FROM IHEANACHO NWOSU, ABUJA
Senator Chris Ngige is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC). He represented Anambra Central Senatorial District in the immediate past Seventh session of the Senate.
In this interview, he clarified some misconceptions about steps taken by his party. He also spoke on what the South East expects from the APC administration.
Excerpts:
There has been a lot of dust over Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s comments about his emergence as Deputy Senate President, filling the slot for the South East. Would you say the ripples are necessary?
Why should Ike Ekweremadu be making a case for the South South? Is he from the South South? He has no locus standi to say that. Even the South East he is talking about, he can’t, in all righteousness, claim that he can speak for us in the APC of the South East nor can he speak for the Buhari APC-controlled government, dictating for them what to do for the South East. I was disappointed when I read it (Ekweremadu’s comments). I read it in all the newspapers and I saw it in the electronic media, I saw it on television – the NTA. I saw it on Channels. I saw it on AIT. I was a little bit confused and disappointed, to be frank with you. Senator Ike Ekweremadu is someone I like a lot. He is a young man. He is intelligent.
I can tell you, without fear of equivocation, that when we were in the Seventh Senate, he made us proud. I don’t know what got over him for making this pronouncement that he has got the share of the Igbo of the South East. He didn’t get our share. The share he got was for himself. He is a receiver of a stolen good. The PDP people in the Senate had an opportunity because our 59 senators were not in chambers when they elected him Deputy Senate President and forced on us a hybrid headship of the Nigerian Senate. I don’t want to go into the merits or demerits of that. All of us know what caused it.
They took away that position by default. They stole it and Senator Ike Ekweremadu took it. He took that stolen material. If it were to be me, I would just keep quiet and allow things unfold. But with this statement now, he is incensing our members in the Senate. He is gloating. Our members are not happy. Even our party members in the APC, in the South East, are not happy and rightfully too because the implication of his Deputy Senate Presidency is that the PDP in Nigeria has the highest ranking elected public officer from the South East coming from their fold and that person is Senator Ike Ekweremadu.
On the side of the South East APC, it has endangered us because the PDP in the South East will have oxygen to breathe from because they now have the highest-ranking person in Nigeria coming from the South East. That is a disadvantage to us and that puts us in a difficult position on our aspiration to make the South East people to join the main stream of Nigerian politics by aligning with the President (Muhammadu) Buhari-led APC government. He has made our job difficult, but we are going to face it squarely. We won’t give up. You know, there are many ways to kill a rat. You can decide to go and kill it manually; you can go and put it in hot water, and you can use poison – Gamalin.
We are back to the drawing table because it poses a problem for us. For some of us who know the powers and the rules of the Senate, a Deputy Senate President exercises powers given to him by the Senate President. It only asks him to act for the Senate President when he is not around. The Deputy Senate President is like a deputy governor – a spare tyre. He is a spare; you don’t use your spare when your tyres are okay in a vehicle. If it is in your house, if you have public power supply, you don’t use your generator. My very good friend and brother, Ike Ekweremadu, misfired when he said he has got the share of the South East. The share he got was for himself; it is not for the South East. His position is not anything to gloat and rejoice about because we know what is involved. Order 26 of the Senate Rules prescribes his functions and powers; it is only a one line item, which says: “He acts in the absence of the President of the Senate or any other functions given to him by the President of the Senate.” that is one line.
As a matter of fact, the leader of the Senate is given more powers by the Standing Order because he is the one that controls the business of the Senate. He introduces all the bills and looks at the Order Paper with the chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business, seeing what and what will be the business of the day. Functionally, the position of Senate Majority leader is more functional, as far as I am concerned. I wouldn’t want our brother to deceive our people by saying he has got our share, as if by getting that, the APC government should not send something to us in the APC in the South East, so that our people will know that we are part of the government. What Senator Ekweremadu has is personal to him; it is a stolen item that was handed over to him to keep by his party; it doesn’t concern us; that is my take on that.
Do you habour fears that Ekweremadu’s emergence might affect South East’s quest for the zoning of Secretary to the Government of the Federation to it?
