As the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan winds up, one of the egg heads in his government is the Minister and Deputy Chairman, National Planning Commission, Dr. Abubakar Olanrewaju Sulaiman. In this interview with YUSUF ALLI, SANNI OLOGUN and TONY AKOWE, he spoke on how he emerged from a critic to land in Jonathan’s team, among other issues.
DID it ever occur to you that one day, you will be a minister or are you another accidental minister?
It never occurred to me that one day I will be a minister, but it occurred to me that one day, I will be a public servant, public servant in the sense of being a public figure one way or the other. I am saying this because as at 1992/93, I was an aspirant for Ilorin West Local Government chairmanship under the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) then. Just three days to the primary election, specifically, November 17, the military struck and that brought in the Abacha government that put an end to that transition programme. When the transition programme came back in 1999, I was an aspirant again for the same local government, but I couldn’t get it and from there, I went back to the university. So, when you look at all these attempts at electioneering bids I wouldn’t say that I was not prepared, but all along, it has been elective positions that I aspired to because I love so much to be in charge.
I believe if you really want to make meaningful impact on people’s lives, it is good to hold an executive position. That informed my attempt to contest for the chairmanship of my local government which I believe is the grassroots government. So, in 2013, we started a political pressure group which we referred to as G3 in Kwara State with headquarters in Abuja here to challenge the attempt by our respected politician in Kwara then, Olusola Saraki, to get his daughter as governor. I led that movement and from there, we have been talking, convening meetings and doing a lot of advocacy.
I never thought of being a minister, I never aspired for it, I never lobbied for it, I never begged for it. God just made it to happen that I was appointed minister representing my state. So, in terms of thinking of being a minister, I never thought of it and in terms of my dreams of holding a political position, I think I had that and that goes back to my school life and perhaps my political struggle in the early 1990s.
You were an activist in the university and a political scientist of repute and now you have the opportunity to feel the pulse on the other side. What lessons have you learnt?
I think there is a big gulf between theory and practice. It is one thing to theorise what you learn in the classroom, what you impact on students as to how government runs and as to how policies are made. But from my experience in the last nine months, I observed that sometimes, it is not what you perceived in the classroom that is what played out in the real sense of it in terms of what happens within the political system. One of the gaps that I noticed was a kind of push and pull within the various political actors when it comes to decision making process. What comes out as decisions and policies, even as laws, are not a straight- jacket decisions. A lot of factors and forces come in determining what eventually comes up as policies.
Secondly, the people outside there such as the workers, the students – what in the political system we call the environment – they make demands and those of us outside think that government must respond to the demands. But I have noticed from what I have seen so far that it is not every time that government is in a position of money to meet those demands. There are so many factors that play out, that determine what the government eventually decides which are not noticeable to people outside there. Government is not just responding to what you ask for in terms of roads, water, in terms of request for increment in salaries. There are lots of interests and competing demands and conflicting agenda that government needs to consider before taking actions.
I tell my colleagues, even in ASUU when they come to me here that we look up to government for everything and there are some other avenues we can explore to address our demands. For example, in my ministry here, I keep on saying it, I may not depend on government to run this ministry if I want to, because this is a ministry that more or less serves as a gateway to international donor partners who are willing to complement government efforts in carrying out certain projects and programmes; who are willing to invest in some universities and institutions; who are willing to grant loans and technical assistance. People outside don’t even know that such opportunities are there.
A university could get a faculty in place without relying on government funding if it is able to access resources, opportunities, grants from the donor agencies. We are not doing that. I have seen a clearer picture that it is not exactly what we say in class that play out when we come to the open. Fundamentally is the fact that Nigeria is a complex society. Nigeria is not like another Africa nation. Considering the various pluralities in terms of religion, ethnicity, diversities, considering the vast nature of the country, considering the resources before us, Nigeria is a country you cannot just run the way you feel.
So, when we borrow theories from advanced democracies, when it comes to applying them to Nigerian society, it is a different ball game. It is a complex society and the complexity therefore must be weighed in the running of this country. So, as a scholar in political science, I am more of a scholar on African politics, I think I have learnt so many lessons which have really enhanced my horizon in terms of what we teach in the classrooms and what plays out in the wider political system.
