Victor Ndoma-Egba, a former Senate Leader, was a three-term Senator, representing Cross River Central of Cross River State in the Senate from 2003 to 2015. He is contesting to go back to the Red Chamber. In this interview with ABANG PATRICK in Calabar, Ndoma-Egba formally declared that he is not running for the Senate to become the next Senate President as was being reported by some online media. He said he is only going to finish the business he began in the Senate and to contribute his quota to national development. Excerpts:
What do you forget in the Senate that you want to go and pick?
While in Ikom we interacted with very many groups and held town hall meetings in all the six local government areas in the district. The response everywhere has been massive, favourable and we have taken time to answer the questions that you expect from the electorate like what did you forget in the Senate and I say well I forgot a lot of things. I started the Iruan Dam in Boki, it is not finished so that is what I forgot in the Senate. I started the Epe water scheme and that was expected to supply water from Mbor in Ikom to Nkonfab the last village before Ogoja Local Government that too has not been completed and forgotten in the Senate. I started a specialist hospital in Ikom which is not completed and forgotten in the Senate. I started the Ikom – Otono-Agbokim Waterfalls, not finished and forgotten. I started a Police Barracks in Itigidi, not finished and forgotten in the senate.
I started the Faculty of Law Building in the University of Calabar, not finished and forgotten in the senate. So those are the things I forgot in the senate. And of course, I have many bills and only the Freedom of Information Bill became an act of the National Assembly so the other 37 bills are still unprocessed, so I forgot all of these things in the Senate. So essentially, I let the people know that the Senate, particularly in the peculiar situation of Cross River State is about sending someone who brings value and who will align the state with the Federal Government in Abuja. My friend and colleague, Dr. Sandy Onor is eminently qualified, but he will not be able to achieve what Cross River needs for now which is aligning our state with the centre. And in any case, he will not be bringing in the kind of traction to the Senate that I will be bringing in because I am a ranking member.
And ranking in the Senate comes with certain privileges which will not be available to a first term senator. So I am essentially running this race on my records and letting my records speak for me. Many of you were with me in 2014 when we toured my projects and if you could recall, we stopped at project number 74. We did not exhaust the projects that we had because there were almost 90 and for want of time we could not inspect all of them. If we attracted that number of projects in the past, then we should be able to do far more in the future. In the area of employment, we have it on record that we secured employment for young men and women of the central senatorial district in particular and Cross River State in general to the tune of 358 persons in federal ministries, departments and agencies, and I believe that we can do much more than that in the future. In terms of empowerment, you could recall that as at last count, we had over 700 students, undergraduates and postgraduate students on scholarship; we can do far more than that.
We supported the Central Bank’s Enterprise Project here in Calabar at the former Desam House and we sponsored over 220 beneficiaries from Cross River Central. Each and every one of them got seed capital of 250, 000 for their training to go and start the businesses for which they have been trained, we can as well do much more than that. So, I am essentially running on my records. My brother and friend who is running on the platform of the PDP will be running on promises, he can only run on promises, but I am running on my records which are established and verifiable. While at home, my mother turned 89 and so we had a small celebration after church service and it is the first birthday I can recall her celebrating. A little background into her, she was among the first 4 Ikom women to receive western education and she was the first woman in the defunct Eastern Government to be the chairman of a local government, then it was called County Councils. She was chairman of Ikom County Council between 1960 and 1963 when Ikom was made up of Ikom, Boki and Etung. So, we thank God that she lived to the age of 89 and we were able to have a small celebration. Now, because of the circumstances in which we went into these town hall and consultative meetings, we were not able to take the main stream media along, so I have asked Sunny to compile a comprehensive report of the activities that we had during this period and thank you for your support.
We know of these records. So, can you add to the records you have achieved especially as chairman of the NDDC and the projects you have attracted to Cross River State?
I have said this before and let me say this again, in the past two years, any road that have been tarred in the state, 90 percent of the chances is that they have been tarred by either the Niger Delta Development Commission or the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and I want to be challenged on this. We have roads right from Calabar South, to Bakassi, down to Obudu, I want to be challenged. If you see any school rehabilitated in the last two years, builds, furniture, 90 percent of chances are that they have been done by the NDDC or the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and again I want to be challenged on this, and until we are challenged, these remain our achievements. You remember that once upon a time, the Calabar – Itu – Ikot Ekpene road was impassable but it has been made passable by the NDDC, the same for the Ikom – Calabar – Ogoja as Calabar – Ikom – Obudu road. I came from Ikom yesterday and before now, it took 5 hours but we made it in 2 hours plus, it’s now about an hour from Ikom to Obudu and Ogoja. These are journeys that in times past took three hours plus. So in summary these are our achievements. They are not all because if you go to health centres, supply of vaccines, we have done quite a lot. Supply of educational materials, we have done quite a lot and that is for cross river state.
The big ticket things outside Cross River like the Nembe – Ogbia Road in Bayelsa has been completed by the NDDC with about 57 bridges and we are just awaiting a date for Mr. President for commissioning and we have quite a number of huge projects that are ready for commissioning and I am hoping that we have time to commission quite a number of these projects before the president’s visit.
