Benson: 10th N’Assembly Will Be Better than Ninth Assembly

Chairman of House of Representatives Committee on Defence, Hon. Babajimi Benson, in this interview with Udora Orizu speaks on people’s expectations from the incoming 10th National Assembly, decision of the federal government to remove petrol subsidy, among other issues. Excerpts:

Your re-election the third term shows how loved you are by your constituents, so what’s your legislative agenda for them?

Like I’ve always done, I will ensure that we pass Lagos and Nigeria centric bills, we’ll continue to do our work diligently, to ensure infrastructure and economic prosperity in both Ikorodu, Lagos state and Nigeria as a whole.

As you are also aware, we have a new administration who has hit the ground running, and they will need legislations on economy, security, employment, health, educational sectors and so on.

So we need to put our hands together to ensure that’s done through legislations.

Former President Muhammadu Buhari came into power with one of the cardinal promises being security. Many Nigerians are of the view he worsened the security situation, how would you rate his administration?

Buhari did his best, whether the best is not good enough is for Nigerians to judge.

So whether he would have done better I would say yes, I would say the fight against insurgency can be solved by economic prosperity. I will always say that you can’t use security to kill poverty. If you keep churning out citizens that are poverty stricken, they will always end up in committing insurgency or crime.

Not just the federal government of Nigeria, I think some states and local government also need to be blamed for that, because states are sub national they need to take care of subjects within them, local government too. So you find out that some local governments don’t even have government presence.

And the devil finds work for the idle and they also don’t have hope so they’re easily indoctrinated. So finding economic prosperity for them will reduce the availability of young people into insurgency.

You must have seen President Bola Tinubu’s blueprint on security, do you think the security architecture will improve under his administration?

I think it will improve, but I will suggest for an addition, modern countries of the world and even some developing countries have a service called the space force or the space Service Chief, but in Nigeria you have Service Chiefs for army, navy, air force I want to suggest that a fourth one be added that is called the space.

Space will fight cyber, so that way you are more precise you can deploy your logistics and resources in a more accurate manner.

So I would strongly suggest that and also a legislature that is driven towards such establishment. Also synergy is very important for our armed forces, they must work together. The President is ready to lead from the front, his security blueprint is very robust.

The 9th Assembly’s agenda broached on National security, what measures have you taken so far and what would you do differently in the 10th assembly?

In rhe 9th assembly, we made landmark legislations, we reduced the availability of young people to insurgency. We passed the Defence Research Development Bureau (DRDB) law.

We are trying to pass the armed forces support fund, it’s in the Senate for concurrence. We had a security summit that brought in all the key stakeholders, the resolution of the summit are very profound, a lot of it were not implemented by the former administration, we hope that the new administration will have a look into it.

So we passed the police amendment act, customs act, all those things that will bring comfort to Nigerians and make them more inclusive we did all that to mention a few.

What will be your advice, if asked to set agenda, for Tinubu’s administration, with regards to National Security.

Like I said we can not use security to kill poverty, I’ll suggest that we tackle the root cause of poverty, I would suggest that the employment, the industries that absorb youths we adequately focus on them, one of which could be agriculture.

A lot of farmers can’t go back to work due to insecurity challenges. Ensure we give them adequate security to enable them go back, I also believe that fertilizer should be something they can easily get because when there is prosperity when they see their yields go phenomenal they get happy and that keeps everyone busy, it ensures that people are also gainfully employed, and when there is food security Nigeria will be safer, that’s one aspect.

The other aspect is improving on power, if we can ramp up on the power transmission generation and distribution more people will be gainfully employed, so I would like to look at curbing security from an economic perspective because nobody wants his daughter or son to be Boko Haram or insurgent. We need to get those youths gainfully employed to see that there is hope for them tomorrow. So the sooner we can get that the quicker we will get our security architecture perfect and in good shape.

Your colleagues from the North Central zone are insisting that speakership position should be zoned to their region, that the ruling party’s National Working Committee was unfair to them, what do you have to say about this, and what advice do you have for aggrieved aspirants?