The general feeling is that Nigerian leaders enjoy at the expense of the masses. What is your experience?
I live a modest life. What I can say is that even as a minister, I am a very modest person in terms of what comes to me as benefits and my attitude to people. If some ministers and others can boast of millions in their account, I can’t do that. If people can boast of accounts abroad, I can’t boast of that. As minister in the last nine months, I have had cause to enter economy class twice and I have had cause to sit down with those you call peasants who I used to discuss with when I was not a minister. We still chat and I still drive myself occasionally. As a minister, sometimes, I may not even have the money to do some of the things I used to do before.
What is next for you?
Hopefully, I will round off on May 29 and like I keep telling people, some of us have work that we are doing. We are not career politicians. Hopefully, by October this year, I should get my professorship. That one is awaiting me and I need to go back to the classroom because my students are waiting for me, my colleagues are waiting for me, my work is waiting for me in terms of thesis, projects and teaching. Except and unless government still needs to do one or two things, I think I have a job which I love doing so much. If I decide not to go back to the classroom now at the University of Abuja, I decide to go on sabbatical which is long over due. The sabbatical will enable me to take a requisite view of what I have done in the last one year and grant me the opportunity to put pen on paper about my experience and perhaps share that with students and scholars from other universities. If nothing much, the possibility of sabbatical is very high and going by the nature of my profession, which is more of politics and international relations, I will be outside the country to share experience with other climes in the area of planning and even the uniqueness of our elections. Some of us have to go there and share experiences with them.
You championed the National Integrated Infrastructural Master Plan (NIIMP) for the country. What is the motive behind this?
The National Integrated Infrastructural Master Plan (NIIMP) is a policy framework that this government came in with to address the lacuna in the area of infrastructure. It was realised that one of the major problems we have in this country which if addressed could address other fundamental issues has to do with infrastructure. Over the years, we have been taking stocks of infrastructural facilities or problems, but those stocks were done sectorally, haphazardly. We never had cause to come up to have a holistic integrated roadmap that will identify the problems, what are the deficits in infrastructure? Where are we? What are those things required and how do we address it? Nigeria is better as an economy when we plan. We are worse off an economy when we fail to plan and we are saying that rather than this haphazard treatment according to ministries, let us have a roadmap that will throw up the various challenges in the area of infrastructure. Let us know the gaps we are trying to cover in the area of roads, ICT, agriculture, power, energy and oil. Before we take stock of all these, what are those investment expectations? How much do we need? How many years will it take us to address it? The master plan therefore is holistic. Going by the language of the concept, it is an integrated roadmap that tends to address the infrastructural gap in the Nigerian economy and we are saying that you cannot achieve our policy of investment drive when there is no conducive climate that is investor friendly. Without power, you cannot do anything. You cannot grow the economy even if we are investing money on small, medium scale enterprises without power.
So, we need to fix power. We are not talking about power alone, but we are taking it at the various sub-national levels. What do certain geopolitical zones require? Where does the South-East have advantage more than the North-East? It is an integrated master plan that brings all the sectors together and it is an integrated master plan that brings all the sub-national governments together. One striking thing about it is that we are able to make comparison as to where Nigeria is today with other developing nations. For us to achieve our vision 2020, we must put into consideration certain factors. If those variables are not on ground, we cannot achieve anything. We will just be embarking on policy somersault, policy reversal here and there. The integrated master plan therefore is a holistic master plan that tends to address the various nagging issues in the area of infrastructure in terms of the gaps, in terms of the requirements, in terms of the investments, and in terms of how we even gather these funds.
What is the finance projection for this master plan?
