WE MUST HUMANIZE POLITICS, NOT POLITICIZE HUMANITY – EMEMOBONG

Comrade Ini Ememobong, lawyer and scion of Obong Ememobong Essien of Use Ndon Ibiono Ibom, is the Publicity Secretary of the Akwa Ibom State Chapter of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). He speaks with Ibom Telegraph on the preparedness of his party towards the Local Government elections, politics of 2019 and sundry matters. Excerpts 

Senator Ita Enang recently described the state economy as a feeding bottle economy, what is your take on that?

When players are on loan to another football team, each time they play against the club that gave them on loan they try to over perform and in the process they earn a red card, just go and check. So Ita Enang, I have said, is a PDP player on loan to the opposition party. Each time he comes home this is what he does. I think the best thing is to re-designate Ita Enang as Senior Special Assistant to the President on Akwa Ibom Matters, because Ita Enang should rather face his job at the Presidency. I am sorry to say this, he is my learned senior colleague, and he is a distinguished Senator. He is someone we ought to be proud of, but his later day behaviour seems to be motivated by economic reasons. It seems that the more he castigates the state government that is when the federal government can recognize him.

If you check the internet, you recall that Ita Enang said that he would work for Goodluck Jonathan’s success; it’s on Premium Times and everywhere. He only worked for APC in the state, incidentally the people he worked for failed, so he has a moral burden because the man he didn’t vote for, that he didn’t work for, is now his boss. But if the man doesn’t care, why not keep quiet and do your job? Ita Enang’s job was to become a liaison between the presidency and the National Assembly. So I ask you; in the history of democratic practice in Nigeria, have you heard the number of rejected bills, appeals sent by the president to the senate except now. A whole ministerial list was rejected under Ita Enang’s liaisonship. Go and read what the president of the senate said about Ita Enang and the budget, he should rather answer those.  Ambassadorial nominee failed under Ita Enang. EFCC has been failing, so Ita Enang should rather concentrate. He should put his energy in being a good butter between the President and the Senate. His voice is like that of an ordinary citizen when he talks about Akwa Ibom matters.

What is a feeding bottle economy, when the Federal Government Ita Enang represents is thinking of producing pencil in 2019 or 2018 or whatever year they are planning, but Akwa Ibom is already producing pencils. The Federal Government is into a joint venture partnership with oil companies but cannot even construct roads to the locations of such oil companies; Akwa Ibom state is now constructing roads that will aid their joint venture partnership. What is a feeding bottle economy when today, if he lives here in Uyo, his family would have been eating from the AKEES tomatoes, I am not sure if he eats water melon, he would have been consuming some from here? These are things that have not happened here before. People are now selling baskets and now earning money, people are now selling their old newspapers to AKEES pencil and getting money. We are now creating a Local economy within ourselves and you call that a feeding bottle economy?  Well because word depends on the speaker and the hearer only knows the quality of speaker when you listen to what he says.

You see people who have a low moral quotient should be the least people to speak when the rest of people with morality are around. What is hunting Ita Enang is his negative past and he thinks that by his recurrently trying to be sanctimonious, that would make us forget that he stole someone’s ticket in 2007. Ita Enang is one person who did not buy any PDP form for the House of Representatives but went to the Senate primaries and lost woefully. Now eventually emerged on the ballot for the PDP House of Representatives and went on to stay for four years in a very criminal manner, forgetting that no one voted for him. Is that the kind of man who has the capacity?

So, if Ita Enang calls the Governor twice or thrice and the governor does not pick his calls, when he comes home; he needs to go on air. We cannot keep running this attention seeking cycle. We are responsible people; we must learn to do things responsibly. But again, Ita Enang is from Ibiono Ibom. For us, what we should rather look at should be: Ita Enang, what have you suggested to the Federal Government that you work with? Do you understand the economics of this season to be able to suggest to the federal government? So, our disposition is that we must not destroy our state for political reasons. I belong to the PDP, I do not intend to destroy Nigeria, I sympathize with the president, I sympathize with the FG, when we get to the election the dynamics of elections are totally different. So people like my brother, Ita Enang, should clearly understand that we must have lines we should not cross in the name of politics. We should not bring truth and clothe it with the garment of deceit; we should not sell deceit to the people. You can imagine Ita Enang asking women to go out naked and beat their breasts; Ita Enang has forgotten the spiritual implication of that. Ita Enang has also forgotten that he is promoting nudity. If you like to watch pornography, it is on sale, buy and watch, don’t engineer. Would Ita Enang have agreed that his own wife or mother or daughter should go naked and beat breast on the streets. We must humanize politics, we must not politicize humanity. We must ensure that the dignity of humanity is preserved.