The other parties are also in the race and so if I disclose to you how I am going to do that, they might steal my idea but I want to assure you that everybody will be reached. We recognise the nature of the forthcoming elections. It’s not going to be like any other election that we have known in the past; it’s going to be different and we are fine-tuning our strategies to accommodate the peculiar nature of the 2019 elections but we are keeping our strategies to our chest because the other parties are also angling to win the state.
How are you going to carry everyone in your constituency along in your campaigns, and the 74 projects you showcased in 1974 was there no mechanism in place to ensure that the person who succeeds you continues with these projects?
On continuity of the projects, there is no mechanism for this and that is the peculiarity of the legislature. There is no handing over notes in the legislature. A legislator loses his elections and just moves. There is no time for you to interface with your successor and that is why it is advised that legislators return as often as possible. That is why in the US, we have legislators who were elected the year I wrote my school certificate. John McCain entered the Senate the year I entered secondary school in 1968 and remained there till he died last year. This is the peculiarity of the legislature and it does not allow for handover notes and that is why they ensure that what is started is pursued to a logical conclusion. In fact, in the united states, a member of the House of Representatives, his constituents wanted him to be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, that is the most powerful committee in the US Congress and for you to be that, you must have been there for a minimum of 28 years so they kept returning him until he qualified and became chairman of that committee. So seniority and ranking in the National Assembly is crucial so for us as an emerging democracy, we cannot afford the erosion of institutional memory that we have now and it is too costly for the system. If you take the judiciary for instance, if you are looking for a court judgment that was delivered in 1898, you will find it because the judiciary has this very sophisticated archive and retrieval system that no matter how old a judgment is, you can find it.
Then you also have what’s called the hierarchy of courts. The courts are in a hierarchy from the customary court to the magistrate court, high court, appeal court to the Supreme Court. The moment the Supreme Court has delivered the principle of law, you have what is called judicial precedent. All the other courts are bound to follow that precedent. Now you go to the executive arm, the governor is handing over to a new one and there are handover notes, transition notes and this is systematic. For the legislature which in our circumstances is the weakest even though it should be the strongest, why do I say the weakest because we have had several years of military rule and each time the military struck, the first thing they did was to dissolve the parliament.
So, the growth of the parliament has not been as consistent as it has been for the executive and judiciary. So, each time you truncate the parliament, it loses memory and then to add to that, you see the turnover of legislators each time there is an election. So you lose the institutional memory because for the legislature, apart from our handset and other records, the institutional memory of the institution is the aggregate memory of the members put together, that is what constitutes institutional memory. That is why you see someone that says then this thing happened in the past, this was how we did it. So, there is massive erosion of institutional memory which is not very healthy for our system and so, that explains why there is no mechanism for continuity in the legislature as an arm of government because you lose an election and you just come, gather your documents, leave a clean office and move on for the next person to come in. In fact, in my first term, the senator who occupied my office left all the documents there, he did not even bother to take them so we had to look for storage for his documents.
You said the state should align with the centre but so many politicians have left the APC for the PDP recently, do you see the possibility of APC winning the governorship election in the state?
On defections, you have seen that in Cross River State, a bit of movement from the APC to the PDP, some big names, yes, but across the country, the traffic has been more out of the PDP into the APC and I want to leak a secret to you, just watch in the next few weeks, you are going to see very big names leaving PDP for the APC. The traffic is going to be both ways but more will leave the PDP for the APC; it’s a secret and you will see that movement very soon. In Cross River, yes of course, we see the possibility of winning all our elections and I tell you why. Do an analysis of the votes that PDP has gotten in Cross River State from 1999; in 1999, over 900, 000 votes, 2003 – over 1.5 million votes, 2007 – 1.5 million votes, 2011 – over 1.2 million votes and so you saw an upward movement of support for the PDP. What happened in 2015, the PDP scored just over 400, 000 votes. It came down from 1.2 million to 400, 000 and even this figure is disputed because you remember how they blocked the highway and access to INEC because they were in government both in the state and the federal level.
If you remember the returning officer for Cross River, that lady professor, could not read the results because what she was reading was not what she knew as the result that was produced in the state. We have it in good authority that the real result for the 2015 election was about 177, 000, so the PDP dropped from over one million to the disputed 440, 000 so the decline of the PDP started in 2015 and we are going to complete it in 2019. The Cross Riverians have become very conscious and have spent the last couple of weeks educating the people and telling them that for all the support we gave to the PDP for the past years which is over 4 million votes, what did we get? We lost Bakassi, 76 oil wells, hosting rights for the National Sports Festival, and during this time, paradise was lost in the state. I remember a time when we had flights from Calabar to Obudu, Lagos to Bebi, Port Harcourt to Bebi, Abuja to Bebi, do we still have those flights? Once upon a time, we boasted of having the longest Cable car in Africa, do we still have that? Once upon a time, the President spent his vacation in Obudu, does that still happen? Do we still have the mountain race? So, with the massive support that we have given to the PDP, our experience has been one loss after the other. Let us even go into the area of appointment, constitutionally, every state is entitled to a minister; so it’s not a privilege but a right. Let us do an analysis of the ministers that we have had. 1999, President Obasanjo gave us Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, that is number one minister because it is the only one that is mentioned in the constitution. When we had Senator Kanu Agabi (SAN) as minister we also had Senator Liyel Imoke as Special Adviser on Utilities, so the minister was a right and the SA was a privilege. 2003, Liyel Imoke became minister of Power, no longer number one but a downgrade. Senator Florence Ita Giwa became SA on National Assembly Matters. So the Minister was a right and Ita Giwa was an extra. After Imoke resigned to contest for governor, Ivara Esu, the current deputy governor was appointed Minister of State for Culture; that is minister for Ekpa, Mgbe, Nnabo and the rest. We had no SA.