For instance, we realised that we need about $3trillion for the next 30 years for infrastructure. In the framework, we are saying all things being equal, we expect 48 per cent of this investment from the private sector, 52 per cent from the public sector. In case we cannot gather what we expect from the public sector, what do we do? We have to fall back on the private sector. So, the policy framework entails all these and since the policy was approved by the Federal Executive Council in August, last year, we have been interfacing with the private sector, especially captains of industry, financial institutions for them to know where we are in this country and for them to know where we want them to invest. The era when government has to do everything is gone. The public sector expectations – we are talking of borrowing, we are talking about what comes from the budget, we are talking of the Sovereign Wealth Fund, we are talking of what comes from PENCOM.
If this one is not forthcoming, we fall back on the private sector and from what happened in the last four months with the fall in the price of oil, we have realised that we are still working in tandem with the master plan and the fact that the private sector is more of the driver than the public sector. If the incoming government and perhaps the various MDAs work in line with the master plan and discipline themselves by not going out of that master plan, I think this country will get the issue of infrastructure addressed. It is done in a way that it is divided into phases of medium terms of five years each; 2014 to 2018 is the first phase.
Is it not like going back to the National Development Plans that we used to have?
It is National Development plan, but this time around, it is out to address infrastructure. It is out to address certain development areas of our needs in this country.
At one of your media interactions, you did say that the government was working on bringing back the National Development Plan. How far have you gone in this regard?
My department of micro economic policy is working on that and we are in touch with the various departments to assist us because before you take anything to the Federal Executive Council, you must have done your homework. The ministry or department must come up with a blueprint to be presented to the Federal Executive Council. As I speak with you now, we are in touch with the various MDAs and the various partners to assist us in conceiving the plan which we had hoped to take to FEC for approval. But with the dislocation now by the change of government, I hope our dream and vision will be in line with the vision of the new government. At the level of the ministry and the commission, we are working towards that. We hoped that by October, the template would be on ground for us to take to the President to set up an inter-ministerial committee to look into it before we take it to FEC. With this development now, I would not know how it will look like.
I hope the new government will come around. But as for the commission, we are working on it, the various departments are working on it. I hope when the new government comes, they will see reason with it and continue where we stopped. My statement that time that we are working on it was predicated on the termination of the MDG this year, that after MDG, what next? After the post-MDG era, what next? It is that what next that informed our decision to put up something. Even the present Transformation Agenda elapses this year. After all these political phases, what next? So, as a country that is transforming, you must have vision beyond certain policy goals. That was what informed our readiness that time to put in place a mechanism and channelled resources towards coming out with a new development plan which we hoped to take to the Federal Executive Council for approval. We are still working and hope that the new government will embrace it.
The National Bureau of Statistics which is one of the agencies under your ministry came out with a verdict that Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa. Most Nigerians were skeptical when that verdict was given. Was that just a paper assumption?
You see, when some people are out to run down a government or when there is a kind of disenchantment on certain government policies, people come up with a lot of things to bring the government down. The thing that disturbs me most is that you don’t allow your interest, your greed and whatever your ambition is to belittle facts because facts are sacrosanct. When it comes to fact, we should be able to respect the fact. If a government has done well, let us give it to the government. When the Bureau came up with the statistics, we should know that the NBS is not Jonathan’s agency. It is an agency established by law to perform certain statutory functions, with its expertise in place, with the World Bank and other donor agencies complementing that agency. They will not go out there and fabricate lies because they want to impress anybody. Perhaps, what we have forgotten in this country is that we have forgotten where we are coming from. I remember in 80s and even in the 90s, there was embargo on employment. I remember in the 80s when we have the kind of crunch we have now in the international oil market, the country almost collapsed economically.
I remember in the 80s, what Structural Adjustment Programme did to this country. I remember when the military took over in the same 80s, what they did to Nigerian workers. We have forgotten all these. In Nigeria, we are mixing underemployment with unemployment. We could not differentiate the two. Even with power crisis we are facing, with insurgency we are facing, the insecurity problem we facing, we could not appreciate that in spite of all these, investors have not stopped coming to Nigeria. We did not appreciate what it used to be before amnesty. If they say today that the Nigerian economy is the largest in Africa, is it only the NBS that said it? The World Bank also attested to it. If they say we are 26th in the world, it is not just NBS, the World Bank attested to it because we work in harmony. So, when we have these facts and figures rolled out, we should appreciate.