Hon. Ahmad Usman Babba Kaita represents
Kankia/ Ingawa/Kusada Federal Constituency of Katsina State and is chairman of
the House of Representatives Committee on Housing. In this interview with
PHILIP NYAM, he drumssupport for the Federal Government’s ban on
importation of vehicles through land borders, President Muhammadu Buhari’s
anti-corruption crusade and
also bares his mind on other issues.
The question:
The House of Representatives passed a resolution urging
the Federal Government to suspend the ban on importation of vehicles through
land borders from January 1, 2017. But you were opposed to this decision. What
informed your position?
In his reply, Hon. Ahmad said: “The crux of
the matter is that the recent announcement that cars will no longer be brought
into the country through land borders beginning from January 1, next year. The
House took the decision asking the Federal Government to suspend the policy and I say this is unfortunate and I will never
support my colleagues on an issue as this especially in this time of recession.
If we do not own up to our past mistakes, we would not be helping the country.
We are having socio-economic issues especially high rate of unemployment and
insecurity; poor standard of living.
Yet, we are dependent on importation of all
kind of goods into Nigeria. It makes no economic sense for a Nigerian to go to Europe and import a car and send it through
Cotonou, where he pays the tax, when we have all the facilities that our
neighbors have.
This government is laying out policies that
would address the socio-economic problems of this nation. Today, we are
opposing the ban on importation of cars through land borders but we have forgotten
what happened during the oil subsidy regime. We were shouting that if subsidy
was removed, Nigerians will die; but what happened after it has been removed? I
think we are better off because the era of fuel scarcity is gone and government is no
longer spending money on subsidy. So, more policies of this nature will be
unveiled because this government is blunt and sincere.
If the previous governments were able to address these issues
frontally, we would not have been in this mess today. We have inland container
terminals all over the country; a Nigerians can go to a German firm and put a
destination to Kaduna or Kano where we have these terminals. His container
arrives in Lagos and immediately cleared to Kano or Kaduna by following the
same processes. One, it eliminates the bottlenecks.
But if you are going to Cotonou to buy a car,
the minimum days required for the car to arrive here are five or six days. And
this is risky because the cars are not covered by any insurance.
We that are importing it from Europe end up paying taxes in Cotonou and
sometimes double tax, but we are not paying in Nigeria. So, it is only natural
for us to develop our ports and generate more employment;
look inwards and spur economic
growth in the
system. But as long as we keep going round the same issues due to political
reasons, we will not solve the problem. We cannot circumvent economic issues
for political reasons and expect good results.
Any country that does
that will certainly lick its wounds tomorrow. The history of countries is there
for us to learn from. For example, Germany, which is the economic hub of Europe, is doing the same thing. It
has good relations with its neighbours but when it comes to economic issues her
interest comes first. So, in this era of economic recession, we must look
inwards and take enduring decisions no matter how tough they may seem. That was
why I kicked against the motion
KATSINAPOST
Comments