.…Nigeria’s like barber’s chair; all motion, no movement
Hon. Afam Victor Ogene represents Ogbaru Federal Constituency, Anambra State in the House of Representatives. He is the chairman of the House Committee on Renewable Energy and leader of the Labour Party caucus. In this interview with Sunday Sun, he speaks on national issues including the silence of the opposition, multiple budgets, the economy, sleaze in the NNPC and other matters.
You recently talked about the present administration prioritising re-election in 2027 over the security and welfare of citizens. Why and how did you come to that conclusion?
What I meant is very visible even to the blind, because if you can’t see, you can feel it. The discordant tunes in the economy and in the lives of Nigerians are so loud that even the deaf can hear it. Last year we bought 50 kg bag of rice at about N90, 000. This year, the price is down by half to between N45, 000 and N55, 000 yet, people can’t buy it. What does it explain? There’s no money in the system. So it is either these resources have been mopped up and kept somewhere that the average Nigerian does not know, or that the economic policies of this government have simply gone awry. It has simply collapsed.
And as we know, the essence of government is the security and welfare of the people. Now, talking about security, until President Donald Trump talked about coming into Nigeria with American forces, it was almost taken that people could get kidnapped, school children could get abducted, blood could flow in any part of Nigeria and it was normal. There was nothing, I restate, nothing that the government has done or was doing to tackle the problem. The government is just being reactionary. You push men to the warfront so if Boko Haram or other insurgents want to advance; the men are there to curtail their advancement. So we have accepted that they are there. Let them remain in their own territory while we hold our own territory. There was nothing on ground to take the battle to them and rout them. Today if you are travelling, the major link from the north to the South-South, South-West and South-East is the Abuja-Lokoja-Okene-Auchi Road. For every family member that is travelling, the entire family will be having prayer sessions in their hearts until they get to their destination. How many times have you heard of any bush exercise conducted by any arm of the Nigerian military to try to go into those bushes to chase out insurgents or kidnappers or by whatever name they are called. I’ve never heard, I’ve never seen any such exercise. So, what that means is they could operate. If the security forces run into them, but these operations do not take more than five, ten minutes because the bushes are just five metres away and enter the bush and they take the people and go.
The welfare of the average Nigerian is nothing to write home about. Contractors have been owed. And if there is no money circulating in the system, how can people, even if you sell a bag of rice for N10, 000, who will buy? Where is the purchasing power? So don’t forget too that the people who work in the formal sector are not even up to five per cent of the entire population. So, what happens to the rest?
You talked about money circulating in the system. Doesn’t that have to do with the performance of the budget?
I am not an economist but I know well enough that in terms of fiscal policies, monetary policies, the only way you can begin to gauge them is the effects they have on the people. How can anybody do a budget on a $75 oil price benchmark? For me, that was too ambitious. The realistic benchmark ought to be around $65per barrel of oil. And then if something happens, you sell above the benchmark. There is the Excess Crude Account. It is still Nigeria’s money. On the other hand, our OPEC quarter for oil, I think, is 1.5 million barrels per day and then you benchmark your expected revenue on 2.06 million barrels per day. You have an OPEC quota. It is the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries that regulates what you push out to the international market and you have been given a quota of 1.5 million barrels per day and you are looking forward to producing 2.06 million barrels per day, the basis of which you have calculated your revenue. So it’s like eating your cake before you even have it. We also have non-oil revenue sources and these sources, the president told us as far back as early September that we have met the benchmark. If we have met the benchmark, what is it that has made it impossible for us to meet our budget obligations? Because in simple terms, the budget is that you have a family and you ask the woman to drop the budget for home-keeping, foodstuff and the like. The man earns, say N100 per month. From his side hustle, he’s expecting N30 so he has a total income of N130. Now, the woman has made a budget of N140, so he has a deficit of N10, which he can actually borrow to augment. At the end of the day, his salary of N100 comes, his N30 side hustle, let’s even say he didn’t make it, he got N15. So you have N115, you are still short of N25. So, all he will do is borrow the deficit to bridge the gap. But we actually know that from January to December, as on December 18, 2025 guess what the score is. The score is zero. I just returned from a