Lagos State Governorship Candidate of the
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2011
election and former Director-General of the
Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety
Agency, NIMASA, Dr. Ade Dosunmu, MON, in
this interview calls on the Federal Government
to embark on holistic measures capable of
engendering social security as a way out of the
current security challenges facing the country.
Excerpts:
By Bashir Adefaka
Nigeria was relatively peaceful and secured in
the time of our founding fathers. How did we
get to where we are?
When we refer to the time of our founding
fathers, I want to believe you are referring to
close to 50 years ago. Definitely you will agree
with me that the situation is not the same in
terms of population, diversities and awareness
on the part of the citizens.
Another reason that could be responsible for
this is that the world is now a global village
and the level at which information are
disseminated and shared is at an
unprecedented rate. This may be responsible
for the various terrorist incursions into our
system. I also believe that these are challenges
for a country that is developing. In the early
60s, the population of Nigeria was less than 60
million but now with a population of over 160
million and as the most populous black nation,
we should have planned to address things like
this.
What then would you say we are not doing
rightly as a people?
It is obvious that the rate of our development
is not keeping up with the expectations of the
people in terms of providing for their
psychological needs and taking care of their
social pressures. We need to come up with a
more robust and aggressive development plan
that will address the challenges that usually
come with development as a nation.
Agitation against marginalisation
This is not happening for the first time, it has
happened to some other countries that have
passed through our stage and we are expected
to learn from them.
Islamists in North and militants in South are
fingered as root causes of the whole problems.
Can there be smoke without fire?
Going by my training, I don’t want to assume
that the insecurity situation in the country is
purely religious or due to agitation against
marginalization. Rather, I want to see it as a
kind of revolt against the inability of the state
to provide for the social-economic needs of
the people.
Take for instance, developed countries like US,
UK and Canada where they have good social
security systems, which serve as succour to
prevent social tension. If you take a sample of
the budgetary provisions that these countries
spend on social security schemes, it runs into
billions of dollars or pounds depending on the
country and the justification for it is in the
ability of these schemes to reduce social
problems like militancy, destitution, drug
addiction and other forms of social vices that
can threaten the existence of the state.
I want to say that the security problem that we
have in Nigeria is a product of lack of social
security. In developed societies, people, who
are not employed, get paid to keep body and
soul together.
In the case of Nigeria, such people may not
necessarily be paid but holistic measures
should be put in place to empower them to be
able to do things for themselves. We have very
adventurous people here who do not rely on
the government. If you look at the population
of those in the public service, they are not up
to 10 million.
What is that compared to the increasing
population of Nigerians which now is put at far
above I50 million? What the people need is an
enabling environment for whatever lawful
businesses they are doing for themselves to
thrive.
When government creates enabling
environment for industries to thrive, people
will be able to establish businesses. Investors
will come in and put industries on the ground
country whereby they will help themselves and
at the same time help others by way of
employment.
Boko Haram challenge: All the challenges by
Boko Haram in the North-East and militants in
the South-South are as a result of lack of
social security. If, for instance, the power
system is working fine and young people are
occupied in doing things for themselves:
artisans, hairdressers, welders, and small
businesses that people have the capacity of
doing will be able to go on smoothly.
Updated position
The country also has the issue of population
explosion on its hands. Yet, there is no
effective planning to get updated position of
our population figure to aid the job of
budgeting. How then do we have effective
budgeting?
Before you do budget at all, our national
planning office should have been able to know
our population accurately, and then forward
same to the budget office which will put
together the budget that the planning office
will use in a way that the generality of Nigerian
masses will benefit.
See the number of students that seek for
admission in Nigerian universities; how many
of them actually get admitted? And it is so
because there are no adequate facilities in the
university environments to accommodate
them. In a society where the planning office
works effectively, all these should have been
detected ahead of time and provisions made
for them.
If you also look at the programmes that are
run in the universities, many of them are not
arranged in accordance to the needs of the
industries. You see, where people offer Arabic,
Philosophy, Yoruba, etc, which are okay but do
not really go with the demands of the
industries in need of services of graduates,
what you would have is unemployment like we
have currently. In essence, I am saying that
the majority of graduates that our universities
are producing nowadays are not employable.
What the industries need today in the world is
in the range of engineering, medicine and some
in the arts.
An effective planning will check this
wastefulness from the standpoint of admission
to the arrangement of courses and
programmes. Students can still be made to
study Arabic, philosophy, etc, but not in the
higher percentage as may be required of
engineering, medicine and others.
What is your suggested panacea for the
security problems?
Our government at all levels must take serious
look into the issue of planning for our teeming
population of young Nigerians who have a lot
of energy that should be channeled to
productive areas.
There is no doubt that our rate of development
is not commensurate with the growth of our
population while our population grows at
geometric progression the former grows at
arithmetic progression thereby leaving a lot of
people un-catered for. What the government
needs to do is to focus on creating a
conducive and enabling environment that will
make private sector and small and medium-
scale enterprises thrive.
So, rather than people waiting for employment
from government they can be self-employed.
The government also needs to come up with
intervention fund that will assist young people
who are desirous of establishing their own
businesses to assess funds with minimal
hindrance.
President Jonathan’s presidency is said to have
put more money to projects than his
predecessors but that his administration lacks
monitoring. What is your take on that?
Mr. President has done what is needful and
because he is not the governor of any state,
you cannot expect him to be everywhere. I
think he needs to have his own independent
monitoring agents, who will feed him with
information regarding the progress of work on
each and every aspect of the projects he is
funding.
Once the people in charge of executing those
projects are aware of the fact that the
president is getting direct situation report
other than the one they conjure to him and
once they know that the president is going to
take a bold step at firing anyone who fails to
deliver, they will sit up and things will change.
On why he congratulated Governor Babatunde
Fashola after the 2011 election
The main reason I contested election was to
enable me render service to my people and I
mean the people of Lagos State. But let me tell
you one thing, in every contest, there can be
only one winner. In every election, there is
always one winner. The Independent National
Electoral Commission, INEC, conducted the
state governorship election and in Lagos, in
their own judgment they said it was Babatunde
Fashola, who emerged as winner. What do you
expect me to do since I do not believe that
politics should be a do-or-die affair?
So, it was naturally needful that I
congratulated him which was what I did. True,
people from my party did not really like it, but
now we can all see the sense in my allowing
things to go peacefully. If I had gone to court
at that time, the truth that has revealed today
about the inability of the Action Congress of
Nigeria, ACN to run a people-based
government would not have come naturally.
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