Babatunde Fashola opens up: My many headaches as minister

You been here for over three years, you were a governor for eight years; what has been your experience?

Well, I haven’t been here for three years. I have been here for two years, seven months and 15 days.

It is like you are counting your days in office?

That’s the only asset I have – time. I keep measuring it every day.

That is to say you work with time?

Seriously, that’s a fact and accurately I was sworn-in in November 2015. It’s not yet three years that I’ve been here. Our government was elected and has been in office for just a little over three years. But I think the point to note also is that the roles of ministers are clearly different from the roles of governors. What you get to do in three years is not the same thing as what you get to do over eight years. There is a planning period, there is consultation period and also a team-building period. All of us who work in the new government have come from different backgrounds. Some are former governors like myself; some have never been in government. Some have come as former commissioners; some as legislators; some came from the executive arms. Some have never worked in government before; I have worked in government, but never worked in the Federal Government before – we became a team and we needed time to get to know each other – our strengths and weaknesses. As I often say, “if you can give quality time to a football team to blend, you must give time to a government team to also blend.” As we get to know each other, we also get to know our partners, like those in the parliament. We have 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives – we have to work together. You would see that from the first to the second and to the third year, the government is getting stronger. It is still not up to what you get when compared with what you do in eight years.

But under two years in Lagos, you asserted yourself and many were yearning for you to come back based on what they saw you achieved. Why is it not so this time around?

I am surprised to hear that. You didn’t give that impression on my second year at that time, you made me feel there were certain things I had not done; until the last day, you kept me on my toes. I have things done even after eight years, so, I think the point to make here is that there is a planning period and if you ask me where I am, I think unarguably, we have improved upon what we met and this is debatable. There is no argument about that. Can we run faster? Yes. We want to run faster, but it is not right to compare eight years to three years. It is not also right to compare the role of a governor

with that of a minister, who is part of a larger team under a government.

Is there anything slowing you down from running faster? We all know there is misunderstanding between the executive and the legislature and it seems things are not getting better.

You think things are not getting better? I can tell you that our relationship with them is getting better and I am the one eating the pudding. I know how it tasted when we came in 2016 and I know how it tastes now. I can tell you that because in relationship building, there is nothing slowing me down in that sense. In the sense of expectation, people expect everything to happen as quickly as possible. We want to see that done; I am just coming back from Kano; we are going to build a 375KM road; everybody wants it done like yesterday. The construction period is three years. So, it has to be done one meter at a time until it becomes a kilometer, until it becomes 10KM, until it becomes 375KM. If you put all your money there today, you won’t create a road. That’s what we are dealing with. It is one at a time. We are moving as fast as our resources and government processes, as fast as human relationship allows us to move. This is a democracy and, therefore, you need to build consensus; consensus about what is priority; so what is priority for the national government may not be priority for the parliamentarian, who wants to do something different in his constituency. Can you work without him? No! You need him. So, how do you persuade him to come to your side? Then, there are procurement processes; you want transparency; you want accountability. We must follow those processes. We must advertise. We must go through Bureau of Public Procurement. These are all the laws. You must respect the laws. If you break any law, it is not a defense that you’ve wanted to do good.

Can you be specific on some of the challenges you are facing currently?

Those are challenges that any government has to face all over the world. You just saw in Heathrow, Britain, they just voted after 14 or 16 years to do a third runway for the Heathrow Airport. Because every time they want to do it, they go to the parliament, some people would say no, this is the first time and they must have the majority. Since 2002, that is 16 years. That is the oldest democracy in the world. To build a runway it took them 16 years to agree.

We saw the concessioning of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway to Bi-Courtney. It was later withdrawn and given to Julius Berger. What is really the grouse against Bi-Courtney?

I think that if you want to know why it was

withdrawn, you would have to ask those who managed the government and those who took the decision to terminate the contract at the time. What I can tell you is that there has been a termination because the contract was not moving as perhaps expected and that termination was done I think in 2012, five or six years after the contract was signed. No significant funding had come into the project at the time, in terms of actual cost. And I would like to stop there because the matter is in court and that termination is being challenged.

