Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, former Senate Majority Leader, served in the Senate for 12 consecutive years. When he left in 2015, he also left the Peoples Democratic Party for the All Progressives Congress under circumstances he described as “a forced exit,” and was promptly appointed the Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission. Recently, he served as the secretary of the just-concluded All Progressives Congress convention committee. In this interview, he spoke with Sam Akpe and Ayo Esan about the NDDC’s moribund master plan, why Buhari deserves a second term, why he left the PDP, and other issues.Excerpts:
You were in the Senate for three consecutive terms. Is there anything you are missing there?
One has moved on. I am facing another challenge. But I remember my time in the Senate with a lot of nostalgia and the fondness we experienced. But I am somewhere, doing something else.
So how is it going at the NDDC?
Things are moving on well. Of course, we have challenges, quite a number of challenges. We have funding issues, we have governance issues. We also have attitudinal issues. So we are trying to tackle them in a very systematic way. There are important issues bothering directly on public perception of the institution. Our process and system are not transparent; they are opaque. We are trying to tune up our process and our system so that there would be more clarity and more transparency in what we are doing. We have stepped up our collaboration with stakeholders: the governors of the Niger Delta states. We are trying to re-design how we do things and now we are in partnership with the governors on big projects. One, we just signed with the government of Ondo State on Ibeju-Lekki road, which is a coastal road that will link Ondo State with Lagos State. There is one we are working on now with Delta and Edo states. So, we are now creating a new kind of synergy or relationship with the states. But as you know, reforms take time when you have entrenched attitude.
Can you explain what you mean by entrenched attitude?
The NDDC has been used to doing things in a certain way and I don’t believe that the way they have been doing things will allow for the kind of efficiency and transparency that one would like to see. You see, when we came in, we had about several thousands of contracts from all sources. Even the Government of the United States of America, with its capacity and technology, would not be able to manage that quantum of contracts. So we started off by terminating or taking some of them off our books to streamline them. And if you look at our 2017 Budget, we made allowance for only 30 per cent new projects. The 2018 budget will make allowance for only 20 per cent new projects. So, you can see that we are giving more attention to ongoing or existing projects and far less attention to new projects because we want to take all those old projects off our books before we now begin to attend to new projects.
When we started having tenure gods in PDP, I needed to prove to them that there was an overall being that is in control of our affairs and that I was not just done with politics yet. And I wanted to show that they couldn’t determine my destiny for me
Some people believe that a lot of funds have gone into the NDDC since its inception, with little to show for it. If that is true, what can you attribute it to?
I always say that with the kind of funding that the region has seen, if it didn’t look like Dubai, it should look like Bahrain. But again, it was due to the kind of development strategy that was in place. You remember that former President Olusegun Obasanjo launched, with great fanfare, the Niger Delta Master Plan. You don’t develop a place without a master plan. I mean, if you want to build a house, you will survey the land, and get an architect to do the design of the building. Then you get a quantity surveyor to cost the building so that you can plan and build on this. That master plan was supposed to achieve the same for the region but it was abandoned almost as soon as it was launched. So we are approaching the development in the Niger Delta region without a master plan. And for me, the starting point is going back to the master plan. It could be a brand new Master Plan, it could be a revised Master Plan, it could be a revalidated Master Plan but you need a master plan if you must move forward.
Then you take a development strategy and the funding strategy, which is different essentially from the Federal Government budget and the oil companies’ budget. As you know, oil is a finished resource and if it doesn’t dry up, if it doesn’t finish, technology may make it less relevant. Now, should that day come, and it would surely come, you still have challenges in the Niger Delta region. How are you going to fund development? So, we are beginning to think outside the box. We are coming up with the idea of a Niger Delta Development Bank. It is still at a conception stage but work is ongoing. We already have a project coordinator that is trying to work on a milestone that has been set for us. So, if we have a Niger Delta Development Bank, it means that apart from funding, there would be some certainties about the big-ticket projects, because each project will follow the law and the bank will ensure completion.
What difference would the bank make to the development of the area?
The bank’s output to development will be different from the output that the agency has. So we can now have era of certainties; one, about funding; two, about derivable. These are some of the things we are thinking about. And we are also thinking about fibre optics infrastructure for the region to deepen internet penetration .The moment you do that, the moment businesses know that when they come to the Niger Delta region, they will have internet speed, on their own, they will begin to move to that location and we will also be able to see the creativity of young men and women in that region. So these are some of the things we are trying to do.
You mentioned a master plan that was launched. You said there could be a revised, revalidated or a brand new one. Which one are you working on?
Well, we have re-engaged the consultants who worked on the earlier plan. They are about to start engaging the stakeholders. I think it is that engagement that will now determine the indices to be used. If the indices have changed so dramatically, then we will have a new master plan. But if the indices are still fundamental, then we can tinker with it. We don’t know yet, it is too early to say anything.
What about the main oil companies?
I think they have been living up to their expectations under the NDDC Act.
For people who may not know or understand government policies, there has been this argument that the roles of the Ministry of Niger Delta, the NDDC and the Amnesty programme largely clash. How will you explain these three establishments?
You know NDDC is an agency set up by law. In one sentence, I will summarise the mandate of the NDDC, which is to deliver an integrated regional economy for the Niger Delta region. That is the mandate of NDDC. The Niger Delta ministry is largely the one that was created at the discretion of the President. The ministry has its own projects. We, however, have a platform where every organisation that has any kind of responsibility for the Niger Delta region meets periodically to review their activities to ensure synergy in what they are doing. The platform, which is chaired by the Vice President, has the Ministry of Niger Delta, the NDDC, the oil companies and the Presidential Amnesty Programme. The Amnesty relates more with the security architecture in the country; so it is a different programme.
