has said. We know those who were at that
summit are not frivolous people.
Q: You are saying it wasn’t a jamboree?
A: It is not by any means, because this government
is not given to jamboree anyway.
Q: How much was spent on that summit?
A: I heard a ridiculous amount that somebody
mentioned, let him justify it,
Q: N250 million has been spent so far on the
retreat…
A: The person who alleged that that amount was
spent should justify it. (It may as well be N1 billion
or any figure but let him justify it.)
Q: Very interesting. But again, we understand that
the budget has been passed at the National
Assembly, has the President received that budget?
A: You need to know the process. When the
National Assembly passes a budget, which was
done on Thursday, a clean copy would then be
communicated to the President .Of course ,if the
presidency had sent a budget, which was reduced
by N17 billion, he would need to study it to see
things that were taken out. And then, if some things
had been juggled, you need to see and be sure that
you agree with the juggling.
Q: This clean copy, you are talking about has it
been communicated to the president?
A: You know that was done on Wednesday, and
Thursday was the last working day for the week. (I
am not quite sure whether it had got to the
president as at Thursday)
Q: Look at the current economic reality that we face
as a nation, oil production rate, oil benchmark, the
dollar system, which are some of the spine of the
budget that was passed. The dollar still stands at
N300 at the parallel market, if you look at it, do you
think that the president is not losing the steam from
the perspective of the average Nigerian on the
street.
A: Losing steam as how?
Q: In terms of promises made before the election
and people have been waiting for almost a year and
the budget is just passed. People are just
wondering that for almost a year, we have not really
seen the dividend that has been promised by the
APC government.
A: You are not likely to see the dividend within a
year because it is a four –year mandate. If you are
in a long distance race, you pace yourself. You may
start with a burst of energy and stop mid-way. And
those who have paced themselves properly will
pass you along the way and breast the tape before
you. It is a four-year mandate, this is the 10th
month and there is still 38 months to go. We need
to be a lot realistic. I just pray that those who have
been cynical and critical will be humble enough to
eat their words when they begin to see things
happening.
Q: So Nigerians should begin to see things in a big
way?
A: I can assure you
Q: He travels so much, isn’t it, averagely even more
than President Barack Obama, when he became
president of the United States?
A: if there are trips that are essential, why not?
Q: Couldn’t he have sent his vice?
A: There are trips for the vice president, where a
president can be represented and he often gets
represented. But there are other places where you
expect to see Mr President. Our president is not a
frivolous man. Let me tell you something, in
September last year(2015), the United Nations
Assembly was going to hold on Salah day, the
president was in Katsina state, he prayed in the
morning, they slaughtered the ram, by 2pm on that
same day, the president took off for New York.
Now, would he not have loved to stay with his
family for Sallah? But that is the sacrifice the man
is making for the country.
Q: Nigerians are impatient and waiting for the
dividend of democracy
A: The dividend will come but I hope and pray that
when they do come, these people who are so
critical will be humble enough to admit that they
were wrong, and say sorry, Mr President. We got it
wrong but you got it right.
Q: Will president Buhari run for election in 2019?
A: That is his decision to take.

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