Outspoken
lawmaker and influential politician from Bayelsa East, Ben
Murray-Bruce, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sell some federal
government media companies including NTA, VON, others.
Senator Ben Bruce
Speaking while making his contribution to the debate on the 2018
budget which started at the Senate on Tuesday, the senator representing
Bayelsa East, Ben Murray-Bruce, called on the President Muhammadu
Buhari-led administration to sell federal government-owned media
companies.
According to Premium Times, the lawmaker commonly known as the "Common Sense Senator",
said the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Federal Radio Corporation
of Nigeria, (FRCN), and Voice of Nigeria (VON), no longer make sense
and should be sold to relieve the budget of recurrent expenditures which
is over-bloated and should be trimmed.
He said; “We have downgraded our economy and the reason we are
downgraded is we cannot meet our revenue projection. It is understood
that this is a budget of consolidation; I would rather describe it as
budget of active imagination.
“If you look at the budget from 1960 to the present, you have
agencies that were designed for 1960, agencies that were designed for
the Nigerian civil war, agencies that were designed to suit some certain
conditions in life. 60 years later, those agencies still exist in the
budget.
“If you look at the budget, you will see some agencies, they
get recurrent expenditure, they pay salaries, they get houses,
computers, cars but they have no money to do any work. No money to do
any work, we pay salaries. Some agencies are so bloated it defies logic
but these agencies exist. So, we have 2.4 million people consuming
60percent of the recurrent expenditure of Nigeria, it doesn’t make any
sense.”
The senator listed some of the agencies he wants the executive to privatise. “I
called President Obasanjo on phone two days ago and he said to me; the
National Orientation Agency was necessary when we had no political
party, what is the value of the National Orientation Agency in today’s
world for instance? Yet billions of Naira is spent in that agency.
“Let us look at agencies that make no sense. FRCN, sell it to
the staff. FRCN has 8, 000 workers sell it to them. Sell NTA to the
staff. Voice of Nigeria. Who listens to Voice of Nigeria? Sell it. If
the staff want to buy, let them buy it. Set up a cooperative like
Awolowo did, sell it to them. If we spend 71 percent on recurrent
expenditure, we will never get out of this predicament we find
ourselves.”
The lawmaker also criticised the agreement reached by Nigeria and China in the construction of rail lines in the country.
“I sent a letter to the Minister of Transport and I asked him
to send us the contract he has with the Chinese. Let’s say we spend 10
billion dollars with the Chinese and they give us a loan what percentage
of that money is spent in the local economy? How many Nigerians are
employed? Which steel product are we producing locally?
“The last time I checked, rail lines were produced 300, 400
years ago. It’s not rocket science, we have Ajaokuta steel. So if we
have the capability of producing steel or we have the capability in slow
motion of making this work as Nigerians, we don’t need to borrow $10
billion from the Chinese and then give them back $10 billion, what do we
benefit in our economy?
“The United Nations projected that in February 2018, Nigeria
will have more people in poverty than in India. We have a population of
180 million people, India has 1.3 billion. Then, if we are going to have
more people in poverty than India, then we have to create jobs. Once we
create jobs we can then export our Naira to China, to India or some
other place.”
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