Babatunde Fashola - Nigeria's Minister for Power, Works and Housing HARDtalk

the Olympic torch procession. It was the second protest

the Olympic torch procession. It was the second protest of

the Olympic torch procession. It was the second protest of the

the Olympic torch procession. It was the second protest of the day.

the Olympic torch procession. It was the second protest of the day. It

the Olympic torch procession. It was the second protest of the day. It is

the second protest of the day. It is time

the second protest of the day. It is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk.

Not so long ago, international investors here in London saw Nigeria

as one of the most promising investment opportunities

in the world.

Well, things change pretty quickly.

The slump in the price of oil has hit the Nigerian economy hard.

The twin curses of insecurity and corruption have not gone away.

My guest today is one of the so-called super ministers,

Babatunde Fashola.

Will Nigeria ever fulfil its potential?

Babatunde Fashola, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you for having me.

Let's start by reflecting on where Nigeria is today.

Just last year you had a democratic transition.

The world applauded.

There were very high hopes for the presidency of Mr Buhari.

Many of those hopes have been dashed.

Why do you think that is?

I disagree.

Hopes have not been dashed.

Change, which was the mandate upon which the president

was elected, is not an event, it is a process.

People are beginning to see how that process evolves.

It is evolving also in an era where there is a global economic

downturn and there will be local consequences.

As I have argued, at a time when there was a lot of prosperity,

there was money to spend, we made some now regrettable choices.

We didn't spent on investment, particularly on infrastructure.

Therefore, we consumed all our extraordinary income,

as I choose to call it.

Therefore, when there is a global downturn, the consequences will be

diverse for each nation.

No nation is immune from what is happening now.

People who are better able able to weather the storm now are those

who invested wisely, in educational assets,

security assets, transportation assets, power generation assets.

It doesn't make them immune, but they were better withstand it.

It is like preparing for winter, really.

At the end of every winter there will be a glorious spring.

I suppose it depends how fierce and how horrible,

the winter is before you get to spring.

Right now, much of the world's attention when it comes to Nigeria

is fixed on the north-east of your country and the fact that,

while you, as a minister responsible for building the infrastructure

for a 21st-century country, you actually, in the north-east

of your country have at least 2 million people who,

according to the United Nations,

are living on the brink of starvation.

How can that be?

First of all, again, I have issues with those numbers.

There are people who are displaced, but the point to make also

is that there is progress in the north-east.

The president has fulfilled his mandate to take in control

of the security challenges of the north-east.

If you move from a situation of war...

As far as the world is concerned he hasn't delivered on his promise

because he very clearly promised to deliver victory over Boko Haram

by the end of 2015 and here we sit in the summer of 2016

and there are still clashes, still bomb attacks, still Boko Haram

atrocities committed against your own civilian population

long after this war is supposed to be over.

What you will see today is the emergence of an unconventional

enemy of the human civilisation evolving on the streets of some

of the most sophisticated parts of the world, in Europe,

and leaders are really challenged.

Now in terms of restoring order to the north-east, I believe

that the evidence that speaks today of people are beginning to trade

a keen on the streets, construction going on that I am

aware of, roads being built, means that water has returned.

I don't know about order.

Dealing with...

The MSF chief in Borno said we are talking about areas

in which 40% of the children have severe acute malnutrition.

It is a truly dramatic situation.

In my whole career, she says, since 1999, I have never seen

anything like it.

That is the reality in your country today.

If you have prolonged war where women and children have been

displaced by a mindless group of terrorists,

some of the aftermath of that war will be that it is children

who are vulnerable, who have malnutrition,

who will be out of schools, who will have health issues.

Securing law and order is the first leg to being able to provide

for those children, to put them back, to relocate families back

to their home state and to help them get on with their lives.

That is work in progress.

Provision of those basic services requires a strategy,

it requires forward thinking.

I would put it to you that your government,

you are the Public Works Minister apart from anything else,

your government, according to the fiercest critics

in the country, the chairman of the State Emergency Managing Agency

until 2015, he now says looking at the north-east of your country,

this crisis is the result of, quote, total neglect and carelessness

on the part of the government.

