How can we reduce cost of governance, serve the people more?

Mr. Ray Epku is a familiar name to most quarters of the country especially in the media world. He is a Journalist of note and was one of the founding Editors of the defunct NewsWatch Magazine considered to be the flagship of Magazine Journalism in Nigeria.

He is currently a delegate to the ongoing 2014 National Conference in Abuja where he chaired a subcommittee of his mother Committee on Politics and Governance of the conference. In this interview with Saturday Vanguard, he speaks on a wide range of issue arising from the undertakings of the conference three months on. Excepts:

How would you assess the conference approximately 3 months down the line?
The conference has been reasonably successful so far considering the fact that you have a group of 492 people from different backgrounds and parts of the country with different interests and levels of education, different levels of sophistication. I think that the conference has done quite well in terms of trying to meet its ultimate mandate of contributing to a better Nigeria.

Ray Ekpu…I do not think we need a bicameral legislature

Can you highlight some of the basic decisions so far taken?

There are quite a number of decisions that have been taken. For instance, the committee on religion has recommended the abolition of government sponsorship of pilgrimages undertaken by Muslims or Christians to any part of the world.

The conference intended to emphasize the fact that religion is more of a private matter and individuals who want to go on pilgrimages should fund it and not ask the government to use public resources to fund the project. But of course, we were mindful of the fact that if a large number of Nigerians are travelling, the government should be able to provide consular services and general support.

I am opposed to the establishment of Pilgrims Boards because it is a money guzzler people use as an excuse to exploit the government. And I think that that responsibility should be handled by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Consular offices in those countries where the pilgrims go to.

In the place of the Pilgrims Welfare Boards, Religious Equity Commission,  RECOM came in and the mandate says it should be replicated across the 36 states of the federation. Do you think that RECOM as it were will assuage the incessant religious tension?

No, no, no. I am opposed to the setting up of such commissions because it is discriminatory. The functions as analysed by the committee are such that can be undertaken by the national human rights commission. You can’t set up a commission for the purpose of protection of religious rights.

It means that you will set up a commission for the protection of media rights. You will set up a commission for the protection of social rights and so on and so forth. I don’t think we need any more commissions. We actually should scrap some of the over 400 federal government agencies because they are a drain pipe as a whole.

I do not think that they are up to five federal government agencies that can consider to be making profit if you are looking at it from a profit motive and or if you are looking at it from a service standpoint. How many of them are actually providing a worthwhile service? Very few. So, we must not keep duplicating these big bureaucracies that do not deliver.

The decision of the conference to introduce a unicameral legislature has continued to generate more and more concerns from amongst Nigerians. In your own view, do you think Nigeria is better off with that than the currently practiced Bicameral legislature?

Luckily, the committee has not taken a decision yet on whether we should have a unicameral or bicameral legislature but my personal view is that: when you look at Nigeria the way it was constituted, you have 774 local governments. All of these governments make by-laws for their local governments. You have 36 states Legislatures. They all  make laws for their states.

So, we are already fully governed. At the center, I do not think we need a bicameral legislature. I think a unicameral legislature can serve us very well because when you look at the amount of money that we are spending, I know democracy is expensive but we have made it much more expensive than it ought to be and the legislators have many aides, three, four or five.

One aide will be enough in my opinion because one solid individual can do a lot of research for a legislator who is serious, and a legislator who is serious minded will also do his own research because he is the one who wants something and he should know what he wants to get. But of course, that depends on the quality of the legislators but I think that one arm of legislature is good enough rather than having over 400 people in the two arms. They have different committees and then you have the problem of having to resolve the discrepancies between the House of Representatives and the Senate.

It causes a lot of friction and sometimes, the House of Representatives claims that it is equal to the senate, the senate claims that it is superior to the house and they have all these frictions and so on. So, why don’t we just have one chamber? If you want to retain the senate, do it and may increase the number to four per state and then you can make do with that.

Then, you have one set of committees. If you want to have 10 or 12 committees, it means that it is 10 or 12 committees that you will deal with but if you have two arms of legislature, you have 12 committees here, 12 committees there, it is a money guzzler and I don’t think that the quality of what comes out these committees is something to seriously write home about.

Another serious issue in that direction is whether the sitting of the legislators should be on part-time or full time basis. What do you think?

It is a part-time business.

I don’t think you can have a full time legislature. If you look at the number of days that they themselves sit now, I think three or four days in a week and they have long holidays, many long holidays in a year and I do not think there is actually enough work to occupy them on full time basis. They have public servants who are working for them. They have aides who are working for them. These can make contributions. I don’t think that you need a full time legislature. Most legislatures in the world are not full time. They run on part-time and that is because people who get there are established persons who have made accomplishments in their lives.

