Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN) is the Senate Majority Leader and a three-term Senator representing Cross River State Central Senatorial Zone in the upper chamber. Senator Ndoma-Egba was at various times a member of Senate Committees on Upstream Petroleum Resources, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Information and Media, as well as Deputy Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. In this interview with Assistant Editor, LINUS OBOGO, in his office, he spoke on state creation, crisis in the PDP, zero allocation to SEC saga and sundry issues. Excerpts:
There was a seeming helplessness on the part of the Senate to compel the Inspector-General of Police (IG) to arrest and produce the former Assistant Director with the Nigeria Pension Fund, Abdulrasheed Maina, over alleged monumental corruption in the agency, leading to his eventual disappearance. Was that the last Nigerians may have heard on the matter?
Our constitutional responsibilities are carried out within constitutional bounds. The powers to investigate also include the powers to recommend. We do not have any constitutional obligation to implement or execute our recommendations. The responsibility to implement or execute those recommendations lies with the executive arm of the government.
That is why if you look at Section 88 of the Constitution which empowers us to carry out oversights, it also empowers us to carry out oversights with the purpose of exposing or minimising corruption. So the moment we have succeeded in exposing corruption, we have carried out our constitutional mandate. What happens thereafter is for the executive arm. We have done our bit. So, we cannot, having done our bit and exhausted our constitutional mandate, be said to be helpless. So, the issue of helplessness does not arise in this situation at all.
Implementing our recommendation is entirely that of the executive.
So, while the executive glosses over this serious issue of corruption in the Pension Fund administration, will it be right to conclude that the matter is dead and buried as it seems?
Well, it is for Nigerians to demand action from the executive arm. The legislature has done its bit. So the ball is now in the court of the executive. It is for Nigerians to insist that something be done. I want to believe that the matter is squarely being pursued by those who have the responsibility to do so. The matter is before the Federal Civil Service Commission. Remember also that the police had also declared him wanted.
Does the Constitution also circumscribe the Senate from reining in the IG of Police or any other head of federal agencies who flagrantly flouts your resolution?
The IG appeared before the Senate Committee on Police Affairs to give an explanation on the challenges or difficulties they were having. The committee is yet to bring its report to the plenary of its interaction with the IG. When the committee submits its report, we will proceed from there.
Following the debate in the Senate on the Petroleum Industry Bill and subsequent revelations that a section of the country controls 83 per cent of the oil blocs, what is the position of the Senate on the disclosure?
The Senate, like the executive, is a creation of the Constitution that also created the three arms of government. Every arm has its responsibility, limitations and powers. The granting of oil blocs is exclusively the preserve of the executive and not that of the legislature. Let us assume without conceding that the allegations made by Senator Ita Enang are true, it is now left for the executive to make sure that, that is corrected. Correcting a balance in the allocation of oil blocs is an executive function and not a legislative function, but I think that there is this mindset out there that the legislature has the powers to do everything, it is not true. There is a clear separation of powers. Ours is to expose inefficiency and corruption. The moment we have done that, it will be left for the relevant arms to take the necessary actions to redress it.
Some people have called on the Senate to be scrapped while others have called for a part time legislature. As a Senator who is serving his third term, how do the recommendations strike you?
Let us first of all look at the issue of the National Assembly or the Senate being the drain pipe. This year, we have a budget of almost N5trillion and the budget of the Senate, the House of Representatives, the bureaucracy, the National Assembly Service Commission, the Legislative Institute and our subscription to international bodies is N150 billion. The percentage of this N5 trillion is a little over two per cent. So are they saying that this percentage is the problem of Nigeria? If you have two percent of the budget, it means that you have two percent opportunity for corruption and if you have 98 percent of the budget, it means that you have 98 percent opportunity for corruption. How come the fixation is with the two percent and not the 98 percent? Now, we are talking about the N150 billion and the OPEC fuel subsidy scheme which is just one of the small programmes of the government costs almost N2 trillion. Even the pension fund that you mentioned earlier is far in excess of the N150 billion of the National Assembly budget. Using the figures that I have mentioned, it goes to prove that the National Assembly cannot be responsible for the wastage in the system. It definitely is not.