The result that you see today is the result of the total neglect

by the government that was in charge that did not frontally address

the issues since 2010.

Allowed it to fester, pretended that it didn't exist

and what you see today is that from a period when these criminals

took over state apparatuses, police formations, local

governments, hoisted their flags, they are at a point where

they are targeting vulnerable citizens and markets and places.

That is the unconventional nature of the warfare that we are dealing

with today, an enemy that is ready to die,

not an enemy that wants to survive.

You would agree that that enemy is not defeated.

Despite what Buhari promised.

The enemy is in retreat.

It is now targeting very vulnerable people, places where people get

on with their lives, marketplaces, schools and so on and so forth.

The agencies I have talked about, The UN, MSF, they say,

and it is their phrase not mine, that there are millions of people

on the brink of starvation.

Can you guarantee to me, as one of the so-called super

ministers in your government, that those people, including

hundreds of thousands of children, will not be allowed to starve?

I guarantee that it will not happen.

This is going to happen and is already happening as a result

of the government taking responsibility at national levels,

state governments taking responsibility and the civil

society, voluntary agencies coming together and providing support,

restoring the office of the Vice President.

There is an officer and a team of people focusing on getting life

back to normal for these vulnerable women and children in terms

of education, in terms of medicines, in terms of food supplies.

In the last three or four months, the president ordered relief of food

support from our strategic reserves of agriculture.

We are mindful of the problem.

Let's move on to national economic issues and talk money.

The most profound economic problem in Nigeria is that you are super

reliant on oil exports.

95% of your export revenues come from oil.

70% of your government revenues come directly from oil.

The price of oil has plunged for the past two years.

That has left all of your economic planning in ruins.

No, I disagree.

We used to be reliant on oil proceeds.

Your not qurelling with my figures, are you?

You are still super reliant on oil.

I quarrel with the figures.

As this government has indicated very clearly,

its budget will be driven by resources from taxation and any

serious government, any forward-looking government,

like this government, must understand that the boom

from commodity prices is extraordinary income.

You cannot plan a future a round extraordinary income that

you do not control the cycles of.

Yes, while we might have made some poor choices about how

we spent that money, clearly this administration has

a focus now that will deal with our funding issues

from taxation, corporate taxation and all of that, and unlike in

the past when we were budgeting to earn $70 per barrel of oil,

this was a conservative would support a budget

of $38 poor barrel.

Even at that time it was trading north of that.

It is just about the price, it is about the capacity

and delivery of the oil you have got.

For example, we talked about security in terms

of Boko Haram, you now security issues in the delta

with a new group, the so-called Delta Avengers who are attacking

pipelines and again, for you as a minister responsible

for infrastructure in your country, how can you defend the fact that

Shell, Chevron, key producers have had to stop production

because a new brand of militants are destroying the infrastructure?

I understand that there are problems there now and there are people

who are aggrieved and who have chosen a very unencouraging outlet

to vent their anger but it is not something that will endure for ever.

They say their campaign will get worse.

They say you haven't seen anything yet.

That is not unusual to hear from a group who want to project

and be seen to be taken seriously.

I know we are working hard to engage with them and to secure,

because there is an obligation first to secure the assets there.

Those are national assets.

I want you to address reality.

The insecurity has cost you roughly a quarter of your oil output.

Without a doubt, we have lost some oil.

We have lost some projected revenues, but are coming back.

You sit with me...

Production is improving.

Until the next round of attacks.

You sit with me as the minister responsible for delivering more

efficient and expansive power systems, roads, infrastructure.

That is your job.

The government doesn't have the money.

The oil price has dropped, oil production has dropped

because of the new insecurity.

Where are you going to find the money to deliver

on all of your promises?

We are funding our budget already.

Last month we paid out about 63 billion naira to contractors

who have not been paid for two years.

Certainly, we could be in a better place but we are making progress.

You need to make more than a bit of progress,

you need to go a long way, particularly in power generation.