Today, it is Udom Emmanuel after eight years it will be another person, and so if we continue this way, you see cannot desecrate the same seat you will want to seat. Mark my words, tomorrow Ita Enang would want to contest for governorship, so don’t destroy the seat, engage the occupant. We should learn from what happens at the national, we must humanize politics and not politicize humanity.

What is your view about restructuring?

The debate for restructuring has not gotten to a stage where states have to submit their dispositions. But you see, while you are discussing restructuring time is going. The Governor is interested in delivering on the promises he made. If the restructuring comes, fine! Governor Udom Emmanuel is a result-driven person, he works with what he has at hand, if what he is expecting comes; beautiful, that is forecast, but  with what he has at hand, he works with it, therefore, the issue of restructuring seem to be over flogged, who doesn’t need it? This is not what the federation should look like, and incidentally, whether it was PDP or APC, people like us, have maintained this disposition, we need to restructure. It’s just like the not too young to run bill, look; the right age to vote and be voted for is a true right.

So, if you now make an 18-year old to vote, if you don’t trust that these people are reasonable and old enough to lead and the number of these 18 years are more, it means they can gang up and in their indiscretion give us a bad leader. If you are saying that you can only vote, you can be voted for, how do you explain that? When in their age bracket they will make a higher percentage of the rest of us. We must allow this state to thrive because we cannot quickly have investment opportunities when the totality of things within their geography is out of their reach. You cannot blame government for successive administration in Akwa Ibom State, for the fate of Ibaka because the licensing processes are not in their hands, so you cannot blame them, you can only blame them when they have a total and absolute control. Today the only federal roads we have in the state were done by Senator Godswill Akpabio and the monies have not been refunded. Every road exists in a state, the money you would have spent on the federal ministry of works, why not send it to the state, it takes so much for a contract to be awarded at the Federal level. If you even take into consideration the bureaucratic bottle necks, restructuring is needed, I am not sure anyone can say he doesn’t need it.

The development pains we have today, yet people are still saying that some state are not doing well, but are they not even better than the Federal Government. We think that what the Federal Government should do when they have project is for Federal Ministry of Works to direct, set policies, become regulators, and ensure that standards are kept. If Federal Ministry of Works, Education, Agriculture, all become regulators, you just set the standard so that when states are not doing it, they come in, it will help, so that people can take ownership of governance.

At this point, when you look at the exclusive legislative list, you look at the concurrent, and you’ll realize that the Federal Government has been over-burdened because the Federal Government does not only legislate on the exclusion, but also has the right to legislate on the concurrent. And any legislation by the federal government which is concurrently legislated upon by the state government, the Federal legislation will override when there is inconsistency, so the federal government is now saddled with so much that it has become overburdened.

The leadership tussle in the PDP has finally been laid to rest, and that seems to have put an end to regular defections in Akwa Ibom State, what does this development portend for your party?

The judgment of the Supreme Court came out as expected because that was the law. The Supreme Court was not adjudicating as to who is the Ward Chairman, Chapter Chairman or who is the State Chairman of the party anywhere in Nigeria, except for places where, for some strategic reasons, congresses could not hold. The judgment of the Supreme Court related with the procedure of summoning a convention and setting up a Caretaker Committee, and the court said that process was proper; that the convention is the highest decision-making body of the party and therefore that, the Ahmed Makarfi-led Caretaker is proper before the law. There is no question as to who is, in fact, the leader of PDP. It was a question as to who is, in law, the leader of PDP. So, what were the facts? The facts were: That the Board of Trustees, who are the owners of the party; the Governor’s Forum, and the National Assembly Forum were with Ahmed Makarfi.

