Now, Fashola Must Wrestle With Pigs – Kehinde Ayoola JP

"When you wrestle with a pig, the pig gets happy and you get dirty" - Babatunde Raji Fashola, 2015.

I am not as euphoric as many of my South West compatriots are about the triple-header appointment of Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, as the Minister of Power, Works and Housing. Rather, I am sober and prayerful for BRF.

Fashola is going to literally turn stone into bread in order to be adjudged as a success in that ministry. Yes, he will command one of the two hefty budgets in the country (the other being Minister Buhari in the Petroleum Resources Ministry), but Fashola needs to fight pigs whom he had tried to avoid when his Lagos traducers called him out for a ‘roforofo’ fight awhile ago.

Kehinde Ayoola JP, Former Speaker, Oyo State House of Assembly and an Environmental Scientist 

In the Power arm of his ministry, he must fight the pigs called the Generator cabal. These are businessmen who profit from our epileptic power supply system so their electricity generators could sell. He will fight a comatose generating and rusty distribution system where so-called private companies have bought in but where they are interested only in billing hapless customers with crazy bills without a corresponding improvement in supply.

He needs to fight the pig of generation where the best we have done so far is 7,445MW in a nation of 170million people. South Africa does 1, 995 TWh (1TeraWatt hour=1million MWh) and is projecting to add 20,000 MW by 2025!

Then there is the monster of gas pipeline vandalisation. I can’t remember how many times Nigerians suffered power outages due to the vandalisation of pipes that convey gas to our power stations. Talking of power stations, Nigeria has about 22 at the last count whereas Erskom, one of the power companies in South Africa alone has 27! Another set of pigs that Fashola must wrestle to submission.

On the Works side, our roads are in a state of disrepair. In the last 16 years, we have spent a helluva lot of money on roads (Tony Anenih once collected N300 billion as Works Minister without anything to show). Government makes the move of repairing roads but they do not last. Travelling on an important road like Ibadan – Lagos Expressway is now a nightmare. I have had to turn down invitations to attend many events in Lagos due to the parlous state of the Ibadan – Lagos express.

There is a 17 million Housing Deficit in Nigeria right now, according to stakeholders in the Housing Industry. The APC promised to reduce that by 4 million housing units by 2019. That means provision of 1 million houses each year it is in power. That is a tall order. 

Professionals in the field have come out to say this is impossible. They say if we have about 200,000 units a year, it is an achievement. This is because government needs N3.5 trillion a year to deliver this. This is almost 70% of our current annual budget. Fashola must wrestle the pig of housing deficit and in addition provide leadership that will see to the reduction of high cost of building materials to encourage private developers. Interwoven with this is the need to reform the Land Tenure system to aid development. He needs to interface with Chief Audu Ogbeh of Agric Ministry on how to stem the increasing use of more and more arable land for building purposes. At the rate buildings are springing up in our semi-rural areas, we may not get land to farm again. Another pig.

Many civil servants especially at the Federal Level had their salaries deducted many years ago for some spurious Housing Scheme. Today they neither have the houses nor a refund. Fashola must get them their money and get the courts to jail those behind the fraud. 

Fashola must remember that Chief Bola Ige, that great son of Yorubaland, was almost demystified by entrenched interests in the power sector. Uncle Bola had to hold up his hands and move to a more familiar Justice Ministry. Ditto Prof Barth Nnaji who came with a blueprint which seemed to be working but who himself was printed out of the list of ministers in the Jonathan Administration.

He must kick the pigs’ asses.

If he gets dirty in the process, I’m sure Nigerians will fetch water, contribute soaps and perfumes to clean and freshen him up.

The alternative is too scary to be contemplated.

May God imbue him with wisdom.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Omi Tuntun, Igba Otun!

NB; Kehinde Ayoola JP is a Former Speaker, Oyo State House of Assembly and an Environmental Scientist.