NLC, TUC now heavily partisan, unable to speak for workers – Onanuga

In this interview with ADEBAYO FOLORUNSHO-FRANCIS, Bayo Onanuga, the former director of media and publicity for the disbanded All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, discusses how the former governor of Lagos State intends to address various issues, including the removal of fuel subsidies and Nigeria’s mounting debt.

Outrage was expressed over the casual way the Senate approved Buhari’s N22.7tn extra-budgetary spending, especially from detractors and opposition parties. Will this cause a problem for the incoming administration, despite the fact that government is a continuum?

Your opinion is your own. The specifics are not yet available. Asiwaju is not yet mounted either. He will research all of those things once he boards the ship. Remember that the APC controls the government. We are the APC as well. Therefore, we think that whatever the Senate approved must have been done in good faith. From there, the Tinubu administration will handle it.

What about his strategy for reducing the massive national debt load?

What I do know is that the president-elect brought up the subject of debt in a number of forums leading up to the election. Asiwaju, a “finance” man, has a strong conviction that the debt problem can be largely solved. He had mentioned paying off some of our debt with naira. He had mentioned eliminating waste in government to free up funds so we could relieve some of our financial burdens. I am confident that his administration will be able to find a solution to lighten the load. He made it clear during his January speech to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group that he is not overly concerned about the budget deficit, which has increased from N2.41 trillion in 2016 to N11.34 trillion in the current budget. He explained to the summit that fiscal deficits are a necessary component of contemporary governance, so they are not necessarily bad. According to him, both the most powerful and affluent governments and the poorest countries have deficits.

Whether or not deficit spending is productive, he claimed, is the real question. Unproductive deficit spending, especially if it is backed by an excessive amount of borrowing in foreign currencies, is a compound negative, according to him.

I therefore anticipate that his administration will devise strategies to address what some Nigerians view as the debt burden.

Will Tinubu publicly disclose his assets, as did Osinbajo, Buhari, and his predecessors?

Exactly why not? It is customary. He’ll complete it. Asiwaju will list his possessions. The same will also be done by his vice president. The Code of Conduct Bureau has already requested that the newly elected officials declare their assets by May 29. Tinubu will undoubtedly abide by the law.

The demand for an asset declaration must have been prompted by the controversy surrounding the British property Seyi Tinubu purchased. What do you think of the current circumstances?

This is a dated tale. They mentioned Oyetola the last time I read about it. They now include Seyi in the narration. It’s an old tale that people keep spreading everywhere. It was probably first published by Premium Times around a year ago. The news has covered the incident once more. They might release another claim that the property is owned by someone else tomorrow. They were aiming for the incoming president. However, they were unable to uncover any smoking guns because the narrative made it abundantly clear he had nothing to do with the property’s purchase.

Is Obi causing issues for the president-elect’s team?

Frankly, I find it difficult to comprehend Peter Obi and his supporters. They have responded to the election and its fallout in a desperate manner. Following their legal battle, Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed have been attacking the president-elect with all manner of insults, questioning the validity of the election, and character assassinating him along with their supporters, who some writers have compared to a headless mob. In order to reclaim a so-called mandate that they never received in the first place, they have insulted and lied about INEC officials. You wonder if Obi came in second place because they are being so boisterous and reckless about it. He came in last place and didn’t even get the majority of the vote or the spread.

The Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress’ latest farce involves them forming an alliance with some seriously compromised civil society organizations and declaring that they will act as the judiciary’s watchdog. In fact, the NLC stated that they would create a “Register of Shame” for judges who made statements about the election that they didn’t agree with. All that is beyond my comprehension. That is not appropriate. The NLC can’t do that, of course. Due to its membership in the Labour Party, the Congress is already a candidate for office. How can you say that you want to watch over something in which you already participate? Due to their already extreme partisanship, the NLC and TUC have no moral standing to preside over the post-election legal battles. Future-focused, I’m not even sure how the NLC and TUC can now assert that they speak for all Nigerian workers after fully embracing the Labour Party.

Is Tinubu unconcerned about the difficulty of dealing with the removal of the gasoline subsidy?

I am unable to discuss his move or any strategy at this time. I can only predict that he will take them sequentially. The fuel subsidy must be eliminated, agreed both the incoming president and the opposition’s defeated candidates from the PDP and Labour Party. But I fully anticipate them to retract or refute my assertions. Anything is possible in politics. However, when asked what they planned to do about the lingering fuel subsidy during the campaign, every single one of them stated it clearly. The subsidy had been abused, and it needed to be removed, according to consensus among all the major parties. Asiwaju agreed that it had to go. What will be done and how will depend on the approach. He will, however, cross that bridge once he arrives there.

The subsidy has grown to be a significant issue for our people and is ruining the treasury. The majority of the smugglers, not the citizens of Nigeria, are the main beneficiaries of this subsidy. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd. claims that Nigerians consume a certain amount of gasoline, but the Nigerian Customs Service has recently cast doubt on this claim.

We cannot continue to subsidize petrol consumers in Cameroon, the Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Niger, and Chad just because we are upholding a subsidy regime, unless we are a nation of fools. We cannot keep serving as Santa Claus to our neighbors and smugglers.

You may recall that the World Bank formally requested that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (ret. ), discontinue the subsidy in 2015. The Buhari administration once did away with it before changing its mind when the cost of crude increased and had an impact on the landing cost of imported fuel. The Tinubu administration needs to decide as soon as possible. In the greater good of Nigerians and the economy, we cannot keep avoiding making that choice.

What will the cabinet of Tinubu look like? Will his administration include some opposition figures and Nigerians living abroad?

Nigerians should, in my opinion, wait for the release of his cabinet list, which will happen after May 29. He is currently consulting with every APC participant.

In the past three weeks, a list of Tinubu’s purported ministers and agency heads has been making the rounds on social media and online platforms. Just how reliable is that list?

Those are merely stories from social media. We ought to simply wait. Some of these positions that are being advertised would be held by coworkers of his. Let’s simply wait until May 29. After the inauguration, Tinubu will undoubtedly make the names public.

A few weeks ago, Buhari revealed that the opposition fell short of defeating Tinubu because they were riding the wave of arbitrary poll results and arrogance. Critics, however, asserted that Tinubu was merely fortunate to receive some assistance. What specifically will you claim made him the winner?

God, I’ll say. This might not be covered in political science textbooks. But I’ll admit that God had a significant hand in his victory. The PDP was divided into three by God, whereas the APC remained a stable party going into the election.

He and his party faced overwhelming disadvantages. The Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had turned the Nigerian people against the APC and Tinubu with his poorly timed, uneconomic currency swap and currency scarcity. Then there was a fuel shortage in many areas of the nation. The two unfavorable factors made it unlikely that the candidate for the ruling party would prevail. He did, however, manage to survive because the public came to believe that the currency and fuel shortages were staged in order to disadvantage him and give Atiku the victory.

But that did not take place. Asiwaju’s record as the former governor of Lagos, in my opinion, was a major factor in the support he received from Nigerians. By supporting him, they hope he will duplicate the successes seen in Lagos on a national level.

In my opinion, Tinubu’s record helped him win a lot of votes, with the exception of the South-East, where Peter Obi defeated him by using the ethnicity card.
Despite this, Asiwaju still had the best national spread out of the three leading candidates. He finished second in many states where he did not place first. That is clearly different from Atiku, who consistently places third in some polls. Atiku only succeeded in 21 states, whereas Tinubu was able to win 25% of the vote in about 29 states. On the other hand, Peter Obi lagged far behind. I believe he received it in 15 states.