In this interview with PREMIUM TIMES’ Bakare Majeed, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Defence, Babajimi Benson, speaks on insecurity in Nigeria, state police, constitutional amendment and other security-related issues.
Excerpts:
PT: This is your second time as the chairman of the House defence committee. We know that lawmakers have deliberated on security issues many times behind closed doors, but your resolutions and summons have produced no results. Don’t you think the legislative approach is not working?
Benson: We always say that you cannot use security to kill poverty. No matter how many security forces you have, no matter how much equipment you have, if there’s poverty in the land the bad boys will always outstrip the security agencies. Nigeria has made some remarkable decisions: we unified the exchange rate and we have removed (petroleum) subsidy. So the state and local governments have huge amounts of money in their kitty. What are they doing with it? If a state government or local government provides succour, provides opportunities to the youths within its territory, they will be gainfully employed. If they do otherwise, the devil finds work for the idle. So I think we, the armed forces are doing our jobs, but all society’s approach is what Nigeria should be looking at. How is the local government spending the humongous amount it is getting at the moment? How is it using it to expand its infrastructure? How is it using it to expand its health care? How is it using it to create employment for the youths? How is it using it to give soft loans to market women and things like that? When people are gainfully employed, there is always a demand for products in Nigeria. So when you put money in the hands of the local women they will multiply it, they will buy more and gain more. But with the lack of that, everybody is folding their arms and not doing anything but expecting the security forces, who are not trained to do internal security work in the first place, to handle the length and breadth of 220 million people. I think it calls to question. We need to all sit down and task our local government chairmen. They are the closest people to the grassroots. Task our state governors, what have you done with the humongous money you have been getting since the subsidy had been removed? Nobody is doing that. We are all focusing on the armed forces and the federal government. They (armed forces) are doing their best. About 250,000 policing 200 million people.
So what other initiative should we be bringing? Is (the establishment of) state police a viable option? I think yes, I think so. The armed forces are overburdened with IS (internal security) matters. The police need to step up, the civil defence needs to step up. The last line of defence, the armed forces, are supposed to be defending our territorial integrity but are fighting IS. So we are getting to that stage where we are going to have a strong conversation on the way forward. How do we police Nigeria? What is the best way to defend the internal problems we have? How do we ensure we have food security? Those are burning questions that are outside what the armed forces are doing. Internally, we are supposed to ask questions and put the right structures in place.
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PT: You talked about state police and internal security. However, the National Assembly has been the biggest obstacle to state police, and nothing could be done without the National Assembly. Your colleagues are scared of giving governors more power. Has that changed?
Benson: I think there is a quantum leap from that philosophy in the 9th Assembly. I think the 10th Assembly – the reality has hit us. The federal police structure has not been effective. Data doesn’t lie, evidence doesn’t lie, and figures don’t lie. If you look at other federal countries, you will find out that they even have university police down to the granular. Can we do that in Nigeria with the behemoth central police that we have? The answer is an empathic no! So we need to reinvent and we need to try time-tested theories and policies in other jurisdictions. I think that this time around, the reality is stark. We are under-policed. The structure is warped. So the best way out of it is to find a way where the police are domiciled within the environment we want them to protect. You will find out that some states and local governments have started this vigilante service, and you find out that it is working. Back then, they would tell you that in Kano, there were no Boko Haram attacks because the locals had vigilante arrangements that they knew everybody. They identify every new person coming in and immediately they find a new person, information gets around. There are ways to check these people and throw them out of the community. So I think now it is a no-brainer. Once that comes into force – once local governments begin to take care of their territories – I believe we will be on an upstream. We just need to check the structure. In football, you have different strategies. You cannot continue doing 3-4-3 like Peseiro (former Super Eagle Coach) for years and not know when to tweak your formation. The winners of games are people who know—‘yes we have done this, why don’t we change to 4-3-3, 4-4-2 or 5-4-1.’ We need to have such systems that would take us to the next level.
