Lagos Assembly To Set Up Committees Soon

The Majority Leader of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon. Ajibayo Adeyeye, has said the House committees which were dissolved almost two years ago would be constituted soon.

Hon. Adeyeye, who spoke with Assembly Matters on the seeming delays in the constitution of the committees recently, said there was no real delay in the constitution of new committees.

“You recall that this House was constituted on 4 June, 2011. Shortly after that, some of us travelled out for a conference. Again, after that, majority of us travelled for another conference.

“Then we went on recess for six weeks and we only resumed few days ago. Any moment from now, committees would be constituted, he said.

He also expressed support for the recent move by the Federal Government to remove fuel subsidy, saying that the action would open the space for selling petroleum product.

“It is a form of deregulation which does not necessarily amount to increase in the cost of the product. But even if it does, I think the labour and civil society groups are wrong as they are not analysing the economic indices very well.

“If you observe, fuel subsidy is not for the poor but the rich. An average Nigerian has more than one car and the ripple effect of withdrawing the fuel subsidy is not necessarily going to be the same for the ordinary man on the street who uses public transport and those riding in big cars.

“We are misplacing our priority and government cannot make everything free. We see a situation where our government is spending between 60 and 70 per cent of our wealth on less than five per cent of the population.

“The government has also told us that most times its recurrent expenditure is about 65 per cent. This means that our Federal Government spends 65 per cent of our wealth on less than five per cent of the population. It is now a case of the hen and egg, which comes first?

“Let the Federal Government withdraw the subsidy and let us wait and watch to know what they have done with the subsidy withdrawn,” he said.

“But if we say it should not withdraw the subsidy, we would be riding to catastrophe and we are going to grind to a halt one day where the government too will fail because the government has practically no money to provide infrastructure since all the money is spent on recurrent expenditure,” he said.

According to him, the country needs to start moving away from the “old order” adding that there was nowhere in the world where petroleum products would sell for the same amount within a country.

“It is something we really need to look into. When is the private sector going to take charge of the economy like it is in other parts of the world?” He asked while advising the government not to involve itself in business.

The lawmaker illustrated his argument with the story of NITEL, which is now moribund.

“NITEL had infrastructure in every state of the country, but today, we have no NITEL because of government involvement. To me, the government should not be involved in the refineries.

“Instead they should be given to people who can manage them effectively. We should stop talking about subsidy when the roads are bad and hospitals are even lesser than mere consulting rooms,” he said.