Femi Adesina Says ''Hope Cynics WillL One Day Be Humble Enough To Apologise To President Buhari....''

Mr Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President

 Muhammadu Buhari, was on Channels TV to field questions on state of the 

nation from Mr Seun Okinbaloye during Sunday Politics programme

(March 27, 2016).

excerptsQ: The queue for fuel is still persistent because I was on queue for

 5 hours to get N5, 000 fuel before I was able to refuel.A: You got fuel eventually. That is what matters at the end of the day. 

There is hope.

Q: We have seen too many queues at filling stations in less than a year of President Buhari’s administration. Isn’t it bothering this administration?A: You seem to forget very early that before this administration, it was like that. 

It is an endemic Nigerian problem and is not peculiar to this administration.

Q: Should we now live with it right now?A: If it means living with it for awhile, we have to, until it gets better

 because it is not going to be by a sudden flight, it is going to be a

 methodical and systematic process, but we will get there.

Q: It takes ordinary Nigerians to just have hope when they 

have to face the rigour of queuing for fuel for their ‘

I pass my neighbour’ generator to power their home appliances.
A: That is sad and regrettable, but it is the reality of the moment.

 We have to live with it for awhile but we know that better days will come.

Q: You have heard the comment of the Minister of State for 

petroleum, Mr Ibe Kachukwu about the fact of the availability 

of fuel and a number of Nigerians have taken him up for it. 

Even the national leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed

 Tinubu has said that his statement is not acceptable,

 when will the queues go away?
A: The Minister is the one who has the authority to give the actual position,

 he has given it and I think, it is what we should believe.
Q: That the queue will stay another month?A: He has more brief….
Q: What is the official brief from the President?A: There won’t be another official brief apart from what he has said.

Q: The President should have a better brief because he is the 

chief executive of the state. People are suffering across board.

 In some states, fuel is N130 per litre above N86 official rate.A: Once you don’t have a control of all the variables, such things are 

bound to happen. We lived in this country 16 years of PDP, even

 before then, there was the military rule, the process of refining 

petroleum locally was virtually short- circuited .The refineries 

were there and were allowed to run aground and when you don’t have the 

variables under control, anything can happen. It used to be that NNPC imports

 60 % petroleum products, at a point it crept up to 70% , now it is almost

 100 per cent. When a situation like that is on ground, anything can happen. 

Once, there is a slight hitch, it throws the process into a tailspin. 

Once you don’t have complete control, things like that can happen.

Q: The President is the father of the nation and if your children are

 going hungry, he should be able to tell them ‘wait till night,

 I will bring you food’, when are we expected to see relief in

 our filling stations?
A: The Minister of Petroleum said in weeks and that amounts to May.

 I think the Minister spoke with candour, maybe he didn’t weigh the 

words but he said the truth at the end. Would people rather prefer 

him to say in two weeks and it doesn’t happen? The month of May

 is how many weeks away? Maybe about five weeks. I think,

 the Minister should not be crucified for his statement.

Q: So, Nigerians will suffer for another few weeks and probably 

buy it higher from people who are hoarding it?
A: If that came from the Minister of Petroleum, we should believe him and 

I think that word was modified thereafter, when he said it would be a

 couple of weeks, not May. The truth of the matter is that Nigerians

 including me may need to wait a while more before normalcy returns 

to filling stations. But will normalcy return? Yes, it will. Will Nigerians

 get out of this rough patch eventually? Yes, we will get out of it.

Q: The President has apologised to the nation a few times on some 

key issues and Nigerians are wondering if apologies will solve some 

of these issues? And some critics in some quarters have said that 

Nigeria needs a strong direction in terms of economic recovery 

policies, especially some of the governors.
A: I know what you are driving at. Some of the governors have a right to their 

opinions, we don’t join issues with them but then, if the President apologies to 

the nation, it is a problem and if he does not apologise, it is another problem.

 With Nigerians,head or tail, you often lose. Would you rather that he does

 not apologise when things have gone wrong like that…

Q: Nigerians will never want him to apologise but for him to fix the

 problem. Which is much better.
A: Because Nigerians always want a magic wand and it does 

not necessarily work like that. …
Q: The president and his party during campaign promised 

almost magic…things that are unrealisticA: Mark your own words… almost magic. But not magic.
Q: The president promised that by end of 2019, there will 10,000 

megawatts, looks like magicA: it doesn’t look so
Q: is that realistic?
A: Don’t forget that about four weeks ago, Nigeria had 5,070 

megawatts of electricity with a promise that by December 2016, 

another 2,000 megawatts would be added, which will make it 7,070

 megawatts. If at the end of 2016, we have 7,000 megawatts,

 what makes 10,000 megawatts not possible by 2019?

Q: That 5,070 that you mentioned because we are back to less than 3,000 and many Nigerians are not aware.
A: You know what happened? After we had that 5,000, we had a vandalism

 in Bayelsa, we lost about 1,600 megawatt, thereafter in Delta, we lost another 

1,000 megawatt. If some Nigerians are crying over power outage, they should

 hold those people who vandalised the installations responsible. But 10,000 

megawatts as the president has promised is a possibility by 2019.