tour of federal universities and all the universities, we’ve gone around the six geopolitical zones over the last two months, for their capital components, it is nil. Not one naira was released. I know in budget, we talk in terms of percentages. If they had even done half… Meanwhile, for every borrowing that they need to bridge the revenue gap, it has been granted. It is my suspicion, however, that projects such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, for which Nigerians do not know about any appropriation, we do not know about any procurement processes, according to the laws of Nigeria, I think for me, such a project, beyond saying whether it is white elephant or not, we see money being thrown at that project. Where does the money go? Who benchmarks it? So these are posers and it is not just for the opposition members of parliament. It is for Nigerians, the media, and the civil society. Everybody must rise to ask the pertinent questions. Just this week, on Monday, I was privileged to be in a meeting of the finance committee. And I heard the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy say that most revenue generating agencies didn’t meet the target. So, who do we believe? Do we believe Mr President who told us four months ago that we’ve met the target of our revenue generation? And they have actually met it. Let me give you a half year report for Value Added Tax. The revenue projection for 2025 was N8.24 trillion. But as at the first half of the year, June ending, we had gotten N4.12 trillion in VAT. The projection for Customs duties was N6.58 trillion and we had gotten N3.6 trillion. Company Income Tax – the revenue projection in the 2025 budget was N9.52 trillion; we had gotten N4.76 trillion; Solid minerals and mining, N38 billion came in; and then Federal Inland Revenue Service. Actual non-oil revenue for the first half of 2025 was N10.64 trillion. How much is the totality of our capital component of the budget? So what have these resources been used for? We need more explanation beyond the semantics of Mr. President saying we have achieved it and the minister saying the revenue earning agencies are not meeting their targets. I think that we should be speaking to figure. Because these projections are not made out of the sky, they are based on two, three years’ actuals. You know, what the trends have been. You cannot project backwards. If you got N5 billion last year, it is a realistic projection to expect N6 billion this year. So even if you are going to fall short, you shouldn’t be falling short beyond the N5 billion thresholds that you achieved the previous year.
You just analysed the 2025 budget. There’s so much confusion on what’s happening with the budget, yet we are preparing for the 2026 budget. Can you speak to it, because the general public is confused about the budget.
Okay, you know that this assembly has been tagged anything even worse than a rubber stamp. It was under Buhari that people said the ninth assembly was a rubber stamp ready to do late President Buhari’s bidding. In this assembly, I don’t know whether there is even ink in the stamp. But sometimes too, you do not blame the assembly. For an administration that has not performed in terms of the capital component of the budget, meanwhile, certain commitments have been made. Some letters of award had been issued to contractors. They paid tender fees before they even got shortlisted and all of that. Few of them went through that before they stopped and asked MDAs not to issue anymore. In 2025, besides personnel and overhead, it’s like there was no budget this year and you know that personnel and overhead are static. So we cannot wish away what we have done
The Appropriation Act is the number one law that parliament makes besides the constitution. So what the parliament did by the repeal and re-enactment is to extend the shelf life of the 2025 budget to March 30, 2026 and by doing so, give the administration an opportunity to do those same projects that they ought to have done in 2025. The lifespan of that budget ought to have expired at the end of this month. So the parliament has now repealed it and re-enacted it. And I think that the problem too has always been that since this administration came in, it has been running multiple budgets at the same time. So at the end of the day, they saw they couldn’t cope. But by then, what has gone wrong has gone wrong. So, all the parliament is trying to do now, is to see how to steer the ship back on course.
So how many budgets will we have running in 2026?
What we will now have is the repealed and re-enacted 2025 budget…
You mean 2024?
No, 2025. Then 2024 still has some projects that have not been fully funded that have been completed. I think they are dealing with that. That is even where the contractors are crying that they must be paid. For 2025, there was no award of contracts, so technically, they don’t owe them for 2025. So for the 2026 budget we will work on it later and that can take effect after passage so that when 2025 lapses in March, we will now have one budget 2026 to run.
On non-funding of projects, as lawmakers, you are channels through which projects are taken down to the rural areas. How do you address the disappointment of your constituents who are eager to benefit from such projects?
