How to Develop This Economy-Ben Bruce

Senator Ben Murray-Bruce representing Bayelsa East Senatorial District spoke during the debate on 2016 Budget at the upper chamber. His words;
Attacking the past governments is not the answer. Let take petrol for instance. All successive governments have made the wrong argument about deregulation. The argument has been wrong. Let me give you a simple example.

When I worked with President Obasanjo, any time he deregulated or raised the price of petrol, transporters doubled transport fares and the poor man suffers.

The purpose of which President Obasanjo was to find a balance was because a regulated system only serve the rich and not the poor. Only in Abuja and Lagos you find petrol at the normal price, everybody buys at higher price in other places.
What is the price of a litter of petrol, that is a wrong argument, the real argument government should make is what is the cost of transportation.
If you live in Ekiti and you are going to work and you spend N100 and you subsidize the fare nobody will protest on the street.

I have done the calculation and have the figure of every state. Lagos will consume only 30 per cent of a subsidized Mass Transit Policy.
A Mass Transit Policy in Nigeria will cost not less than N100 billion annually with Lagos taking over 30 per cent of that.
If President Buhari is to deregulate today and has a Mass Transit Policy and transporter were paid the difference, which is no more than 10 per cent of what we spend today importing petrol nobody will be on street protesting.
And let us remember that diesel has always been deregulated, good and services, the prices will not increase, the only price that will increase is intercity transportation, which means if you go to Ikeja from Obalende and you spend N200, there will be no protest.

South Africa has the Mass Transit Policy, America, British has the same, and Germany has the same. Major cities and nobody goes on the street.
Ask anybody in London about the price of petrol, nobody knows, ask in South Africa nobody knows but in Nigeria everybody knows because we have made the wrong argument. We must make the right argument and support masses of this country.
If we save half a trillion and it goes to capital development, we would truly develop this nation. Secondly a man paying 18, 000 is paying slave wages. The cost of running government is not a poor man who earns N18, 000 a day but the directors, the permanent secretary, the most powerful people in the country who earn big money and allowances.
If you follow Orasanye report, we can contract government at the top. We will save a fortune. If the federal government continues to collect disproportional amount of the budget to run the government and not given the money to the sate we will not solve this problem. Most of the problems we are facing happen at the state level.

Federal Government collects about 50 per cent, why can’t we shrink that to 25 per cent and let the state have more money to develop the economy. They are closer to the grassroots.
And if you want to develop housing, for the minister of Housing to say he will develop 50, 000 housing is counterproductive. He should come up and say he will develop 5 million houses. The way we grow and develop does not help anyone.
Let us take a position and solve the problems of this economy. If you want to borrow N50 Trillion let us borrow N50 Trillion and develop this economy and industrialize Nigeria overnight. Borrowing N2 trillion doesn’t solve this problem.

Nigeria has the capacity to grow, Nigeria has the resilience to develop.
Nigerians are the most hardworking, industrious people in the whole of Africa, yet we do not make the progress to help this economy.
I take a principal position that this budget is a right step in the right position. And let me say this, I have never met an economist, I have never met an accountant, I have never met anyone who can adequately predict the price of oil tomorrow morning.
So a budget of $38 per barrel is fine for now, it’s irrelevant anyway because I’m told that it will get to $20, some say $50. It doesn’t matter. The Minister of Finance has done a great job, I’m not here to criticize anyone but what I’m saying is this, we must review the budget every three month and adjust it to reality.

For me it is very important that we get to the market and borrow N50 trillion and industrialize Nigeria. It doesn’t matter who the president is.