A member of the House of Representatives from Edo State, Sergius Ogun, shares with LEKE BAIYEWU his thoughts on his bills seeking to regulate medical tourism for public officials and public officers’ penchant for training their children abroad
The House has rejected your bill seeking to restrict public officers whose children school abroad. What inspired the bill?
I brought this bill in the 8th Assembly and it passed through second reading. It was scheduled for public hearing but that never happened. So, I had to lift a clause in our rule book to say that the committee (to which the bill was referred) should be discharged of the responsibility since it failed to do the public hearing, and that was granted by the Chairman of (the Committee on) Rules and Business. And then, it was slated for clause by clause consideration by the Committee of the Whole. Again, that never happened. It was slated for hearing one day and then, it was moved again to another day; and then, it never happened. Of course, the term of the 8th Assembly lapsed naturally. So, now, I re-presented it. Back to your question: my thinking is that if public servants, civil servants, legislators, political appointees, governors, presidents and their deputies send their children to school overseas, what is going to be the fate of public schools?
There is every tendency that you will not budget enough for public schools; there is every tendency that you are not going to compensate the lecturers well and that is what is playing out today. If the children of public servants – let me not say the rich; you can be in the private sector and make your money and pay your tax and you want to send your children abroad; by all means you can do that – are in our public schools, things might be different. When you play in the public space, you must make sure that public facilities are working well. But today, that is not the case. Public hospitals are not functioning well; public schools are not functioning well and the children of the poorest of the poor are not in the schools. Yet, we expect that there will be peace. There can’t be peace. Now, the Academic Staff Union of Universities is on strike. If we are able to navigate this and send them (students) back to the classrooms, they are going to have examinations and they will sit their examinations and that is it. So, when you are churning out half-baked graduates, what do you expect?
Some public servants have said their children are schooling within the country. Do you have any data to show that more or less of this class of Nigerians train their wards abroad?
That is not the issue now. I am not saying that people working in the public service should not send their children outside (the country); no, that is not what the bill is saying. The bill is saying that for you to do this, you have to subject yourself to some scrutiny – apply to the Minister of Education, attach your payslip, attach your bank balance (statement of account), attach your affidavit deposing to the fact that you can train this child abroad, attach your Code of Conduct Bureau form that you filled for declaration of assets. When you do this and apply that your child wants to school abroad; that you are able to fund the education, then they should go. If the minister and his team scrutinises this and say ‘fine, you are actually earning enough,’ or maybe you have a business on the side like farming, or your wife has a business; they can see that you have enough resources to take care of that, by all means, they will grant it. But if they check and confirm that you don’t have enough to do it, they will decline.
We know today that there are assistant directors…one of my colleagues from Kogi State, Hon Teejay (Yusuf), when we were debating the ASUU strike last year or the year before, said there were Grade Level 8 officers; civil servants, that had children overseas. I can even tell you now that Assistant Directors, Deputy Directors, even Directors; how much is their salary that they can afford to send two, three or four children overseas? And some have up to three wives who take turns to go and visit the children. How much is their salary to do that? That is even not what we are saying now. Just subject yourself to this basic scrutiny; display these documents, show them. If you have enough, really, you can be a civil servant but married to (Africa’s richest man, Aliko) Dangote’s daughter or relative, and you have the money to do it, by all means, go and do it. But it cannot be the case that you are a public servant, the public schools are not taken care of and your kids are schooling abroad. You will not know the state of the schools here. That is basically what I am saying. I am not saying that they cannot go; they can go, but show us the proof that you have enough money to take care of them.
Considering the political environment, do you think such regulation will work, when the minister belongs to the ruling party and members of the opposition apply to train their children in foreign schools?
Why not? It is not the individual; that is the mistake we make. If you have a minister that is APC and I am PDP, and because of political sentiment he does not approve my request when I have everything at my disposal, I can challenge it. I can sue. I can go to court to say that I have a company, I have declared it, my wife works in this place, this is our earning and I have applied to the minister for my kids to school outside but he has declined. I can sue. I can take it up beyond the minister. And if the minister, because he is APC, is allowing the children of APC members to go without meeting the criteria, a day will come when somebody will review it. We cannot say because people will misbehave today when they are in government, we will not do the right thing. When it becomes law, you can look into the law and do something. When there is no law… and I will give you an example: there is a bill that has been in existence since the 7th Assembly against medical tourism, it passed through second reading. I presented it again in the 8th Assembly, it failed. It seeks to amend Clause 46 of the Health Act that says that if you are a government official and you have to go for an emergency treatment outside the country, there has to be a referral board that will look at the case and will refer it to the Minister of Health or Commissioner for Health. That is the only opportunity that you have to go outside the country for medical treatment that the state will bear the cost.
Must it be an emergency?
It must be a health situation that cannot be catered to here (in Nigeria).