The position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) is an executive appointment. The office is a clearing house for executive business. Therefore, it is the prerogative of the president; the appointment is at his prerogative. Our party knows the challenges of the South East and the South South, in terms of what happened to us during the elections. The good thing there is that our president, happily, is a general. In warfare, an area where your enemy is strong is where you deploy the crack brigade; that you have the crack armaments there. You do a lot of air sorties, air bombardments. Your air force will go there and bomb the place many times; so, you spend more in such an area. In politics, it is not different. One will expect that in an APC government, efforts will be made to bring up the South South and the South East that are weaker; more work will come in there. The president knows what to do; we will not speak for him. There is nothing that guarantees that the area you did well today, you will do well there tomorrow. Politics is dynamic and the situation is fluid. Our party has a policy and strategy arm and I know that the right thing will be done.
You are one of the leaders of the South East in the APC. What are the key things you think the people of the zone are expecting this government to do for them?
Well, the preponderance of the people of the South East didn’t believe that a change of government was possible. Luckily, some of us believed in it. Luckily, the mantra in our party is ‘change.’ While the people of the South East are hoping, we also expect them to change in their political behaviour and political culture. There are a lot of things they will expect from our government. There are a lot of things we expect from them too. It is reciprocal. This party is not like PDP; we don’t share money in polling booths, like PDP do and even APGA; we don’t believe in that; they have to change. Our government believes in equity; everybody knows that the South East roads are one of the worst in the country. Enugu-Onitsha through Awka, Enugu-Okigwe-Umuahia-Aba-Port-Harcourt is impassable. Onitsha-Nnewi-Arondiziogwu-Okigwe, Umuahia-Ikot-Ekpene-Aba and Onitsha-Aba are all impassable; so many federal roads that abound there. So, for the people of the South East, they are looking up to this government to give them good roads and infrastructure. They will also expect the second Niger Bridge, which has been talked about for the past 18 to 20 years. The talk about the second Niger Bridge is becoming embarrassing. This is a 1.8 kilometre bridge. The Jonathan administration claimed that work was going on there, but if you go there you will see nobody.
A 1.8 kilometre bridge; today they will say they have awarded it and Julius Berger is handling it and that they have finances from that IFC, but we cannot see all those things. This is a bridge that has been awarded three times. It was awarded by President Obasanjo, awarded by President Yar’Adua with the Enugu Airport. Providentially, the Enugu Airport took off. Yar’Adua made it an international airport. The Jonathan administration came again in 2011, and awarded the bridge again and broke the ground. That was midway into 2012 or 2013, I’ve forgotten. During the last election, they came again.
The bad aspect of it all is that even their conception of what they want to do with the bridge is marred by irregularities and fraudulent expenditure and expositions. That 1.8 kilometre bridge, when they gave it out under Obasanjo they gave it to Gitto. Gitto came there and flagged it off. Then Governor James Ibori, Governor Peter Obi and Andy Uba, went into the bush there and danced with some cultural dancers and so on and left. It was over priced at that time. The over pricing of the bridge that we are talking about, as at that time, was going to cost N70 billion. I shouted blue murder because I had just left as governor. They came to me about it when I was governor and I told them that I did not support it and would not be part of a Public Private Partnership arrangement. Immediately I left, they started doing PPP arrangement with Gitto; it didn’t also take off.
When President Jonathan came on board, he also moved it into PPP consortium arrangement again and increased the price from the original N70 billion to N115 billion to Julius Berger. The same company did a bridge of an equivalent length in Lagos from Lekki into Ikoyi –Alexander Avenue – for N32 billion under Governor Fashola. I asked them why? They said oh, because we have rail track on the drawing. Railtrack does not mean it will now attract an additional N90 billion. I do not understand what is going on. As far as I am concerned, the Igbo of South Eastern Nigeria will not pay one kobo to pass on that bridge they are building because they say they are doing a toll gate. I will lead a demonstration to the bridge to ensure our people do not pay any toll, assuming that is what is going on.
I am very confident that the Buhari administration will have a second look at what is going on there and call for a round table discussion, so that we will know the actual value of the bridge, know what profit is due to whoever is building the bridge and then we carry on from there.
The contractor is entitled to some profit. I built roads in Anambra State. The roads were built and contractors still had their profit, but they gave us quality roads and they gave us value for our money. Those roads I built in Anambra State 12, 13 years ago are still there. They were built by RCC and Setracco. We got quality jobs and we paid for the jobs.
