Date: 2012-05-12

Senator Bukola Saraki spoke to Omojuwa.com's Japh and Fiyinfoluwa Elegbede. We spoke on issues ranging from his current travails with the police, the Senate and it's allowances, the competence (or otherwise of president Jonathan), his tenure as Kwara State Governor and the issues around the N21 billion loan saga amongst others.

Omojuwa: In the court of public opinion, you are guilty and this is besides the fact that you are a politician. For instance, you went to get an exparte motion over an ordinary police invitation…

Senator Saraki: It was not a case of "I don't want to go." I felt that I was being invited to assist in an investigation but by Friday all the blogs and platforms were carrying a lot of inaccurate information. All that was going out and I was like "what's going on here?"

Omojuwa: What was the court move supposed to achieve?

Senator Saraki: First to have my rights defined in a knotty issue where I was being invited without knowing what the invitation was for and also to object to the underhanded way the whole process was going.

Omojuwa: When you finally decided to go, you sent emissaries ahead of you…

Senator Saraki: No. I was in Abuja. People decided to go to Lagos. The perception is that being a politician, people assume the worst about you. You are never going to get the majority's benefit of the doubt. If I wanted to mobilise people, I am going from Abuja, won't I tell them to come and meet me in Abuja? If the objective was to mobilise, why would I be in one car and they come separately? When I went it was only three or four of us.

Omojuwa: So, why is this happening now?

Senator Saraki: Many people are upset. I think I have upset a lot of people. If you look at the reports coming out from the first quarter of this year, you'd have seen a 40 per cent drop. Our trade balances have increased, 153 people were doing that business (petrol importation) now the numbers are far less. Definitely the country is better for my bold move to reveal the petrol subsidy corruption.

Omojuwa: Your senate is the most hated collection of people in Nigeria today and you might actually be amongst the highly ranked ones especially given the recent police events. My worry is that why would someone like you go into the house and see them increase their allowances that are ordinarily extraordinarily big. And based on this 2012 budget, you had another increase. What did you do? Are you comfortable with this?

Sen. Saraki: This is what I've always said that we bring the issue to public fora. Our salary per se is about a million naira a month. Now what has happened is that the cost of running the office, public hearings, constituency running and all that what you can call running operations ..

Omojuwa: Cuts in…is it more than the cost of the American president running the White House?

Sen. Saraki: Because the American president you don't see it under their salary. It's a different item entirely.

Omojuwa: why don't you guys make a law or something to separate your salaries from these expenses?

Sen. Saraki: Yes. It's an issue, why don't we like..

Omojuwa: the reason why you didn't must be because you are able to not incur those expenses and then still add them to your salaries. Let's face the reality.

Senator Saraki: No no no, don't judge like that. First of all, let us first accept the fact that the word "salary" is not a true representation of what is generally put out there. Then we can now go to the next stage which is to say "okay then why do you do this? Why don't you do this?"

Omojuwa: The reason why I am saying that is because you guys have been rightly receiving flaks for years now on your allowances and then you are saying these monies are being used to run the office which in itself may not be bad so why don't you create…

Senator Saraki: But we have said in the past they've tried as much as possible to explain to the public. I mean this is not the first time…

Omojuwa: The public will not understand. When they know that what is being budgeted for constituency projects actually go into private pockets. Why don't we have a process in place where these monies don't have to go through the individual senator for instance, like the American president?

Senator Saraki: The American president retires his expenses, same way a British member of parliament retires his expenses. The British media does not call what is retired a salary. "This is what I have spent money on," they retire it and they get paid. But nobody calls it their salary.

Omojuwa: That's because we don't have any empirical evidence of that here. And what made you guys increase it again all of a sudden? Is it because of the effects of fuel subsidy removal or do you now spend more on some other things?

Sen. Saraki: That'd largely be the operational cost because the salary has not moved. It is the cost of operations.

Omojuwa: But the salary is insignificant to what you take home!

Sen. Saraki: When you talk about salaries, I am saying the figures you are using to define the salaries are not accurate. There are things that have been lumped up to call salaries that are not salaries.

Omojuwa: But all the money gets "lumped" up for Senators to take home.

Sen. Saraki: Some people do work.

Omojuwa: Don't you think it is too much for us to spend that much money in a country that is not being run inefficiently?

Sen. Saraki: I believe we can be more efficient and should be more efficient and should indeed try to be more efficient. But the question that this money all the members of the National Assembly just take and do nothing with them and pocket like it is part of their salary is not true. I think that there is a need to bring down the cost of government. I think that as we move ahead something will be done.

Omojuwa: When?

Sen. Saraki: Because we will do it.

Omojuwa: When? These are problems we've always identified.

Sen. Saraki: Mind that some of us have only done one year and I have personally made impact if you look at least the results of the fuel subsidy process. We need more daring hands in there.

Omojuwa: The Senate has been pretty useless. Apart from the corruption reports, the panels…take for instance the house of representatives has found out things in the subsidy regime, why would the senate now decide to sit over the same thing? You would say that's the process but sometimes you have to look beyond these so called processes. Your senate will be spending extra money to find out what the reps have already found out.

Sen. Saraki: I could use that same argument. You could have used the argument that "why did the house of reps start what the senate had started?" The point is if we don't finish the process now, it's you same people that will say the only reason why senate has not finished…

Omojuwa: The Speaker of the House of Representatives has much more trust…I can't even say more trust because the senate president is not trusted at all.

Sen. Saraki: The style of management is different.

Omojuwa: You are saying this as a politician.

Sen. Saraki: No. I am not. Wasn't I the one that got up in September? You didn't know about the core issues of the fuel subsidy. I was the first person to pin point the fraud and the unacceptable amount of money being spent on subsidy. The results are there today and nobody remembers that.

Omojuwa: Could this be the reason you are being witch-hunted?

Sen. Saraki: I am not saying that. All I am saying is let us be frank here…if I never got up to say what I said in September, how would we know what we know today? Let us say it as it is. I knew the risks. I knew a lot of people would be upset. I knew a lot of fuel subsidy businesses would be affected, but in the interest of our country I got up to say it and that is the topic of the whole country today.