Udom Emmanuel, governor of Akwa Ibom State, in this interactive session with journalists in Lagos, spoke about his administration’s effort to change the face of Akwa Ibom State. The governor, who says he is a professional in politics, insists that his focus is to lay a very solid foundation for the economic well being of the people and not bothered by the tantrum of gainsayers. ZEBULON AGOMUO was there. Excerpts:
You marked three years in office recently; may we know the basis for the celebration and how your administration has impacted on the people?
As soon as we came into office; we hit the ground running because we knew why we came into office in the first place. In the past three years that’s what we’ve gone ahead doing. Has it been rosy; the answer is no, are we facing a lot of challenges? The answer is enormous (enormous challenges). In Akwa Ibom State, we have about 3,000 units, and I have gone round. I have visited all the units severally. That’s why you can now understand that even certain policies that you put in place might not even work because of the feeling of what the grassroots people are facing on daily basis.
That’s how you will now understand that it is not when you sit in the Government House fanning yourself and saying you have put in place policies for compulsory education and you think everybody is in school; but you just discover that a lot of people cannot even go. You meet a family and ask, why didn’t your child go to school, and they tell you ‘sorry I have not even eaten since yesterday’; what do you do as a governor?
You now say go to school I will pay your WAEC fees; if he doesn’t eat, he cannot even write WASC examination and pass very well.
You now discover that things we used to take for granted are no longer so. I remember in those days when a child is hungry you say ‘go and drink garri’. Today, garri is difficult to come by. So, we started to look at our blueprint once again, because the blueprint you draw when you are aspiring; the blueprint you draw when you are campaigning is different from the blueprint that you experience when you are having adequate feedback from the grassroots. But by and large the principles are the same. We look at everything and see how we can do a proper execution that can take things up to the grassroots. And see how you can live for a cause that you came into the office; not for an applause that probably we are known for in this part of the world, because you just discover that you can play the politics in different way, not so much into the applause, but we are concerned about what we can actually do to get back to the grassroots.
You see somebody who would probably have just a slight fall in the bathroom, before they run around looking for a clinic, a doctor or even a syringe to inject the person, the person is gone; something that is that minor happens regularly and you have a heart break as a governor.
It will be difficult for me now to start counting all that we have done in the last three years. We have done a lot on infrastructure and we are doing and we are also going to do more.
One thing I also experienced is that we can actually do so many things simultaneously. Somebody may be surprised to ask, ‘you are building infrastructure, what about other sub-sectors?’ Not even a single sub-sector is neglected, but it is subjected to resources. You know resources are limited; we do not have open-end resources to carry out all that we want to put in place.
Someone asked me some time ago how I am able to do all that we are doing in the era of recession. I said well there are two situations here. I have a situation of cash and a situation of money. Cash I don’t have; money can I create? The answer is yes. I find a way to create money to do certain things; I may not have cash. That’s what makes a whole lot of difference. A lot of people may not really actually understand that, and that’s why you read all the things you read and they don’t actually come out with the true position of things.
Today, I have just discovered that minor staple foods we eat as a people we do not even have enough; and till tomorrow we do not have enough.
Even where we borrowed the presidential system of government from, that’s America, there is hardly any state in America that cannot produce; I think about 83 percent of what any state consumes is produced in that state in America.
So, I just challenged my people and that’s why I went and picked a professor from a university and said to him, come and head a technical committee on Agric and Food sufficiency! Now, how can we be evergreen from January to December? And once there’s a little bit situation around us people wouldn’t even find garri to buy in the market. There must be something wrong somewhere. God has provided us with everything, that we need but the problem is that we are probably not doing what we are supposed to do.
What has been the impact of your intervention in the agric sector?
Today, I can tell you for free that the price of garri in Akwa Ibom State has drastically reduced from what it used to be when we came into power.
That was as a result of our conscious efforts. For instance, garri was about N21,000 (Twenty One Thousand Naira) a bag, but today, it is N11,500, at most N12,000 depending on our output at that point in time. I just discovered that even the local fabrication yard, we can actually patronise them. If you see our garri-milling factories, about 90 to 95 percent are fabricated locally; people go ahead fabricating the processing system and I try to take people round and show them how those processes work; and they work perfectly well.