But the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), and other top government officials easily and frequently go for medical tourism…
Buhari was outside the country until he returned on Friday and that is what I am saying. That law does not have sanctions. It is a law that does not have sanctions. There is no penalty for flouting it. My bill is proposing an amendment to the Act to have sanctions. Now it has passed second reading – narrowly – and we are going to conduct the public hearing anytime soon. When that bill passes, whoever comes – we are not looking at Buhari today, in 2023, Buhari would have gone back to his village, leaders cannot do what Buhari is doing today. That is the effect of law. He cannot do what Buhari is doing today. Let us assume that the referral board is (made up of members of the) PDP or whichever party is in government then, we will ask to see what is the condition that Nigerian hospitals or doctors cannot attend to. (There is) Freedom of Information. We can go to court and say we want to know how much the President is spending. Is it his money? Is it state money? We will ask. So, when you have a law, don’t say anybody can abuse it. Anybody can go to court if it is law. If it becomes the law of the land, anybody can go to court to say ‘I was denied this opportunity because of political affiliations’ or ‘somebody granted this because of their political party membership.’ So, the first is for the law to be there; the second is for you to challenge it.
In the 8th Assembly, when your bill on education was debated at the second reading, the then Majority Leader, now Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, was among those who criticised the proposal that it was likely to infringe on human rights and it was unanimously rejected. Despite that, you have re-introduced the bill. Does it mean you’re not considering the protection of rights?
There is no human rights (infringement). Some of the things they raised then, they did not read the brief; they did not read the law; they did not do any of these things. These were the things I have pointed out to them now. If they read the bill and the brief, those who argued about human rights would not do that. There is no human right (abuse) here. I am not saying DON’T, it is regulation; not restriction. If you say you want to send your kids abroad, no problem. But these are the criteria: do you have the money? Let us see your payslip, bank account and assets declaration form that you submitted to the CCB and then, swear to an affidavit. That is what we are saying. There is no restriction; there is no human right (infringement) or anything like that. So, how can you be working in government and your salary is N250,000 per month, and you have four children overseas. How much are their flight tickets, for a start? The minimum it will take you to train a child abroad today for a year or a session is about $50,000. Go and do the calculation, with the exchange rate today. And we are here talking about corruption. Let us begin to tackle these things. This bill does not say you should not send your child to private school. It is to save the country. So, when somebody says it is on moral ground, it is not on moral ground. We will compel you to tell us where you got the money from. If you cannot prove it, then your child schools here. We have not even done private school. Someday, we will go to private school. Now that they are taking this position, we will do private school. If you must serve in government, make sure that your kids are attending government schools, so that those schools should be given attention. We all went to public schools and we turned out like this. If they were like this then, maybe we would not have gone to school at all.
If you said the bill was misunderstood in the 8th Assembly and it has been rejected again in the 9th Assembly, does it mean you did not lobby your colleagues over the years to allow it to pass?
In the last Assembly, the Speaker was the Majority Leader then. The Deputy Majority Leader then is now the Deputy Speaker and they were vehemently against it. What is the need to lobby?
Is it not about getting the numbers and not the opinion of a few?
It is the mindset and that is why they were telling me to step it down; that they were going to kill it in the chambers and they did tactically. Which lobby? Even on that day, I had a conversation with some people. There is a colleague that had two kids in Ukraine. The first thing I asked him was how the kids were and he said they were back. He asked about the bill and I said he should go through it. I said he could meet the criteria because I know him; he is from a rich family. He then said he would support it. We have even amended the constitution to even allow public servants to do business… in the last amendments that we passed. So, that is even more reason why we should bring this (bill on foreign education). If you are doing business and earning money from it, declare it. Let us know how much money you are making from the business that you will use to support the children. So, it is just a mindset. If you listened to the debates that day… one said there is already a CCB. Until you petition somebody, CCB will not just wake up and be looking for you. But we are saying to sanitise the system, comply with this. I am in the system and I am ready to comply. I am going to submit myself to scrutiny. Why are they running? It is not a matter of whether you lobby or who you lobby. There were people who voted for it but there are more people that do not think we should do this. Why? They are in government; because they are in government and it is their time. But guess what? Most of them will not even come back to the House.
You think it was rejected for personal reasons?
Of course! When you say human right, what is human right? We are not saying ‘Don’t’. If your child gets a scholarship, you will not even need to apply to the minister if it is full scholarship. However, if it is a partial scholarship, you would still have to apply. Why are we running away from doing this documentation? When you want to go to another country, you will go to the embassy, fill forms, say what you are going to do in the country, the period you will be there, when you are leaving the country, how much you earn, where you work, your grandfather, your grandmother and all other information, including how many kids you have. You give them all this information. They will look at them before giving you a visa. Now the government is saying we want to have a law that says if you want to go outside the country to train your children and you are a public servant – not everybody, let us know whether you have the capacity and the financial strength to train this child outside the country. That’s all. So, how does that affect human rights?
Are you thinking of amending the bill or will you re-introduce it in the next Assembly?
A couple of persons have approached me to say they want to re-present it. I will work with them for them to re-present.