Ndoma Egba
Former Senate leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba recently spoke with journalists in Calabar on a number of national Issues. Our Correspondent, Diana Okon-Effiong, Who Was There Brings Excerpts.
What is Your Attitude On Fuel Subsidy?
The issue of subsidy has always been there. What has been the extent of the subsidy? Where does it begin and where does it end. For me, I think the issue of subsidy has provided the biggest independent infrastructure for corruption in this country. And if you must address the issue corruption, you must start by addressing the biggest single infrastructure of corruption, which is the issue of subsidy. In the next few years, you have never kept subsidy at the level for which it was budgeted. It has always been in excess and the entire subsidy regime, remains very opaque.
So for me I think it is a huge opportunity for corruption and if we must fight corruption from the fundamental, then we must go to the issue of subsidy. They say it would affect the common man if you remove it, but I don’t know how many common people use vehicles. Now if you say it would affect the price of goods, the goods that we have are transported by lorries which use diesel. So I think it is an issue that must be frontally interrogated and dealt with once and for all. But as a person I don’t believe in subsidy.
On the devaluation of the naira, I would say I am not an economist, but where things are you say you want to devalue because you want to generate exports, I don’t think our economy is sufficiently diversified now to say that the export s are there and we would be generating. You first of all diversify the economy to make sure that there are alternatives, that you are producing and manufacturing enough quantities and good enough quality that can compete in the export market. You must have the product first before you can talk of exporting them. But to just devalue because you think it would generate export, what would you be exporting. So I think devaluing before we have diversified and generated enough locally in terms of quantity and quality, I think we would be putting the cart before the horse. But like I said I am not an economist, I am simply saying this from the point of view of an informed layman.
Do you see the present leadership of the senate surviving with the crisis they have now?
First the turbulence you see is a turbulence associated with a new government in power. If you recall when PDP took power in 1999, the senate was always turbulent. Each time you have a new government in power you expect this because it takes time to settle down. Now when that government settled down, you saw an era of stability. After that era, we now have a new party in power, so naturally and inherently there would be some instability because this is a party that was used to playing opposition and now it is in power. It needs a transition period to settle down. And the institution, the senate is highly political institution and the political sensitivities are very high. So you are bound to see this turbulence. As for whether I foresee the leadership maintaining power, it is only God that can say. I can only analyze events from my understanding of the events and from what I see the turbulence you see are turbulence associated with any party that is new in power.
On Ekweremadu staying back when other PDP members walked out
I don’t know why he stayed back, but let me say that walkouts by political parties are not new. If you recall just as recently as February, the APC which was then in opposition walked out when Senator Musliu Obanikoro was being confirmed. So it is not new. It is a political gimmick. It only goes to confirm something about life. What goes round comes round.
On Ayade’s superhighway
My reaction is very simple. The governor has promised again and again and he had said he is betting with his right eye that he will deliver the road. So my attitude is that I want the road. I look forward to the road. I would benefit from the road, just as any other person would benefit from the road. The only thing we can do now is give him the benefit of the doubt and give him every support to deliver on the road. He has staked his political future more or less and that road has become not just a signature project, but a defining project. A project that would define his political future. So he will not take that risk if he did not mean to deliver on it. So we should encourage him. My only appeal is that while waiting for the superhighway, at least the one that we have now should be made passable because without road infrastructure in a state like Cross River that has basically two commodities which are agricultural products and tourism, without passable roads, the economy would be jeopardized. So I think as much as we anticipate and look forward to the superhighway, that would bring a lot of dividends if delivered, what we have on ground now should also be made passable.
Has the security forces made a headway in the country?
First let me say insurgency does not have its origins in Nigeria. We probably have forgotten that once upon a time in recent history, we had the IRA, you could not tell where the next bomb was going to drop in the United Kingdom. You couldn’t tell who was going to be the next target. We had them in Italy, Germany, Spain and you could not tell who the next victims. Insurgency is not a peculiarity in Nigeria, just that in recent past, it gained global prominence because of the events in the middle ease and the north of Africa and Nigeria being that close has been impacted by insurgency.
Now whether we have made any progress I would say yes, we have made substantial progress. If you recall a few months back, Boko Haram were hoisting flags and taking territories and appointing caliphates and so on. Today they are no longer acquiring territories, but we have lone wolf incidents where a young man on lady is wired and goes to a soft target and blows themselves up. Insurgency does not end dramatically. It peters off.