There is this feeling that you are eyeing the governorship seat of Cross River State in 2019. How true is this?
That is not true. I am not eyeing any governorship seat.
Why are you not interested in the governorship position?
Every state or society has history behind it. Take Cross River, from its time as South Eastern State, the first governor, U. J. Esuene was 32. The next governor, Paul Omu, was 36. Then, during the democratic dispensation, Clement Ebri was 38 when he became governor; Donald Duke was 37, Imoke was in his early 40s, when he became governor. The current governor, Ayade, was in his early 40s when he became governor. I am 62 now. I should be looking at challenges for a 62-year-old man.
If I may ask, what has age got to do with it?
I do not feel 62, I may not even look 62; but we have had an established pattern in Cross River that the governorship has always thrown up people of certain age and certain generation. There are other challenges that will require people of my age and experience.
But if at 62 your people say they want you to run, what will happen?
But they have not said so or if they have said so, I have not heard
You left PDP….
(Cuts in) I didn’t leave PDP. I was forced out of PDP.
Can you tell us the circumstances that led to that?
As a politician, you want an environment for your voice to be heard, and for you to make your contributions. But when they said you should be silent and they want to make you irrelevant, it is like forcing you into retirement. And it came to a point that I needed to make it known that only two people could determine when you would retire in life. The first is God, the second is yourself. If I decide that I have had enough, that I want to take a break, that is okay. But no human being, no matter how powerful, can determine another person’s destiny. When we started having tenure gods in PDP, I needed to prove to them that there was an overall being that is in control of our affairs and that I was not just done with politics yet. And I wanted to show that they couldn’t determine my destiny for me.
Some people have said that PDP brought you to political limelight but that you paid it back with sudden defection…
I can’t deny the fact that PPD gave me enormous opportunity. But it is like spending money training a child; you sent him to the best schools and then just when he was to blossom, you poisoned him and killed him. Now, rather than remembering that last act of poison and killing, you are talking about how you sent him to good schools. In one sentence, those who lay claims to that simply destroyed the house they built.
You were in the Senate for three terms, during which there was a reasonable robust relationship between the National Assembly and the Executive. Things have since changed. And what is your advice to your serving colleagues?
I am not there so I would not have details. But one thing that is certain is that the senators of both major parties need to have their caucuses and their caucuses must meet regularly. If you don’t have functional caucuses in the legislature, you would have the kind of problem that is there now. I am not saying they don’t meet, but all parties that have members in the Senate or House of Reps must have caucuses that meet regularly to discuss issues. Two, there must be regular interface between the leadership of the National Assembly and the Executive. In times past, in fact when the late President Umaru Yar’Adua came newly, he was meeting with the leadership of the National Assembly on a weekly basis. It was we in the National Assembly that suggested to him that meeting weekly was too early. And then at some point, he even offered to engage with us in the Senate President’s house. He said we should be rotating the meeting. In the last PDP administration, it was the same thing, there was regular interface. So people make the error of saying the majority of the legislators are from the same party as with the Executive. Those who designed the presidential system of government designed it with inherent conflict between the Executive and the Legislature; because without that inherent conflict, you cannot play the role of checks and balances on the Executive. So it is totally immaterial that majority of the legislators are in the same party with the Executive. To resolve that inherent conflict, you must be in constant dialogue.
Who initiates the dialogue?
Does it matter who initiates it? If you have a problem with your wife at home, does it matter whether the husband starts the peace process or the wife? The most important thing is that there must be peace at home.
When the National Assembly, particularly the House of Representatives, summoned the President to address them on certain issues, some lawyers said it was unconstitutional. What do you make of that
summon?
You know when we were in the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu tried to introduce a bill that would require the President to appear before the National Assembly, periodically, to brief it. I think it was the State of the Nation Bill. I am sure he did that because it was appreciated that there was a gap. Can you summon the President to appear? You can only summon somebody you can issue a warrant of arrest. The President enjoys immunity. Though there is the need for some regularity in the President appearing before the National Assembly to tell the nation and the world about the state of the nation, but in my opinion, you cannot compel a person you cannot issue a warrant against.
You have been an advocate of Buhari’s second term. What informed this?
First, I think that for the first time, we have a leader that is a moral leader. We have the president and vice president, who are not only leaders but are offering moral leadership. President Muhammadu Buhari was in the public eyes before I went for the National Youth Service. He was governor of the North East at that time; he was Minister of Petroleum, among others, and almost everybody can vouch for his personal integrity, I must say. And that is what we need first in leadership; that personal qualification, something that others will like to emulate or copy. Recently, he signed amendment to the Constitution, which talks about the funding of the judiciary. But it goes beyond funding. It enforces the independence of the Judiciary; which means Buhari wants to have an independent judiciary. He did the same for local governments. When we were young, local governments were centres of activities. For so many years now, they have been dead. But we may see now, a re-invigorated local government system. When people talk of restructuring, these are steps you must take. Buhari is quietly restructuring the country and nobody is noticing.
Then take the fight against corruption; you can see great delivery on the fight. So I think that he needs time to complete all these. Yes, there are feelings of disappointment, but not because he did not deliver. It is the feeling of disappointment arising out of a crisis of very high expectations. You know Nigerians believed the moment Buhari comes, the country would automatically change. They don’t even appreciate the level from which we were coming. The country was in recession just before he came in. So he needs time to continue what
he is doing.
(Read the unabridged version of Ndoma-Egba’s interview at: www.thepointng.com)
