‘A Deputy Should Be 100 Percent Loyal to the Governor’
In what area would you say the Udom Emmanuel administration has made the highest positive impact in the last five years?
Education and infrastructure. Education is top on our agenda, food sufficiency is on our agenda and we are delivering food to the people. Sometimes people don’t know that we can be self-sufficient for up to 80 percent of what we eat in this state. We are producing rice. The issue of people smuggling rice into Akwa Ibom is caused by greed, the craze for money, because there’s no scarcity of our local rice in our markets. As a matter of fact, it’s cheaper than the one they bring in. So we are self-sufficient in food.
In Uyo, alone our green-house supplies us with the tomatoes we need. We have conserved a little bit of our energy going to bring these things from the north. In the area of food sufficiency, we can stand up to be counted.
In infrastructure, schools, medical field, all our hospitals were gone. It is this administration that brought them back. All the general hospitals are back to optimum capacity. The Etinan General Hospital is a paperless hospital. All the general hospitals in the state are interconnected. All you need to do is give your name and information and in two minutes what the doctor says will be given to you there. It’s a development and there’s electricity to back it.
We are aiming for ‘light for all’ in this state by 2021. We are hoping and working to be able to also distribute the power we generate here, because that’s the problem, if you generate the power and by this same law it doesn’t allow you to distribute what you have, you put it into the system, the system is unable to distribute so it can’t serve the people. Some communities here have light up to between 20 and 22 hours everyday and we are progressing. If the law allows, we will give light to our people minimum of 18 hours each day. But we are impeded by law.
Are you concerned that the NBS rates Akwa Ibom as the state with the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the country?
It’s not correct. I don’t know where they got that statistics from. Anybody can sit down in his house and give statistics. Are they really in the field? There’s not less than between 15 and 20 health centers in each local government here and so they are the people to say how many HIV/AIDS cases were reported. Don’t forget, if you don’t report where will the statistics come from? So, it’s not correct. It’s like the statistics that a certain percentage of Akwa Ibom children are out of school. Why are they out of school? There’s free education here and on top of that, each teacher in the school is given an allowance per child in every school, on top of their salaries to manage, and each child knows he/she is not paying any fee.
Akwa Ibom is the chair of Federal Government intervention in oil production, how is this position being used to revolutionise oil palm production in the state?
The oil palm estates we used to have in the state became dilapidated. We had estates in the palm belt area. They are being revitalized with these loans and support from the Central Bank, as at this point in time. We have not forgotten that this is the money spinner.
What kind of relationship are you going to work out with the farmers, are they still going to be government-owned estates?
The Ministry of Agriculture is to make sure it provides a good liaison between them and the Central Bank. They should be part of the Anchor Borrowers Scheme. It’s not going to be possible for each private farmer, to get borrowers scheme. They get into this cooperative working for the government. The government is not going to manage these estates. Once we get these estates working again, the people should be able to manage it themselves and benefit from this input that the Central Bank is making.
What are you going to retire into in 2023? Assuming you don’t have any ambition in politics
In 2023, my ambition is to be able to continue living in this state and making it better than I found it. I will continue to make my little contribution. I’m a journalist. If I retire into publishing, I will be comfortable. I have never been a business man in my life.
Where do you stand concerning the controversy over retirement benefits for governors and their deputies?
Will I not be adjudicating over my case? It’s all about good governance. What is good for the people is the most important thing. If the people come out and say this is not right and it’s universally accepted, a good government should be able to listen to what they are saying.
What’s your take on the social media bill?
Nigeria believes in laws, but do we enforce these laws? What is that bill expected to achieve? Is it not left for us the practitioners to impose what we think would make our profession sane? Which law in this country has been enforced? If we enforce laws things will be orderly, but no law is enforced. Is there no provision for people who circumvent laws? A reasonable law is able to regulate what you’re saying. Why do you want to put it into a law? Life itself is self-regulatory. You cannot say no to people who believe it’s an agenda to witch-hunt people who are not in their party because they are right. Because even when you know that somebody has committed an offense instead of taking them to court, you want to do some other thing. The whole thing boils down to leadership. Has the leadership fared well? The problem is not to review the constitution. that you didn’t make.
If the nation considers that it is important to define roles for a deputy governor, will it ever be in conflict with what the governor is doing? I think it’s a mutual understanding between two people. The former governor didn’t choose me. It’s the party that chose me. If it was the former governor, I would have decamped with him. I’m not opposed to defining the constitutional role but what will this role be in our case? No matter what you inscribe in that constitution, are practicing it here? What we want is the interest of the people. We should be very careful in saying what a deputy governor should do or should not do