I didn't say we made a bit of progress, we are making

a lot of progress.

I am saying a bit because I am looking at the figures.

In the context of where we were coming from,

paying out 63 billion naira to contractors who haven't been paid

for two years is the best way to start to get the infrastructure

back in place, to get people back to work,

get production going and begin to rebuild the economy.

That didn't happen in the whole budget cycle from the government

we inherited the administration from.

This is the first quarter performance.

Here is what the senior lawyer working for the Centre

for Social Justice in Nigeria.

He says we are not seeing a single contract mobilising.

Delays have meant work on road, power and other programmes

is stalled or coming to a halt altogether.

I don't know when that statement was made but if you go

onto the major highways, contractors have moved back

and they are working and they are re-engaging people.

You said by the end of this year you would be getting

to 6000 megawatts.

There have been times in the recent past when your entire generating

system has actually not even delivered 2000 megawatts.

You are never going to meet your targets.

Our generation capacity has reached 5000 megawatts.

Of course there have been sabotages.

You have the sabotage, you have outages.

You have a grid that is obsolete.

The grid is not obsolete, it is being rebuilt and expanded

and developed as I speak, at the moment, and there is a lot

of work going on since I came on to expand and

strengthen the grid.

It is being upgraded.

There is a lot of work going on.

We are running repairs, trying to make what we inherited work.

I am optimistic that it will work.

You seem to be a little undecided how over the next ten or 20 years,

you will deliver this massive upsurge in power generation.

At one point you talked about renewables, you said solar

was the future for Nigeria and recently I got

this quote from you.

We are going to do a lot more gas and a lot more coal.

We really feel that coal has to be part of our mix.

It isn't right now, whereas in South Africa and the US

there is 30% coal.

We need to do it too.

Did you not fallow the Paris Climate Summit, did you not buy

into the idea that we are all the decarbonsiing

the global economy?

I have made the point repeatedly that, if we have the capacity

to deliver coal, if we have the capacity to deliver gas,

if we have the capacity to deliver hydro and solar power,

why should we be limited?

What is important is the mix and the content that we produce

and there are nations who have very little capacity to deliver

any sort of power...

You will use more coal power then?

We will.

Never mind decarbonisation?

We will.

We have to survive first.

We are part of the global economy and we will also

keep our commitments.

Let's talk now about delivery.

You have a strategy and you are very ambitious with your targets

for power generation over the next 15 or 20 years.

You tell me you will use all of the available means

to do it, including coal.

There is one overriding problem we haven't discussed and it

covers your sectors, it covers the whole economy

and that is corruption.

Corruption, and Mr Buhari has said it himself,

it is killing Nigeria.

Well, I think the clear evidence is that we have done better

in the way that we enforce law and order.

I think that corruption is a symptom of a larger problem of noncompliance

and, therefore, I would focus on law and order and in such a way that

compliance becomes the way of life and people who fail to comply really

are those who scandalise us.

For me, there is no corruption free country.

It is a clash between law and order, really, and enforcement

and the lack of it.

The more of that we see in our procurement process

and our way of life, in how open and transparent we do

things, the better off we will be.

If it comes to enforcement, Nigeria must be at the bottom

of the global league table.

I wonder how you felt when a short distance from here,

a few short months ago, the Prime Minister David Cameron

saw your boss, President Buhari, entering a room and said

he thought, privately, though it was on a microphone,

we have some leaders of fantastically corrupt

countries coming to Britain.

Nigeria and Afghanistan is possibly the two most corrupt countries

in the world.

I think that the former Prime Minister was speaking tongue

in cheek, because if this country...

I don't think he was.

Because if this country plays host to stolen property, as it were,

there is a strong moral issue, and if I remember my criminal law,

it is as much an offence to receive stolen property as to actually steal

it, and I think all of those who make those kinds of comments

and become bastions and harbour the proceeds of corruption

need to do everything.

That is in the past.

The president has said clearly that he is not interested

in an apology, he is interested in having the money back.

If you have something that is stolen, please give it back.