They have made enough money for themselves. They want to contribute their ideas. It is a contest of ideas. How to make the society better, more humane, more progressive and they are going to push that idea through the system. They are not going there to make money in other climes. That is issue. But here, that is not the issue. The issue is how much money can we make by different means and methods?

And I want to admit that there are people who are genuinely working for Nigeria but they emphasize on money; how to make money from committees. They have enough time to invite experts to come and speak to them so that the quality of legislation will go up. Besides, you cannot have a National Assembly that operates above the law. Right now, that is what happens.

I give a few examples- we spoke to the former Head of RMAFC that is supposed to decide the salaries of public servants and he said that the National Assembly ignored the prescription of the commission and decided on paying itself what it wanted to pay and that is a shame because that is an assembly that is supposed to make laws and it cannot be above the law as prescribed by the country. That is the problem.

So if they do that, that is a disservice to Nigeria. And you know one of the media agencies as a way of tasting the vitality of the Freedom of Information Act has sent a letter to the National Assembly asking them to inform them on the salaries and allowances of the legislators.

They have not complied with that. So, the agency has gone to court. If the National Assembly does that, then you begin to say to yourself, who can control the National Assembly? I give you another example – the Director-General of SEC was invited by the House of Representatives to come and answer questions on the fortunes of SEC and the stock market and she went there.

In the course of their question, she made an allegation against the chairman of that committee and accused him of impropriety: that the man collected money and was to go for a conference somewhere outside the country, but he did not go and did not return the ticket or the estacode. He just pocketed both and they investigated it and found out that the man was guilty as charged and they removed him and appointed another chairman.

Now, the House of Representatives said that the woman is not qualified for the job she is doing. I had to do an investigation about her credentials and I found out that she had first class in Computer Science from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in those days when universities were truly universities. I found that she had Masters in Business Administration from Harvard University in Massachusetts, United States, I found that she worked in the African Development Bank.

These three institutions are prominent, first class institutions. But the House of Reps said she was not qualified for the job after she had been on job for many years? And then, the Board of SEC set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the allegation the House made against the lady, they found her to be clean. They then said they wanted the President to fire her. If not they would withdraw her budget. They did. It is not her budget. It is the budget of SEC.

When SEC was performing a national function and you said because you didn’t like the face of the lady; because she accused one of your members of misconduct which tends to paint you in bad light you are fighting her and withheld the budget of SEC. That is impunity. That is undesirable. How can an assembly like that behave that way

But they are doing their job by making those people and institutions to be accountable?
Oh! Sure. But that job must be done with integrity and discretion because other people are doing their jobs too.

Back to the conference, it has been agreed at the conference that the Governors’ pension and gratuity should go. Do you agree?

No, it shouldn’t. The governors are deserving of pension just the way other public civil servants, private persons who work for some establishments deserve pension too. But this must have relativity. You must relate it to the economy of the state. You must relate it to the pension of senior civil servants like permanent secretaries for instance. If a permanent secretary works for 30 years and then retires, what on the average will he get for the 30 years? If he retires at the age of 60, what will he get?

There must be comparability. Again, how do they assess the pension of politicians in other jurisdictions? Do a comparative analysis looking at these items I have mentioned and you have a basis for arriving at a just decisions but you shouldn’t say that they are politicians, they must get something disproportionate to what people get in other countries. Right now, it is very discriminatory. It is not based on criteria.

Your committee promised that state police should be established. What really propelled you as against some other opinions that say that Nigeria is not ripe for that?

State police is a desideratum as it is now. The federal police cannot cope with the enormous responsibilities assigned to it. First, the federal police is undermanned. We have 290,000 policemen to man this huge population of 170 million people. By UN standard, we should have one policeman to 400 people. That means that by our population of 170 million, we should have at least 685,000 policemen. Now we have less than 50 percent of that figure.

That is why it is not possible for the federal police to be effective. Two: The police in the states now are funded largely by state governments. They buy them equipment, guns, phones, whatever; support them materially, physically and otherwise. So, in terms of what is happening to the Police in 36 states, they are actually state police because they are funded by the governments of those states. Yes, that is the truth.

The only difference is that the commissioner of police still reports to the Inspector General of Police even though the governor is supposed to be the Chief Security Officer, he is not effectively the Chief Security Officer because except he has a very good relationship with the Commissioner of Police, he will go no where. We saw this with Chief Joseph Mbu in Rivers state.

Once there is a problem between the Commissioner of Police and the state governor, the governor doesn’t win but he is supposed to win because he is supposed to be in charge of the security. How would you be the Chief Security of the State and you have no control over the commissioner? But governor cannot have control over them because he doesn’t appoint them, discipline them. So, the point is that you must make the governor an effective Chief Security Officer.

The police under him must report to him, not to the Commissioner of Police. That is one strong reason why you must have State Police. If you don’t have State Police you cannot increase the number of police available on duty substantially.