Let us now come back to the issue of the National Assembly being part time or full time. As a child growing up, when we had the parliamentary system, we had part time legislators and I remember that the headmaster of my primary school was a member of the House of Representatives. He went to Lagos where they used to have their sittings and after that, he resumed his work as headmaster. But it was the same Nigerians who clamoured for a full time legislature. Today, we operate a presidential system of government. Tell me, in which other presidential system anywhere in the world do we have a part time legislature? Again, if the reason for the clamour is cost, I have told you that what we spend in the legislature is two point something percent of our total national budget.
Out of the N150 billion, the Senate takes a part which is totally inconsequential when you place it side by side with the billions in the pension funds. So the issue of cost cannot be the argument because you would be looking at the wrong place to save cost. When people talk about scrapping the Senate, I wonder what the logic is in having a bicameral legislature. In the world over, you have a bicameral legislature when you have a diverse heterogeneous polity because if you check the representation of the House of Representatives all over the world, you will see that it is based on population. Now, the Senate is based on the equality of the states, so if you scrap the Senate, it means that you have taken care of only the major tribes. So what happens to the minorities who are also Nigerians?
The minorities are accommodated on the basis of representation through equality of states. It is a bicameral legislature in a multicultural heterogeneous like we have in Nigeria that can address the fears of every Nigerian whether you are from the majority or minority tribe. If you now remove the Senate, you are leaving people like me who are the minority of the minorities to be virtually unprotected. The only people that would be protected would be my colleagues from the major tribes. Would it now be that it is because you want to save cost that you would be denying protection to minorities who are Nigerians? As far as I am concerned, the call for scrapping the Senate has no basis either in fact or in logic.
Aside the cost which the National Assembly seemingly represents, is it not within the powers of the national legislature to recommend an alternative system of government to cut cost as people say the presidential system we are operating is very expensive?
Did we not try the parliamentary system before? Why did we abandon it? That answers your question.
Wasn’t the system not truncated by the military, and not abandoned?
But when you had an opportunity to choose, you chose a presidential system. So it is not as if you are coming from a situation where you had not tried the other one. We tried it and at that time, the complaint was that it did not work for Nigeria. Now we are operating the presidential system, you say we should go back to the parliamentary. The mindset of the average Nigerian is very curious. I remember in the past when everyone was saying we should liberalise the political space by registering more political parties.
The argument then was that if you registered more political parties, it would weaken the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), then INEC went ahead to register almost 60 parties, but the PDP got even stronger. Now they are saying that we should go back to a two party system. I think we should investigate the reasons why the parliamentary system was abandoned. Under that system, we kept slipping into one crisis after another and the belief was that we needed a presidential system where the chief executive would be strong enough to hold the country together. I do not think that anything has happened to that logic.
What would you say about the crises in the Governors’ Forum, the leadership of the party and even the presidency?
It is an exaggeration and I can give you an example. I was in Port Harcourt some time ago to receive the National Chairman. The next day, all the newspapers reported that Governors Rotimi Amaechi and Emmanuel Uduaghan walked out on the party, but it is not true because that didn’t happen. They refuted it because it was not true. I was there. What happened was that we were already in the bus leaving for the venue when we got information that Governor Uduaghan was nearby and we agreed to wait for him. When he came in, after exchanging pleasantries with everybody, he made it clear that he would have to rush back because he would be travelling. The Asaba Airport, as you may be aware, closes at 6:00pm. So we went to the venue and at a point he had to leave. He went to the National Chairman and took permission from him to leave. Governor Amaechi was the host, so he had to see his guest off. The next thing we heard was that they walked out on the party. If you are walking out, do you seek permission? So all these talks about face-off are exaggerations and imaginations of some sections of the public and media. These governors are PDP governors as well as so many of us. We have our forums for resolving our issues. So people should stop dramatising and creating situations just because they want to paint a particular picture.