The legislature is the anvil for every hammer of dissent in a democracy. Everybody vents their spleen on the legislature and the legislators themselves. Even more so, the federal legislators because I don’t think they put the kind of pressure they put on us on state assembly members. For most people in the constituency, we are the closest to the people because of course, besides them looking for us, we also go to look for them, else your constituents will say they no longer see you as opposed to somebody in the executive. If you are a minister, your votes didn’t make the man or woman a minister so if he’s going to even do some charity; you take it that it is charity. Whatever an elected representative brings, it doesn’t matter even if he comes from his private business. The constituents see it as a result of his or her investment through votes. And you know that sometime early this year, the buzzword was that we have been given one billion naira and for many constituents, Mr. President simply dipped his hand in the treasury and gave us one billion naira cash to put in our pockets, not even in the banks. But these are projects that members lobbied to put for the same constituents of theirs. The same projects have not been funded. I don’t see how many people, civil societies and even journalists come to talk about it. Even this one billion that we have castigated this set of people for, not one naira worth of project has been done. I’ve not read anywhere, anybody supporting the parliament. And some constituents are still with that notion that there is 1 billion naira in our pockets to be shared to them but you know, that is the dilemma of parliaments all over the world but to varying degrees. In Nigeria, the parliament is guilty until proven otherwise, if at all they have an opportunity to state their case. We keep explaining everything to them. I’m going to travel tomorrow and I’m taking some documents along. So, I like to engage. When they come, we talk about it and I ask them to check. They can Google themselves and read about it. We are all in this country, we all see when contractors protest and block the Ministry of Finance, not once, not twice, not thrice, you know. For those projects, I have done my bit. Some Nigerians will tell you that we shouldn’t even be bothered about projects, but we also know that we are judged by what we attract to the constituency. So if you do your best and put it in the budget and it is not implemented, you explain to them why.
Why are we not hearing the voice of opposition?
At least you are hearing my voice. Well, it is a time honoured cliche that the minority will have their say and the majority will have their way. And you know that we are called the opposition because we are in the minority from the outset and worse, the problems that beset the main opposition party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, split it down the line and when you have an internal crack, you don’t expect unity of purpose. So while one half was working for the APC administration, the other half was prevented from actually playing the role of opposition. And this was further made worse by the defections across the states. As the governors are going, they are also going with their house members. So when you keep weakening the voice of opposition, the few remaining voices will now be sounding like one crying in the wilderness. So that’s what has happened to the opposition. And for me, I think it is a wake-up call for all democrats that are not within the spell of the All Progressives Congress, because there appears to be a political spell cast on both former members and their new entrants. So, for every other person that the spell doesn’t have effect on, they need to congregate under one roof and try to save the Nigerian people.
What is happening with the constitution amendment? According to your schedule, by this time, the bills should have been transmitted to State Houses of Assembly.
No, it is in progress. The report has been laid and we have started the consideration of the report for Electoral Act amendment, and then the constitution amendment report ought to be voted upon but because of the disagreement between parliament and executive over the budget, we are not in the mood to take on voting for the constitution amendment because what happens in parliament, in one fit of anger, they could throw the baby away with the bath water and common sense dictated that we should tarry on the side of caution. If they’re able to complete work on the Electoral Act, at a point, we were to start this week but beyond the mood of the house, there was an issue of whether circulation of the document and all of that. But it is properly before the house for consideration and consideration doesn’t take more than one, two days.
The world is embracing renewable energy and here in Nigeria, many people are picking interest in the innovation. As chairman of Reps Renewable Energy Committee, what have you been doing to enable Nigerians to benefit from it?
The committee on Renewable Energy, like you know, is a new one. This is the very first time a committee is dedicated to green energy. Even from takeoff, a lot of green energy projects are spread across diverse ministries, departments and agencies of government. While we have oversight responsibilities for those projects, we also have other house committees that oversight those agencies. I like to give the example of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA). It was set up, you know, to take care of the underserved communities, especially those who are not hooked onto the national grid. So in essence, 80 per cent of what they do is renewable, whether it is a mini grid they are taking down, whether it is solar street lights, solar home systems, you know, all of these are under the purview of renewable energy. But because there is a committee that predates the House Committee on Renewable Energy that is dedicated to oversight the REA, you see that there is some friction in terms of proper oversight of the agency because, of course, whatever interventions come from outside, say the World Bank, European Union, The Netherlands, German government, whatever support they are giving to our renewable energy sector passes through REA which is the government agency that serves as implementing partner. But besides all of that, we are also charged with the responsibility of advocacy.