The second Niger Bridge is what we expect this government to do for us because the other bridge is rickety; that bridge is in a state of disuse. It has not been well-managed. It is also a bridge that has suffered the full weight of hostilities during the civil war. It was a bridge that was used by the army on both sides. At one point, they went and removed a portion of that bridge. At one time, they put bombs there. So, the existing bridge has suffered wear and tear from usage over time.
We need a second bridge, as a replacement bridge. That was one of the reasons I said nobody would ask us to pay money to use it. We are not the only users of the bridge. The people of South South need the bridge to go home from Lagos. The people of Benue, Kogi, the North Central use it too. So, why surcharge us? Are we second-class citizens? No, we are not. This is my take on what our government will do. Government should do that bridge and give it to the Igbo. The Igbo will be very happy.
We will also want government to face corruption. Once the system is not corrupt, the people will benefit, the South easterners will benefit. So, if you give them a level playing field, which is in an anti-corruption measure, the South easterners will thrive. I don’t want to talk about the economy; our economy will be a strong economy. Our people do a lot of buying and selling. They do a lot of commerce; they do a lot of manufacturing. The industries will come up, same way if you give them power. There are companies that litter the roads in Onitsha, Nnewi, Orlu and Aba. Business clusters will come back to life. More than 3,500 industries are dead and these are the people that will provide jobs for the people. An APC government is what the Igbo require and I can tell you that very soon when the government kicks off, the Igbo will know that this is their own government, a government that is environmentally friendly to them.
Nigerians have two major concerns, regarding the APC government. First is the inability of the president to make key appointments and the other thing is the recent statement by the president about his old age. What do you make of these concerns?
You are misquoting the president. The usage of the word, ‘I am old’ is in a different connotation. He was talking about another thing. He said, ‘I am now 72 years old. I will be 73 by my next birthday; how I wish I were younger.’ That was what he said.
Just like me now, there are certain times that my boys will come and they put on the musical set in our house, the way they would dance would not be the way I would dance. They are 20 something years; their style is not my style. That is what the president is talking about. But the press people oh! All the headlines were, Buhari: I am old, I am too old to do something. These were things that were said during elections. We have come out of the elections; we should all be supportive of the government. He said he wished he had become Head-of-State at the time he became governor because at that age he did a lot in the North East. That is why the whole of the North Eastern State of Nigeria, from Bauchi to Adamawa to Taraba, Borno to Yobe to Gombe will always vote Buhari en mass. They love what he did in the North East when he was military governor there.
Like the North East, he did a lot when he was in charge of petroleum. He was 40-something years then? That is what he was talking about, not that he wouldn’t do wonders. Let him kick off, you know a locomotive engine takes off gradually and once the engine has moved, it goes non- stop. If you are on the track it will crush you. We are asking for time.
He has given reasons for the little delay in doing certain things. He explained he did not receive handover notes from the outgoing people until May 28. He asked his transition committee to run through them very quickly and work day and night, brought resource people to look at some of the things that were turned into a workable document. This again, he summarised and action points taken out and in these action points government will have the ones it will do as quick fixes or what you call immediate and you will have the ones that will be done on a medium and long term.
We are in a democracy and things will be done democratically. Crime and fraud are always there; it will be addressed. Things will take a natural shape. He had allayed fears that he wants to take his time. He is an experienced administrator and I will plead that you people give him some more time.
There are some APC leaders who have their eyes on 2019 and they are already fighting and outdoing one another on how to take the structure of the party. There are insinuations that the crisis over the National Assembly election was aggravated by these moves. How true is that?
Tell me how? What has the leadership of the National Assembly got to do with it? Our party leadership is intact and they have a tenure from the national down to the states, down to the local government areas to the wards. Everybody has a tenure of four years, unless you resign or you are involved in misconduct, in which case you are impeached at the executive level, national or state or whatever.
How does this translate into the battle for 2019? Nobody will do that at this time. Do we know who will be alive in 2019? Do you know who will be alive in 2018 or 2017 or 2016? It is a makeup of the press. I don’t blame the press because those catchy headlines make sales. And for the press and the news people, any bad news is good news.
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