Comparing the achievements, do you think our nation fairs better now than before?
It is not what you see that transforms a nation. What transforms a nation is the kind of educational system that is practised: have we been able to reduce the 5 million Nigerian children who are out of school? How many schools do we have across the federation? The Boko Haram you hear is about education. Why are we having militancy, crime and other things? How about unemployment and poverty? How many jobs have we created? We filtered away all the resources we had when oil was at $110-140 a barrel. It was during Buhari that oil got to $58 per barrel. Obasanjo left behind $68 billion in the Excess Crude Account. Where is the money? They didn’t leave 1kobo for us. While $68 billion would have Lagos to Kano railway, which is 8.3 billion dollars. It would have built Lagos to Calabar, which is 11.1 billion dollars, it would have built Port Harcourt to Enugu road which isabout 8 billion dollars. But all that money was squandered.
On the 1st of January, 2012 there was a nationwide protest because of the hike in fuel price. People fear the same now. What do you have to say?
(Cuts in) The reason why the subsidy removal happened during Buhari’s regime was because there was need to encourage investors in local refineries. If we have refineries we will not import fuel. But the President (Buhari) was mindful of the poor people. (The rich can afford it.) He knew that once the price of petroleum increases it would affect poor people. He is conscious of the fact that is why the price would not be increased this year. Those who are hoarding fuel believing that there will be increase in price are wasting their time because the president would not allow it. But basically, we need to run a price regime that allows investors to build refineries.
The Nigerian Airways was functional during your time as a young person. Do you think it can be revived now that you are Minister of Transport?
You cannot revive it by asking government to build Nigerian Airways again. We should encourage private investors to bring in investment and establish Nigerian airlines.
Are you saying that there are no plans?
We are getting private investments. We are still consulting professional advisers to enable them get private investments.
Events like the Future Awards is organised to encourage the youth. What is your words of motivation for the youth at this time?
If you have been following the awards the one that held in Ekiti, I totally abused the youths. I said that the problem with Nigerian youths is that they want to take over from Nigerian elites and that they don’t want to reform. For us to move forward, the youth must be ready to upset the elites because the role the elites are currently playing is not what we expect to make the country grow. I say this because during the Goodluck Jonathan government, the level of corruption was high, the compliancy in the Nigerian community was very high, the economy was going down and nobody cared to speak.
What the youth should ask is: when we got into recession, would we have gotten into recession in one year after we came? From 2013 to 2014 the economy was going down, especially in 2014. We inherited an economy that has collapsed and we needed to do something. We were doing something when the young men that were used in Goodluck Jonathan’s government began to break pipes. What was their reason? That we should not prosecute Tompolo. What did the youth do? I remember, when we were young men, every year we shut down schools in Nigeria because we were protesting especially when Babangida was Head of State.
Now, if you see the National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), he has a convoy of cars, he has a PA, SA. He even has traditional rulers working with him. He wants to have a house in the village. But when we were students it was strange for a NANS president to own a car. We used to trek. We used to hold NANS convention and everyone came as a student. There was no big or small student. All those student who used big cars around campus never fought for the struggles. We had a strong hold that if you met $49b missing the whole Nigerian schools will be shut down. But the same amount was missing recently and students were joining in the celebration.
But some of those who protested during your days are now in the ruling class or the elite. What do you have to say…
(Cuts in) But you can see the mark most of us are making. I moved from PDP to APC. Don’t forget that I was a frontline governor in PDP. I was the chairman of Governors Forum. I could have afforded to stay, to get anything I wanted. But I didn’t believe that the country was going in the right direction. I believed that Buhari was a better alternative to what we had. I believed that he would change what was going on. Things have improved. And like you see the economy is back to positive attributes. It was bad. Cost of food was high.
I went to have a haircut last week and I heard the barber say, “Things have changed. Rice is no longer N17,000. It is now N16,000”. By the way, we are now feeding ourselves. When we came, Nigerians were happy importing food. We were importing about N3b worth of poultry and rice. We were importing tomatoes. Now, that has been banned. We now eat our own tomatoes from Kano and other places. Importing rice has been banned. We now grow our own rice. Almost all the states in the north are growing rice. It is surprising that the north is growing these things when by right the South-South should be the ones growing things like rice because of the swampy areas, but they are not. Everybody is waiting to collect money from Abuja and go home and share. Nigerian youths should ask me and the governors questions: what are we doing with our resources?
In Lagos, the transport system has been improved, as the minister of transportation, what are you doing to improve the transportation system of the country?
You should ask the governors in different states and see their responses. You cannot solve a problem when you haven’t identified that you have a problem. I have to agree that I am not well before you go to look for a doctor for me. Students should resist those who have put our country down.
and then