Then our brother of blessed memory, John Odey became minister for information, later environment; again a slight upgrade. There was no SA, just our right. No extra. High Chief Edem Duke now came after John Odey. With the massive support we gave to the PDP, they just took Cross River for granted and our people are beginning to know that. Now, let us see where we are with President Buhari, that we gave only 28, 000 votes. I don’t like to talk about the CJN because we should not politicise it, but it is under Buhari that Cross River has a CJN. It could be a coincidence but we also have the head of service of the federation, auditor-general of the federation, chief of naval staff as well as minister all with 28, 000 votes. The reason I am including the minister is that in the recent past, the PDP had reduced Cross River State to minister of culture and Ekpe. That had been our fate under PDP but Buhari said these people deserve something better. Minister of Niger Delta Affairs from Cross River, chairman of NDDC from Cross River, SA Prosecution; DG, centre for Women Development all from Cross River. So, you can see what Cross River has benefited with 28, 000 votes.
Our roads became passable under Buhari. Today, if you drive along Calabar – Itu road, you see some activities by Julius Berger. They have even cleared the other side which means the dualisation process for that road has started. The abandoned sub-station at Ikom, work has resumed; the sub-station at Obudu, work is almost complete under Buhari with 28, 000 votes. So, what is the PDP coming to tell Cross Riverians, what is the narrative now that we should continue to vote for you? The sentiment that ruled at the time is no longer there. We are a sentimental people. The sentiment then was that our son, Donald Duke and Imoke took part in the formation of the PDP and President Obasanjo was a southern Christian and out of sentiment we voted for them. After that, Goodluck Jonathan was our son from the South/South and we gave him massive support. Today, which sentiment are they going to use? President Buhari is a Muslim from the North as well as Atiku Abubakar, so what story are they going to tell Cross Riverians? And so, we stand a better chance of winning. With the vulnerable position of Cross River State today, we cannot afford to be in opposition. And our governor has publicly said again and again that he is the first son of the president, and the president has shown him love, came to Cross River State twice and so this is the time to reciprocate that love. So, it will be the highest act of ingratitude for any Cross Riverian not to vote for Buhari. So, the factors that favoured PDP in the past are no longer there.
What role did you play in the rehabilitation of several roads in the state like the Ikom-Ogoja and Calabar roads because in the past, a lot of people had accused you of doing nothing for the state?
On roads, I stand on what I said. The commissioner allegedly contradicted my earlier claim. I did not hear the commissioner’s interview but those who heard gave me the summary. He did not mention any completed road. All their roads are in the pipeline. I am talking about roads that were tarred and I stand by it. If they insist, we can go and stand by the roads we did. He never mentioned any roads that they completed from what I heard.
It is being alleged that your intention to go back to the Senate was just to become the president of the Senate or that you have been promised the slot. May we hear from you on that?
I don’t know of any politician who would do that; supposing I don’t win the elections? So, that information is just cheap propaganda but what I can tell you for certain is that I am eligible and available when I get there to struggle for whatever is coming to my zone and will not shy away from it, but for now, nobody promised me anything.
It is also being alleged that some people are destroying billboards of their opponents in the state. What actually is the truth?
On billboards, violence is the argument of a man who has run out of logic. I recall that the governorship candidate of the APC complained of the destruction of his billboards and this does not speak well. Democracy is a matter of choices and o don’t see how the presence of a billboard will affect how somebody votes. So, the destruction whether it’s done by the APC or the PDP is condemnable and not acceptable. The people must be allowed to make their choices very freely. Pulling down billboards will only instigate violence in an election that is supposed to be free and fair and so I condemn it. Every candidate should go out and sell what he can do. If you have been in office, you should be able to ride on your records and not promises.
Recently, the appointment of Amina Zakari by the INEC was controversial. Do you think there was any reason for the controversy?
First, they said she was the blood relation of the president and the same people say the president is from Sudan, a Jubril from Sudan; so, how can a lady from Jigawa be related to a man from Sudan? And then, I don’t know what appointments they are talking about. The electoral act is very clear on the role of INEC. That commission they are talking about is not envisaged by the electoral act. It’s just some ad-hoc arrangement. The returning officer for the presidential election is the chairman of INEC. So, I think this propaganda is just mere distraction. First of all, you say the president is one Jubril from Sudan, then in another breath you say the lady from Jigawa State is a blood relation of a Sudanese; please be consistent.