Let people become more aware of the fact that they could transition from the grid to solar home systems given the huge cost of getting grid electricity. We are also supposed to make laws and regulations that will incentivise the setup that will make it alluring for foreigners to invest in the sector. So we are doing all of that. We are also in the process of a green jobs bill especially to take care of women and our youth population. What does this mean? This means that for every green job Investment that is going to come into Nigeria, every project, we are pushing that this bill which somehow we have tagged the NIGJA bill, Nigerian Green Jobs Act, which eventually we would see how it becomes an Act, would make it possible that 40 per cent of jobs in that sector are dedicated to women and youth, and of course, People Living with Disabilities. With that, we will begin to grow the sector in the country. And of course, we also worked in collaboration with some non-state actors that have helped us to fashion out a curriculum, alongside the Nigerian Board for Technical Education so that renewable energy can be thought of as a module from secondary schools so that people can actually begin. It does two things. Apart from making our children catch up with the fad, it helps us to produce qualified personnel in the sector. Right now, if you go and get a solar system for your house, you might just call one roadside installer. I’m sure you would have heard of the fire incident that happened in Lagos. It was from the solar installation which they put in the basement. Solar installation ought to be in a place with ventilation. These incidents keep happening but as soon as we have qualified people who will be certificated to work in that sector, these things will be reduced. So these are some of the things we have been doing, as well as encouraging the private sector to come up with a green bank. Ours is to make the policies friendly for people to invest in that sector and if you have a green bank and for somebody, a low-income earner, actually, you know, the system is such that when you are deploying at first, if you have to spend N1.5 million to N2 million, the average worker may not have that amount to put down. But if you have a green bank at a single digit interest rate, why not? If they are taking N20, 000, which of course you are paying more than currently for grid installation; if you have such access to capital, you can transition and then at the end of the day, the grid may be left free for major big users like industries. Maybe we will begin to see cottage and big industries come back. So these are some of the things we’ve been doing.
Nigerians are not benefiting from the removal of fuel subsidy even as there are talks that more subsidies are being paid. What are your thoughts on this?
Well, you saved the best for the last. These are not mere talks. I also raised it in a statement the Labour Party caucus issued about two weeks back. Yes, we removed subsidies and in the past, when we even added some money to the price of petrol which is the major by-product of crude, we had always set aside, even under the military, the earnings to intervene in critical sectors of the economy. But what do we have? We have a situation where subsidy was taken off, more money came into the system through the sale of crude but instead of having such interventionist mechanisms, we decided to share all the money across the local government, states and the federal government. And so while the states took a chunk of the money, they are still doing the same work for which they got far less only three, four years back. And nobody is looking in that direction. That is why we have almost a crisis situation. But now, under a subsidy regime, within a 12-year period, we are said to have spent N18 trillion financing subsidies up until the coming of this administration in 2023. So if we say from 2011, we spent N18 trillion on subsidy, which whether you like it or not, benefited almost everybody because there was lower transportation cost, there were lower prices of foodstuffs, there were lower rents and the whole gamut of the economic cycle, but having removed subsidy and then the citizen is enduring the attendant hardships occasioned by removal of subsidy, we now spent, according to, allegedly, from the NNPCL audited account for 2024 alone, N17.5 trillion protecting pipelines, for pipeline security, and nobody wants to talk about it. So have we robbed Peter to pay Paul? My people say when you sell your dog and buy a monkey, you still have a squatting animal in your house. So, Nigeria, we are just like a barber’s chair that turns round; all motion, no movement. So we need to look into the issue of pipeline security and the huge sums of money that have been claimed to have been spent and that is one area I’m sure we will look into as we resume in January.
– The Sun