 I would empathize with them, because the candidates are people very known and dear to me. Everybody talks about party supremacy, the party in its wisdom know why they zoned it to those various zones, and the North Central has been compensated with Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF position. I have heard some of them say that as soon as the zoning is out, and they are adequately compensated, they will drop off the race.

 So I’m sure in the next couple of days, we would see traction towards them walking their talk. I believe north central did extremely well during the election. Better than we thought, we won Benue, which is remarkable. I believe they are brothers and friends and Nigeria will compensate them for their support and in time they will not regret voting for the All Progressive Congress.

But they are describing it as an imposition, vowing to rebel against the party on inauguration day.

I do not think that’s the true position of things. Social media like to sensationalize news to create an audience, they are brothers and have spoken about party supremacy and the party has also spoken to them in camera and I believe the party is supreme and at the end of the day everybody will be adequately looked after. We are one family and one party, and our candidate has won the presidential election, so all hands should be on deck to ensure renewed hope is brought to Nigeria.

Criticism is trailing the removal of petroleum subsidy by the Federal Government. Do you think it’s a right move for a new government?

Yes, Asiwaju has shown leadership, has shown decisiveness, he has shown that he would take the great tough decisions to ensure we have a better and more rewarding tomorrow. All the presidential candidates of various parties, all ran on the premise that subsidy would be removed and subsidy has been removed and in the history of Nigeria NLC has called off the strike and gave conditions that are very workable that have been agreed with the Federal Government.

So it’s a new dawn, it’s mean that we have an opportunity to rewrite the history of Nigeria.

Trillions of money that goes into subsidy will be re-injected into the economy, more work, more electricity, more transportation infrastructure, and more education.

Good for us it will make us look more critically at the refineries, the multinational agencies. So it’s good, if you look at the price of cooking gas it’s falling and diesel is falling, So the entrance of Dangote refineries is also a big game changer and I’m sure Federal Government will collaborate with him to make sure that refined crude is made available everywhere and at affordable price.

The incoming 10th assembly will be the most diverse in history, with so many new lawmakers, experienced ones lost their re-election bid, don’t you think it will affect the quality of leadership?

I do not think so, I believe we are spiced up with many different people, diversity is actually a good word, so Nigeria have a diverse population, so in the National Assembly we will ensure that the diversity works for us.

We have close to ten professors joining the 10th National Assembly including men, women and youths. People who have excelled in various endeavours and I believe the quality of people coming into the 10th National Assembly is really high, and I thank the good people of Nigeria.

Nigerian voters were able to bring out the best from their constituencies and these are the people that can hit the ground running in the next National Assembly. I’ve seen former speakers, commissioners and teachers and lecturers, engineers, critics of government, from all parts of Nigeria, everybody coming to the federal parliament and all ready to fight for their constituencies, their states and Nigeria. So I believe with the potential we have, we may actually surpass the huge achievements of the Ninth National Assembly.

There were other contenders for Chief of Staff position, but President Tinubu in his wisdom chose outgoing Speaker, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila. Do you think he will do well as Chief of Staff?

Gbajabiamila will do excellently well, he is a man of the people, he has got the reach, he has been in the parliament for so long a period. He was the minority leader,  majority leader and now the Chief of Staff.

Chief of Staff are gatekeepers, so he is going to work excellently well on that job because he has presided over the House of Representatives that has the most diverse people. He has passed judgements, has used discretion. If you look at his decision or judgements, they have been far reaching and helped shape Nigeria.

Under him the electricity bill was passed, the devolution of powers, the INEC bill that introduced Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, the Petroleum Industry Act, so a lot of things and he superintended over issues concerning Nigeria. All issues were tackled and treated well under him.

I do not have any doubt in my mind that he would make a good Chief of Staff. He’s got empathy, he’s diplomatic, he is decisive.

I believe the President chose the right peg and put it in the right hole.