Some of the interventions, which we used to see FERMA executing in many parts of the country seem to have disappeared. Some of the roads are collapsing and nobody is actually doing anything to fix them. Why is it so?

(Cuts in) Which road is collapsing?

Across the country.

Across the country?

Yes.

That is not the experience I have. I have driven across this country and my experience is that people see improved attention to the roads – that’s what I hear. I don’t know what you have heard. I have driven around. I have interacted with those who use the roads. Transporters, NUPENG, Petroleum Tankers Drivers, Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), their experience is different. I have interacted with contractors; their experience as regards to funding is different. So, I think if we don’t agree on the facts, we can’t have a conversation. Have we covered all the routes? No. Don’t forget also that we came into government at a time when Nigeria’s major source of income, oil, dropped. There was a time it reached $117 per barrel. It dropped to about $38 per barrel. We inherited debt, unpaid contractors for years. One of my contractors just told me that for the first time in 10 years, he was not owing money to his bank. This is what has changed. We are covering more distance with less resources, we are covering more distances. We just reported a N1.6trillion capital expenditure spent in the 2017 budget. At the time we were earning much more than this ($100 per barrel), we didn’t spend half a trillion on capital expenditure. That’s why when people ask me what has changed, it is that we are doing more with less.

The delivery time is another thing entirely; and if you know how construction works, you would understand the synergy between construction and the diversification of the economy. Every time you pay a contractor, the first person he pays is his sub-contractor to supply quarry, sand, rocks and construction materials like lat- erites. That has to be produced – cubic meter by cubic meter, then it has to be transported to quarry plant and mixed with concrete – and that’s what creates the ecosystem of employment – mining, transportation, labour, supply, as well as the food chain for labourers – women, vendors, and so on and so forth. That’s why I say undebatably, we have improved things from where there were. Have we finished all the roads? No, and we are not building two kilometer roads. We are building roads that span 200km to 400km, roads that connect states and they won’t be built over night.

So, you can confidently say that in two and a half years, this government has done far better than what the previous administration did in five years, in terms of road construction?

We have made things better than what we met. I don’t want to talk about the past government. I want to talk about what we met. We have improved upon what we met, and don’t take my word for it. Go to Enugu-Port Harcourt, and stop any commuter there – ask him what is his experience on the section we have completed. He will tell you his journey time has improved even though we haven’t finished the work. Go to Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and ask the commuter there; he will tell you work is going on, there is a diversion, but the journey from Lagos to Ibadan is taking fewer hours than it took three years ago. Go to Kano-Maiduguri or Benin-Okene or Ilorin-Jebba.

What has actually happened? Is it as a result of lack of funds that has made this government not to intervene in the East-West Road, which the Niger-Delta Ministry has been struggling to do?

The government has intervened. I have travelled to the East-West Road from the Akwa Ibom/Calabar side to the Bayelsa side right through to the Benin-Warri side. The major parts that are not completed suffered largely from violence and militancy in the area, where contractors had to abandon the site. There are also problems of lack of funding, but on a pound-for-pound basis, if you analyze that route, at least, close to 70 per cent of it has been largely built. I must also note that people were also trading on the road. I have driven the entire length of the road. I know what I am talking about. A committee of EXCOs, including my ministry just stormed the road re- cently, and if you hear from Minister of Niger Delta and Minister of Transport, they will re-echo exactly what I am telling you. The government is determined to complete that road, and we need to secure the peace so that contractors can work. We also need to get the money; it was challenged by lack of funding and also challenged in some places by security.

Apart from funds, have the plans of the government been in any way slowed down by insecurity in some parts of the country?

Oh yes! We have problems in places where contractors are threatened; contractors are robbed and in some places contractors are kidnapped. The truth is that wherever you have insecurity, development is also affected. You can’t run away from that. That is why the government continues to pursue security as a top agenda. That was why security was a top campaign agenda for this government. So that economic development and prosperity can follow. So, all of us must also learn that we have a bigger interest and bigger stake in ensuring peace for our collective wellbeing because it is in an era of peace that development is rapid.