The president recently said, because he has been seen,

he fought the election on an anti-corruption ticket,

he said recently that I am worried that the expectation of the public

is yet to be met by the judiciary with regard to the removal

of delay and the toleration of delay by lawyers.

What he is saying is the judiciary is not doing its job and coming down

like a tonne of bricks on people, very powerful people,

who are still, in your administration, conducting corrupt

practices.

I don't think the judiciary isn't doing its work,

I think all of us understand that there must be a process

to prosecution and you cannot break the law to enforce the law

and the right of the people, constitutionally guaranteed rights,

must be respected in this and that is not a local problem.

It is also an international problem.

All of the proceeds of crime held abroad are also tied up in one form

of judicial process.

Prosecutors actually get rewarded for what they seize.

For recovering assets, that is really important,

but to actually crack down on the perpetrators

in your own country, that is down to you guys

and the question is if you are serious.

We are doing that...

Transparency International has you close to the bottom

of the league table for corrupt nations right now and their chief

coordinator in West Africa said, ending the impunity

is about political will, because those benefiting most

are amongst the ranks of the leaders.

People, may I say, such as yourself in government,

you are the guys who many Nigerians feel are still implicated.

I think the government has shown clear will.

I think you will see in the number of charges that are being brought

against people who were hitherto thought to be above the law.

Can you name me anyone who was thought to be above the law

who has been brought before a court?

I think the evidence, former security advisers,

all of those party chiefs and all of that.

The point to make is that, locally, by ratings,

the people of Nigeria think the president has walked his talk

in terms of corruption, how many people you ultimately see

in jail is one thing and the point must be made very clearly as well

that there are many interests here involved.

The interest to see people convicted, the interest to recover

and the interest to ensure that it won't happen again and all of these

are going on simultaneously.

You sound like...

The people believe there will be consequences for action.

Do you think the people of your country really trust

people like you?

I think they do.

Even when they read, and you were a popular

governor of Lagos provence, you got re-elected, so you had

a good political track record, but after you left office in 2015,

there were serious questions asked about you.

You spent 70 million naira on upgrading your website.

You spent 600 million naira on a German engineering firm coming

to improve the car park outside your official residence.

People began to wonder weather even you had been abusing

the public trust.

Yes, the point, my response, I havemade my response

on those matters.

If anyone truly believes I acted in any improper way and I have made

the point today, we need to be circumspect and very careful.

Transparency is all very good, but we need to also understand that

some people work very hard in their lives to their reputation

and people who make those kinds of allegations must be ready

to stand up and verify them.

I mean Minister, here...

Nobody has accused me...

Most people in your country earn less than $2...

Nobody has accused me, the body has accused me

of privately benefiting myself.

There were allegations that I think, at the very best, were a clear

misunderstanding of how procurement processes work.

Let me end then by asking you, as one of the most powerful

ministers in the government...

I am just a minister.

You have three portfolios so you are doing very well.

That doesn't make me powerful.

It makes me responsible.

However you want to put it, let me ask you this...

I have been travelling to Nigeria for HARDtalk for many years now,

more than a decade.

Every time I go I hear Nigerians telling me that this

is going to be our time, we are going to be the economic

powerhouse of Africa and yet, look at the reality today,

foreign direct investment is down.

It seems the Ivory Coast, one of your neighbours,

is actually more successful in attracting inward investment

than you are.

Oil output is down.

Angola has overtaken you as the biggest oil

producer in Africa.

Look at various metrics, Nigeria is failing to fulfil its potential.

My response to foreign direct investment is simple,

no country survives on their own investment,

butt every country thrives on the investment of their people.

As long as Nigerians are responding and investing in our economy,

I think we will turn this corner.

As I said in the opening part of the discussion, there

is a global downward trend.

National growth projections have been revised downwards and,

in these very difficult global time, there will be

diverse local consequences.

Nigeria is underperforming.

We are not underperforming.

We are facing a turbulent time, a difficult tide, but we will come

through and I see that happening within a shorter time

than a longer time.

We have the end there but, Babatunde Fashola, thank