By Saminu Ibrahim
Senator Adeyemi Oriolowo, represent Osun west at the Nigerian Senate. He is the vice chairman of the senate committee on privatisation.
In an interview with newsmen recently, the lawmaker lamented that government intervention is not organised. Specifically, he posited that ‘We are living in an unorganised society’.
Acccording to Oriolowo, most government intervention are going into wrong hands. He however warned that Nigeria need to think while the crude oil is flowing before it stop.
Your committee lamented on the poverty level in the country, can you give an overview?
One Nigerian President, once said that Nigerians are pathologically lazy, and I asked for the meaning, I learnt it is the laziness of the brain, inability to think deeply. There are three factors of success in life: knowledge, energy and integrity. Knowledge has to do with something you learn about, technical skill, when you talk of energy, is ability to do work, invariably, wisdom is part of energy, ability to think deep is part of energy, apart from muscular energy. And money is also part of it, but when you put them in layers, wisdom is at the top and money is at the bottom and in between them you find perseverance, deep thought, you have endurance etc.
At the top of it is wisdom, so you see what we do here most is to chase money and the third one, as I said is integrity, your relationship with God, with your fellow man and relationship with yourself. Once you have these three, it is just like tripod. You will see that we have to balance them and that is what we are lacking.
So if we have all the resources and yet we are suffering, something must be happening somewhere- is inability to think. Whatever you are doing to your fellow man, you are doing it to yourself. Injustice any where is Injustice every where. So that is what is really troubling us, we have oil, gold all the solid minerals and those who know the value will come and hide under our people to do illegal mining. They give them paltry amount of money and cart away everything. It is high time we live in what I call an organise society, we are living in an unorganised society. Government intervention everywhere is not organise, like in agriculture, there is a lot of fund being given to people to farm but it is not organise, most of the interventions are going to wrong hands. I was part of Agriculture Development Programme (ADP), I want to tell you today, hardly can you find the traces of the programme. But if you look at the Farm settlement, the one established by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the one established by Chief Bisi Akande and the one in the east by Chief Michael Okpara, they are still existing, because there is a boundary. You know the farms and the farmers, you know where to take your intervention to. Today, as a farmer, if I want to buy government subsided intervention, I will buy the paper from non farmers. That is what am saying, we have to live an organised life.
As I said, America is one of the largest crude oil field, but they are protecting it. They are not selling their own, they are buying cheap ones from us. We need to sit down and think about how to make use of our natural resources.
Most of the people that are doing it in other countries are Nigerians, we have brilliant people in the country, but to sit down, think deeply how do we use it, we have climatic condition in our favour. We need to think while the crude oil is flowing, before it stop.
Constitutional amendment featured at the meeting, do you consider it a necessary prerequisite for the success of your committee.
We are treating the effects, but not the cause and that is what is predominant today in Nigeria. We know that our constitution is defective. But who is afraid of reviewing the constitution? That is just the problem, because everybody will be saying our problem is the constitution, but who is afraid of doing it? But as I said the other time, we have a specific assignment, if constitutional review is one of those things that we need to put in place to get what we want need to be done, we have to put in our report.
If there is a specific issue like the one we are raising now for solid minerals or resource control, then one way or the other, the issue of review will come up. It has to be part of our own recommendation that if we are going to achieve this, that must be done. And that is why I said that the governors in whose states we find predominant gold reserve, we need to talk them and let them tell us their experience, no matter what, the land on which these illegal mining is being done, the constitution vested the ownership of the land in the governor’s hand, so they have something to say.