That’s how you’ll know that in Nigeria we have the capacity; all we need is just to challenge the mind of our people. One of the fabricating yards recently did a corn-shredding and drying processing system for me and I discovered that the quality that came out after the shredding and drying of the corn can actually be sold anywhere in the world; so right now we are actually importing similar technology to also do cocoa because I also discovered that because of our vegetation – our weather, our soil, we have one of the best flavours of cocoa on planet earth, but it is the processing system that makes us non-competitive in the international market. So, our people just suffer a whole lot, they don’t get competitive pricing. So we have to import technology now to process that and see how that meets the international standards that will be required or needed by big companies like Nestle, for chocolate, etc.
Once we get that right, then we change the face of things and fortunes of our people. Similarly, we look at our environment and said; one day oil might not be always there. There are new commodities that are coming up in the market (emerging market); if you go to Bloomberg you see cocoa Nikel, all the prices of corn, sugar, coffee and the rest of them. You will never see the price of things like crude coconut oil because it is not available in large qualities and cannot even meet 20 percent of the world demand.
So, we said to ourselves we have a shoreline that is very conducive for certain hybrids of coconut. So we went ahead and acquired the areas, to do 2 million seedling of coconut; so we are about 60 percent to completion on our refinery where we would refine crude coconut oil and it is something people do not know until we pointed it out; the federal ministry of Agriculture, NIFOR are with us now.
The same way, the same technology that we can use to process coconut oil can also be used to process palm kernel oil without even changing any pan. If you check, the white palm that we have in South-South is so rich in kernel, but very poor in palm oil so, why should we allow those kernel to waste? And that’s where appropriate pricing also comes in. So when our own women sit and get cracking kernel, we should be able to buy it at international market prices; and that’s how you create an economy, because once you process it, you have off takers that will be buying it from us. These are things that are not rocket sciences; just making use of what you have in your community to get certain things to work.
Where is your administration on the wood factory project?
We are from a region where you have wood all round, but believe me, I can’t remember when last I saw any factory in this country specialising in wood works; but everything in this country we go to South Africa, outside this country to buy, meanwhile we have a lot of wood everywhere. So, we are setting up a factory to also process wood and also make plywood to be as good as the ones being imported, and as good as what you find in your car chrome and also be able to play in the international market. All these things abound, but we have to look inwards and see what we can do. You see that typical politicians might not be interested in doing what we are trying to do; because people may not applaud what you are doing because they are interested in only today and not tomorrow.
But we are laying a very solid foundation for the economic wellbeing of our people. These are things we call paradigm shift and that has been our focus in the past three years.
What some do not understand is that as you are doing this good thing, laying this good foundation people will appreciate because you are touching lives directly and that’s how you, at the end of the day, get loved by the people.
What do you think was responsible for the reported massive crowd at the venue of the Democracy Day event in Uyo on May 29?
Those who saw the huge crowd that was at the stadium on the Democracy Day were shocked. The good thing is that 99 percent of the people who came that day came on their own to show solidarity; they came to show love for the government that has touched the grassroots. That day, if we did not open all the emergency exits there could have been a serious stampede. Even the policemen could not do parade because there was no single space; the people outside were almost as equal as the people inside; we couldn’t do a match past; we had to just give goodwill messages and opened all the emergency exits for people to go out.
People are trying to say, fine, you might call any party you want in this country but as much as we are concerned this is our own party; is like a religion here, we will live and die with it. That was the message they were trying to make Nigerians to know. This is because they have seen the impact of good governance on the grassroots and the people.
Despite the achievements your administration has recorded in the areas of infrastructure, investments and raising the quality of life of the people as you have highlighted, criticisms still abound. Why is it so?
Of course, there must be those who will deliberately deny the good efforts and the changes in their environment. They have chosen to live in denial, but we are not surprised about that. They use the social media to send out falsehood. Well, like I said we are not surprised because it didn’t start today. We Christians know that even in the Bible, even after the good man had planted wheat, the enemy still went and sowed tares. It is always there. So, no matter what you do, there are those who would be somewhere throwing in sand and stones, calling you names, but we try not to answer them because we are not going to the same direction.
But I tell you for free that I am one governor that knows what is happening in all the 31 local government areas and in almost all the MDAs in my state. So, there’s no single area that I don’t know what is happening there. I do not need a paper or call on any of those working with me to update me with what is happening in any area in my state; whether local government areas, wards and even to the units. We signed on in this business and we will do it with every amount of sincerity and passion; and then try to see what amount of result we can get. As I told my people and as I say always, I am a professional in politics, not a professional politician, and this is what has continued to drive my passion in the service of the good people of Akwa Ibom State.
