‘No law requires FG to subsidise petroleum products’

Do you support the production of drivers’ licence and vehicle number plates by the Federal Road Safety Corps as well as the operation of the corps on all public highways?Notwithstanding the recent decision of a Federal High Court in Lagos which invalidated the new vehicle number plates introduced by the FRSC, I believe that the […]

Do you support the production of drivers’ licence and vehicle number plates by the Federal Road Safety Corps as well as the operation of the corps on all public highways?
Notwithstanding the recent decision of a Federal High Court in Lagos which invalidated the new vehicle number plates introduced by the FRSC, I believe that the corps lacks the power, ab initio, to produce even the old or existing number plates. This is because the authority which the constitution confers on the National Assembly in this regard is limited to “regulating traffic on federal trunk roads.” – See Item 63 of the Exclusive Legislative List of the Constitution.
 This provision clearly does not include production of either vehicle number plates or drivers’ licence. Similarly, the National Assembly is incompetent to enact, as it does in the FRSC Act 2007, that the operations of the corps shall “cover all public highways.”  Federal trunk roads are the operational limits of the FRSC under the constitution. A federal trunk road is as designated by the Minister of Works through a publication in the Federal Gazzette – Section 27 of the Federal Highways Act 1971; they are usually inter-state highways.
The Boko Haram sect has been uploading videos and circulating same on the internet, does it constitute an offence? Can it be criminalised?
Yes, you can criminalise that but enforcing it is another thing so as to control it effectively. So, it is pointless to make laws that cannot be enforced. It is impossible to regulate the internet. Because we are talking of an electronic phenomenon which no government in the world can control, this is something you can do with your smart phone. It is like trying to fetch water with a basket if you think you can stop people from uploading videos into youtube.
Does the National Broadcasting Commission have powers to regulate state government-owned television and radio stations?
This practice is supported by sections 2(i)(b)(ii), 9(i)(a),9(6) and 14(2)(a) of the National Broadcasting Commission Act 1992. I believe those provisions of the act are ultra vires the National Assembly under Item 66 of the Exclusive Legislative List, by virtue of which the assembly is restricted to regulating  “wireless, broadcasting and television other than broadcasting and television provided by the government of a state…” To the extent that every state in the federation owns at least one radio and television station, the implications of a successful challenge to this anomaly are obvious.
What is your take on the prosecution of pension fraud suspects?
It is commendable but the sad part of it in my opinion is that the venue is not the Federal High Court but the National Industrial Court. It has been the practice to try persons accused of committing fraud in relation to pension funds at the Federal High Court.  This is usually by virtue of the provisions of certain extant laws such as the Anti-Money Laundering Act, the EFCC Act, etc.  It will be recalled that a Federal High Court in Abuja convicted the infamous pension thief, John Yakubu, whose sentence of a fine in the sum of N750,000 (which he promptly paid) caused so much public anger that the CJN had to sanction the trial judge by suspending him without pay for a year. I believe that by virtue of sections 254C(1)(k) and 254C(5) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, the National Industrial Court possesses exclusive jurisdiction over cases of pension fraud. The question is: what is the implication of this for convictions already handed down by the Federal High Court, such as that of Yakubu referred to above? Well, they risk being invalidated or upturned on appeal.
Where do you stand on death penalty?
I belong to the conservative school of thought. I believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth because  there are certain heinous offences such as raping an under aged girl and killing her, some of these things are despicable, so I believe that certain offences are ideally punished with the death penalty, so to that extent it should be retained.
What are some of the anomalies you have spotted in the Nigerian law?
Generally speaking the vast majority of our laws are military era decrees as they came into effect prior to our constitution which came into force on 29 May 1999, so to that extent most of them are known as existing laws before the present constitution. And this constitution has made provision for modifying any such existing law which is inconsistent with it in order to bring it into conformity with the constitution and that is why we have structures such as the National Law Reform Commission at the federal level and the state law reform at the state level. So they have that mandate under the constitution Section 315 to modify any existing law which is inconsistent  with the constitution so they need to rise up to that responsibility.
On the inclusion of the private sector in the contributory pension scheme introduced by the Pension Reform Act     2004, that provision (Section 1, et seq) of the Act is ultra vires the National Assembly by virtue of Item 44 of the Exclusive Legislative List of the 1999 Constitution, which limits the National  Assembly to regulating only “pensions, gratuities  and others – like benefits which are payable out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund or any other public fund of the Federation.”
Given that the private sector is by far the largest contributor to the contributory pension scheme, the implications of this anomaly are only too obvious. If you know the volume of the contribution now , it is in trillions and the vast majority are from the private sector.
Another area of anomaly is the subsidisation of petroleum products. There is currently no law that obliges the government to subsidise anything including      petroleum products. What we have are two laws which merely empower the government to “fix” the prices of petroleum products. A subsidy is an amount of money paid by the government or an organisation to reduce the cost of a product in order to keep its price low.  The verb “fix”, on the other hand, in relation to prices, means “to take a decision in relation to the price of a product or service and not allow it to change”.  See Macmillan English Dictionary, 2nd Edition. Both Section 6(1) of the Petroleum Act 1969 and Section 4 of the Price Control Act merely empower the ministers of Petroleum and of Commerce, respectively to fix the prices of petroleum products; neither law imposes an obligation on the government to actually subsidise petroleum products.
 At any rate, both enactments are invalid because of the non-designation of petroleum products as essential commodities by the National Assembly. Such a designation is required by Item 62(e) of the Exclusive Legislative List of the constitution in order to validate any price control legislation. To that extent, both the Price Control Act, and Section 6 of the Petroleum Act, as well as the PPPRA Act and the Petroleum Equalization Fund Act, are ultra vires the National Assembly, invalid, null and void.