PT: You have taken us to the root cause of insecurity, which is the economy and governance structure. If that is the case, are we not in trouble because there seems to be an impasse on the autonomy of local government, restructuring and others?
Benson: As a member of the Constitution Review Committee, what I suggest is that our constitutional review should be done the way we pass our budget.
PT: How?
Benson: The president comes with his estimate for the budget and presents it to the joint session of the National Assembly. So the president should come or the executives should come up with their proposals, what they want to be amended in the constitution and they should have an agreement among themselves, including the governors—including the speakers (state houses of assembly). I know that Mr President is a federalist. So he sits on top – most of the things that he promised the country because the buck stops at his table, are very progressive things that might be halted by the state assemblies. But if you have an agreement ab initio that; ‘guys A, B, C, D…” I pray that state police is among them—and send them as executive bills—‘this is what we want to be passed.’ We (the National Assembly) then have a right to tinker or to pad. We could say, we will give you three. We think we are closest to the people. We have 360 constituencies and this is what we feel should be added. We sit down and have a handshake. That is the quickest way to amend our constitution. But if we go on and pass ours and send them to the state assemblies, they might like it or not. I think we should have an agreement from day one with the executive; give us your proposed amendment or we draw up our list of proposed amendments and we have a meeting with them, and agree from day one that A, B, C, D, E must go. A constitution must not be amended in one fell swoop. I did the power amendment bill. I did the removal of the Land Use Act from the constitution but it was killed at the committee level. I did the educational qualification but it was also killed at the committee level. However, out of four, two scaled through. That is not to say that in this 10th Assembly, I am not going to reintroduce those two. So it is a process and in terms of servicing them, we need to prioritise and know which ones are germane enough to give us the desired trajectory that we need to be at. Two hundred million people is huge. All we need to do is to key into the right leadership to take us into becoming the fastest-growing economy in the world. Do we have the right leader to do that? Yes, we do. We only need to key into the vision and be strategic and tomorrow will be a better day for all of us.
PT: Some of the issues you have mentioned are long-term. Are there low-hanging fruits for the immediate to cushion the economic hardship?
Benson: I always shed tears because the government is not communicating strategically enough. Do you know how much oil we are doing per barrel today? We have gone up to 1.8 million barrels per day, which is huge from 900,000 barrels per day when we took over. (Editor’s note: OPEC said oil production in Nigeria declined to about 1.3 million barrels per day in the first quarter of 2024) That means the revenue stream will be racking up. The only problem we have is funds. A lot of oil that we make has been sold under the last regime to some people. They collected money and sold oil. It’s like being a landlord and collecting five years of rent from your tenants. Instead of you to use it to build another money-making venture, you used it to marry another wife and to travel around. So that is the brunt we are facing now. But it will soon be over. If we can ramp up production. FDI – portfolio investors – if you look at the statistics, money is coming in now from all over the world because they believe in the Nigerian returns on investment. If you put money in our capital market, the returns on investment that you get here, you cannot get it in Europe. The government has a good reputation that you can bring in your money and take it anytime. Very soon, Nigeria will be awash with FDI. The president came in about seven (11) months ago. If you planted rice then, would you have harvested it? The worst time may be over soon. We need finance, we need money to come in. Once the sale of 1.8 million barrels is consistent, you know the law of demand and supply, it forces down the prices. So yes, that’s where we are going. It’s just an economic principle.
PT: You have talked about the economic side. Many would argue that there is a need to give appointees key performance indicators. For instance, the service chiefs should have measurable indicators to assess their performances.