That has been the experience all over the world. There can be no dramatic end. You cannot say that by so and so date it would end. What is important is whether you are sufficiently degrading them in terms of capacity. So if they are being sufficiently degraded and you are not seeing lone wolf attacks, I think that is evidence enough that they are getting more and more desperate and they can only get desperate when they are losing ground.
Let us look at your political career. You recently resigned from the PDP a party you have been member of for the past 16 years and you left your supporters hanging. One would have expected that having left the PDP, you would have indicated interest in another party but you have not. What is your next move politically sir?
You will hear and you will report it.
How do you feel about the dust raised in the state over speculations that you were joining the APC?
Well, if speculations generated dust, the real activity would generate a storm.
On ambitious budget
Like I said about the superhighway, we should give him benefit of doubt. We gave him mandate to provide leadership and a vision. If his through his vision, he believes he can generate that kind of amount, we should give him benefit of doubt. For now I believe he should be encouraged to achieve what he has promised. I believe that he has the capacity to fulfill his promises.
Internally Displaced Persons
For the northeast, the starting point is to completely degrade the threat of Boko Haram so that these people can return to their homeland and normal lives. The northeast has traditionally been the food basket of this country. By displacing them, you are also distorting the national economy. It would have an impact on food security. So it is in everybody’s interest that these IDPs return to their normal routine as quickly as possible. We also have internally displaced persons as a result of the challenge between Fulani cattle rearers and farmers. Again that issue has to be addressed. The time has come. I think it is a bit antiquated for people to be carrying cattle across thousands of kilometres. It is not even good for the quality of beef you get at the end of the day. The time has come for new animal husbandry methods. You also have IDPs from communal clashes. The IDPs are coming from different scenarios, but the important thing is that they are displaced. And by way of an aside, I hear that in political parties, you have internally displaced politicians.
People re having doubts about democracy and the judiciary. Going by what happened in the last election and moving to the tribunal, there were accusations of bribery and the integrity of the judiciary is in question. What is the fate of democracy and the role of the judiciary?
The judiciary is perhaps the most important pillar of our democracy because when we say democracy that in itself is an incomplete statement. It is democracy and the rule of law.
And the rule of law aspect is aspect that the judiciary represents. The judiciary must always be like Caesar’s wife, above board and beyond suspicion. Having said so, I would also like to appeal that no matter how strongly we feel about judgments, we should not constitute ourselves into a public court to sit over the judiciary.
The judiciary is organised in such a way that it has its own internal cleansing mechanisms. Also there is the hierarchy of courts, so that you can subject the judgment of one court to the opinion of another court and it goes that way up to the Supreme Court. We must exhaust the internal cleansing mechanisms and the appellate processes. For us to constitute ourselves into a court of public opinion to sit on appeal over judgments of tribunals would be subverting the judiciary and the moment you do that then you have removed the fundamental plank on which our democracy stands. So I want to appeal that no matter how strong, political cases evoke a lot of sentiments for and against, there is no judgment you will not get one reaction or the other, but we must first insulate the judiciary from this kind of public conversation about judgments, we should rather use formal methods to strengthen the judiciary and make sure that its internal cleansing and redress mechanisms working adequately. Political cases are very emotive.
The senate just finished screening nominees and if we look into what they did confirming the entire nominees compared to when you were in the senate when one or two nominees were not cleared, how would you assess them? In terms of comparison, would you say they did their job in a manner that is expected of them given that they had told Nigerians that this time screening would not be business as usual?
Let me say that the constitution is very clear on who is eligible to be a minister and who is ineligible to be minister and the starting block when you are screening is whether one is constitutionally eligible or constitutionally ineligible. They are certain requirements before you are sworn in; you have sworn to code of conduct declaration, are all of those things there. Are you satisfied that there are no criminal records?
Beyond that what you are looking for is whether the person has the capacity to be a minister. Now that is subjective. Subjective because until you say this nominee is going to be minister for this, the senators would not have a proper framework within which to situate their questions.
Unfortunately the constitution does not obligate the president to indicate the ministry he is sending a particular nominee to. So if we do not know where a ministerial nominee is going to, your questions can only be general to test his general capacity for that. And as long as you don’t have any issues with moral standing, criminal records and all that, it is difficult to disqualify somebody. If the senate must do proper screening, then the constitution has to be amended to include the requirement that the president indicates where a particular nominee is to be sent to.
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