Q: Again, does this nation have a clearly defined economic

 policy direction?A: Now, let me illustrate with this, you have a government in 

which the number 2 man, the vice president heads the economic team,

 the finance minister, Trade and finance minister, Minister

 for budget and National planning, Central Bank governor, 

Economic Adviser to the president, and yet people still 

keep asking for an economic team? What else do they need?

Q: The economic direction is what Nigerians are asking for?A: Yes, are they not the people that will fashion out the direction?

Q: We want the direction and the average Nigerian 

doesn’t want to know the people in the team but 

where we are headed to as a nation?A: It is clear were we are headed to as a nation and those

people manning the economy will tell you where we are headed. 

I am not an economist but I know that the direction in which 

they are headed is that there are luxuries that we cannot 

continue to indulge in, those luxuries are being weeded out. 

Essential forex is being warehoused and saved in the real sector for more

 productive usage.

Q: After the Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka asked for an 

economic summit, few days later, there was an announcement of 

economic retreat. Would you say that retreat was fruitful at the

 end of the day?
A: I will just like to correct the sequence that you just went through.

 Prof Soyinka asked for an economic summit but what happened was

 not what he asked for because before he asked for a summit, the National

 Economic Council had decided to hold a retreat. And don’t forget that the

 president at an interview in Qatar had said if someone people want to sit and

 hold a summit, the government is not averse to it. But what happened last

 week was not what Prof. Soyinka canvassed for. The National Economic 

Council had decided to hold that retreat before Prof. Soyinka spoke.

Q: Do you think that retreat was fruitful?
A: Well, to the best of my knowledge (I was there at the opening ceremony,

 the other two days, I was not.)A report is going to come out on that summit

 and thereafter, we will be able to judge. I know where you are driving at 

because a governor has been saying some things and he has rights to

 what he has said. We know those who were at that summit are not 

frivolous people.

Q: You are saying it wasn’t a jamboree?A: It is not by any means, because this government is not given to 

anyway.
Q: How much was spent on that summit?A: I heard a ridiculous amount that somebody mentioned, let him justify it,
Q: N250 million has been spent so far on the retreat…A: The person who alleged that that amount was spent should justify it.

 (It may as well be N1 billion or any figure but let him justify it.)
Q: Very interesting. But again, we understand that the budget 

has been passed at the National Assembly, has the President

 received that budget?
A: You need to know the process. When the National Assembly passes a budget,

 which was done on Thursday, a clean copy would then be communicated to 

the President .Of course ,if the presidency had sent a budget, which was reduced 

by N17 billion, he would need to study it to see things that were taken out. 

And then, if some things had been juggled, you need to see and be sure

 that you agree with the juggling.
Q: This clean copy, you are talking about has it been 

communicated to the president?
A: You know that was done on Wednesday, and Thursday was the

 last working day for the week. (I am not quite sure whether it had

 got to the president as at Thursday)
Q: Look at the current economic reality that we face as a nation, 

oil production rate, oil benchmark, the dollar system, which are 

some of the spine of the budget that was passed. The dollar still 

at N300 at the parallel market, if you look at it, do you think that 

the president is not losing the steam from the perspective of the 

average Nigerian on the street.
A: Losing steam as how?
Q: In terms of promises made before the election and people

 have been waiting for almost a year and the budget is just passed. 

People are just wondering that for almost a year, we have not really 

seen the dividend that has been promised by the APC government.
A: You are not likely to see the dividend within a year because it is a four –

year mandate. If you are in a long distance race, you pace yourself.

 You may start with a burst of energy and stop mid-way. And those 

who have paced themselves properly will pass you along the way and breast

 the tape before you. It is a four-year mandate, this is the 10th month and 

there is still 38 months to go. We need to be a lot realistic. I just pray that 

those who have been cynical and critical will be humble enough to eat 

their words when they begin to see things happening.

Q: So Nigerians should begin to see things in a big way?A: I can assure you
Q: He travels so much, isn’t it, averagely even more than President 

Barack Obama, when he became president of the United States?
A: if there are trips that are essential, why not?
A: There are trips for the vice president, where a president can be 

represented and he often gets represented. But there are other places 

where you expect to see Mr President. Our president is not a frivolous man.

 Let me tell you something, in September last year(2015), the

 United Nations Assembly was going to hold on Salah day, 

the president was in Katsina state, he prayed in the morning, 

they slaughtered the ram, by 2pm on that same day, 

the president took off for New York. Now, would he not have loved to stay

 with his family for Sallah? But that is the sacrifice the man is making for the 

country.
Q: Nigerians are impatient and waiting for the dividend

 of democracy
A: The dividend will come but I hope and pray that when they do come, 

people who are so critical will be humble enough to admit that they were wrong,

 and say sorry, Mr President. We got it wrong but you got it right.
Q: Will president Buhari run for election in 2019?
A: That is his decision to take.

Couldn’t he have sent his vice?