Benson: For you to be able to give somebody your KPI, you must be able to give him everything he/she needs. There must not be a contribution factor to not make him succeed. Number one, you give him a supplementary budget at maybe N500 to a dollar. They placed their orders (equipment). You don’t release that money on time because…..You want to release it on time but your bank account doesn’t support it. Also, there’s an international conspiracy – ‘Nigeria again – no, don’t sell to them.’ I sponsored the DICON bill, that is, to make Nigeria self-sufficient in arms production and the president signed, you know when they say at alacrity. Do we have investors who want to partner with us? Plenty! So we would be producing those arms and exporting them too. A lot of countries are falling over themselves to partner with us because there is a demand. We have 200 million people. They want to sell boots, weapons, and bullets to police 200 million people. We have the Civil Defence Corps and police. You have marine guards and different types of law enforcement agencies. We also have the ECOWAS market. I don’t want to deviate. So, for you to be able to give me a KPI, all variables must be on the ground. We are getting there but the exchange rate just came and torpedoed it. They need hardware and software; they need men on the ground to be able to do these things. They need satellites. Wars are fought in the sky nowadays. They use geospatial equipment but no money.
PT: Is it a question of lack of money or lack of priority? Nigerians saw a video recently where a Nigerian soldier was lamenting his meagre salary of N50,000 but needed N32,000 to travel to see his family. However, the government has spent billions on what many would consider frivolous, like cars for the office of the First Lady, and new residence for the vice president. The National Assembly got an unprecedented N344 billion budget for 2024.
Benson: So the military…..I am championing an upscale in their salaries and emoluments. I am championing that. They will get it. This administration is committed to looking at their request kindly. Nigerians also should know that the frivolity and all those things you mentioned are being looked at critically. The next budget will not be like the first one. Yes, there’s no money. We have come to that realisation. Priorities will be ordered. We know where the shoe pinches. Yes, the legislature as an arm of government also needs to function. The inflation and the exchange rate have also exacerbated what everybody has. The judiciary and executive allocations were also increased. So it was not as if it is just the legislature. It is because of the value of the money. You need money to do a lot of things. People think that money was divided among the 360 members of the House plus 109 senators. They always forget that the legislature has 7,000 staff. They have a bureaucracy just like a ministry. They have permanent secretaries, Clerk to the National Assembly etc. So, the legislature feeds millions of Nigerians too – 7,000 bureaucratic staff, the National Assembly Service Commission and so forth. So the minimum wage of an average Nigerian is also being looked at but I feel it’s taking too much time. But the executive, in its wisdom, set up a committee and I guess they want to do it appropriately.
PT: Recently, a former Majority Leader of the House, Ado Doguwa, talked of giving private security companies the power to operate offshore. Are you in support of this?
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Benson: I think extraordinary situations need extraordinary solutions. Our biggest revenue is from crude oil. The oil has been siphoned by different people. Some people know the terrain more than others. So it’s like intelligence and the best people to give you information are the locals in that area. Now if you want crime to stop in those areas, you better look at the locals and make it profitable for them. So that may be the philosophy behind the idea. But for me, it must also be timed out and there must also be a process for decommissioning whatever arms they have. As long as that is in place and they are simply complementing the role of the Navy, I do not see anything wrong with it.
PT: Let’s talk about Ikorodu. Within your party, some people believe that the APC has not been fair to this local government despite its loyalty to your party. Take, for instance, a bridge connecting Ikorodu to the Island could speed up the development of the area.
Benson: Firstly, I must acknowledge Mr President. The last time I was with him he said ahh! Ikorodu, I won’t joke with these people oh because they gave me my biggest votes. So that’s the acknowledgement of the fact that something big is coming. I know that it is just seven months and in the fullness of time, they will get the true share they truly deserve. On the state level, it’s true, do better. There are a lot of projects going on in Ikorodu Federal constituency that will be speedily completed. We have taken our plight to Mr Governor and he complained about funds. The willingness is there but lack of funds. Lagos has about 57 LGAs all chasing limited funds. I still believe the governor can do a lot more to give love back to the people who supported him unconditionally. We are still on that conversation and we will not stop until we are assured or see projects started are completed and new projects coming in because we delivered at the most critical time more than the whole LGAs in Lagos state.
PT: On a lighter note, I am looking at a portrait on your wall showing the old Lagos, why not the new Lagos?
Benson: No you have to remember how it was and now know how it is. You know there is a connection with history. It reminds me of how Lagos was and also how things can be transformed within the shortest possible time.
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