The country has lost millions of dollars through subsidy payments for imported petroleum products. Is it not part of your oversight as lawmakers to put an end to this through an act of parliament by compelling local refining of the products?
If one part of your body causes you to sin, what do you do? Why are you avoiding the answer? The Bible says that if your left hand leads you to sin, cut it off. If subsidy has become the major source of corruption in this country, then do away with it. Let us not beat around the bush. What act of parliament will you make to force people to invest their money in an environment where they are not sure? People invest money where market forces are at play. You tell somebody to come and invest in a refinery and you are subsidising products, who would invest in such an environment? My take is that if subsidy has become the bedrock of corruption in the country, then we should do away with it.
You were quoted as blaming the backwardness of the country on the creation of more states. But I want to ask that if Cross River State, where you come from was not created out of the old Eastern Region, would it have given you the opportunity to be in the Senate?
How many states did we have in 1979 when Dr. Joseph Wayas who is from a minority group emerged as Senate President? Coming from a minority group has nothing to do with state creation. Let us not be emotional about this and let us use facts in our arguments. As at 1965, the economy of the then Eastern Region was the fastest growing economy in the world. By that time also, Nigeria was at par with countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil and Indonesia. There are certain political developments that we have shared in common with those countries, especially in military intervention. Indonesia had its fair share of military rule. One thing we did not share with them and which we must investigate is that their federating units remained the same while ours kept multiplying. Could that be the reason why they left us behind? It is something we have to think about.
How does state creation undermine development?
The question you should be asking is how has multiplication of states aided development?
But people argue that the creation of more states and local governments has brought development or better still, government closer to the people. Do you also differ on this?
As a child growing up when we still had three regions before the Midwest Region was created, you could open a tap in my remote village and water would gush out. In those days, we had what became known as county secondary schools, but during the civil war when the government took over, they became government secondary schools. Those secondary schools were built by local governments, and then they were called county councils. Local governments built hospitals, water works and tarred roads. Today when a local government pays its members of staff, it becomes news and it is celebrated. Is that development?
I remember when I wanted to write my first Common Entrance exam in Government College, Afikpo, I was put like a parcel in a vehicle that conveyed mails for the post office. Do we still have that today? And we are talking about development.
I went to school at a time when we were two in a room in the University of Lagos, when our law library was reputed to be the biggest and the best in the whole of Africa. Those days, when you left your room in the morning for lectures, potters came to your room, dressed your bed and picked your laundry. During meal times, you had a hall mistress that went round and ensured that your meal combination was healthy. By the time we were in our second year, we were being interviewed for jobs. Today, people tell me about development when students graduate without even knowing what a library is. I was discussing with my colleague the lowering standards of education and he told me that there were people who spend four years in school without seeing a proper toilet. These days, when you graduate, you have to wait for 10 years to get a job, is that the development that has been brought about by state creation?
We should learn to separate emotions from reality. My training as a lawyer is to keep emotions aside and look at facts and I have been looking at these facts. State creation has served its purpose. I was a commissioner when we had 19 states and things were still working. In those days, the states were feasible and there was a lot of development then. A lot of positive things were happening. As we now multiplied the states, bureaucracy bloated, so we are now paying more on salaries than capital development. Is that development? What happened to our economy? What happened to those plantations that we used to have?
As a child growing up, we had rich people in places like Ikom and Ogoja who made their money by being in Ikom and Ogoja. Today, with state creation, if you are not living in the state capital, you do not have any chance and they tell me it is development. It has gotten to a point when, if you are not in Abuja, you have no chance and they say it is development. It is not about saying that if there was no Cross Rives State, would I have made it to the Senate? There were people who were nowhere and still succeeded. I gave an instance with Dr. Joseph Wayas who was Senate President in 1999, so it has nothing to do with state creation.
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