So, what the law did was: the law, through the pronouncement of the Supreme Court, aligned with the facts on ground. And that is when true justice is said to be done. It could also have gone the other way because the court was not part of your procedure; the court was not part of the Port Harcourt Convention; the court is not a PDP member. So, if the case was not properly presented, the court may also have arrived at a different decision, because where people claim that the court acted unjustly is when the law does not align with the facts. So, when the law aligns with the facts, justice is attained. So, for now, in that instant case, my Lords, the very noble Lords aligned the law with the facts and so justice was not only done, but was manifestly seen to have been done and you can see with the non-elective convention that was held. We saw the real situation. What I saw in Abuja was a party that had passed through its own turmoil but had emerged victorious. So I am grateful that my Lords in the Supreme Court, my noble Lords, did justice and allowed justice to be done.

Were there any faction of the PDP in Akwa Ibom and what reconciliatory move has the National Chairman put in place? 

There was absolutely no faction here in the state. It is difficult when people choose to daydream. Processes are sacrosanct; we had Ward Congresses, Chapter Congresses. We had the State Congress and there was no single complaint. In Akwa Ibom, through the leadership of Governor Udom Emmanuel, we had no problem.

Let’s agree the party is back and Akwa Ibom is preparing for its Local Government election, how prepared is your party?

We, the PDP, have been preparing long before the election. The second answer is that the people attempting to contest against us are not sure whether they want to partake of the election or not. Therefore, if our oppositions are not certain whether they want to contest or not, shouldn’t that tell you that they are conscious of imminent failure? Today, they say they will contest, tomorrow they say they won’t; the next day they are in court.  PDP is the only party that is ready for elections. We have issued guidelines and in the next few days we are going to set out our structures, we are going to go ahead and conduct nominations, not the type of nominations our opposition did in Lagos. Those who fail to prepare, plan to fail and those who prepare, prepare to succeed, and I can assure you that PDP will succeed.

Today, PDP has a strong opposition party at the centre with the INEC, security to their advantage. Do you think Akwa Ibom will still remain a PDP state in 2019?

Let’s wait for 2019 to come. There may not even be an APC in 2019. Yes, they have never contested any two general elections in the same name or structure, from AD to AC to ACN to APC. The only thing that has been constant in their name is the letter A. So, we don’t know what other A, we will be expecting to come. You see INEC is to count votes, not to vote. We will ensure that votes are counted. We have come to the point of political awareness.  The same INEC that counted the votes and they won the Presidential Election, will be the INEC that will count this vote. People are becoming aware so much so that it makes it very difficult. Anybody who goes for an election needs to think whether he will go back home. And the only guarantee that you will go back home is when you do the right thing. I can assure you that we are Christians; the Governor is a Christian also.

The political projection that thrown up Udom Emmanuel as Governor is not known to our political history in Akwa Ibom, therefore, the hand of God was manifestly seen, and that hand is still there. So, I can assure you that the hand that brought him, the hand that is sustaining him, will confirm his mandate. We have defeated these same people before, they are people we know, we defeated them at nomination, and some of them ran away from nomination, and the God of that first defeat is still God on the seat. We defeated them when this same Governor was not this popular. We defeated them when the Governor did not do programmes. We defeated them with his political history as Secretary to State Government (SSG). Now, we will be going to elections with his political history as Governor. You think that the people of Ikot Udo in Ibiono will vote any other person apart from the Governor? You think that the people in the market who have benefitted from the price crash of Garri will not support the Governor? You think that the people in Eket-Ibeno and Esit-Eket, some adults who are witnessing good roads in that area for the first time in their lifetime will not vote for him? You think that the people in Oron will not vote for him? And then Mkpat Enin and Eastern Obolo with the Coconut plantation will not vote for him? You see, when we get to that point, there will be a comparison between the known and the promised, and we have seen that these gentlemen have consistently promised and failed. When people see these people, they’ll remember the sufferings that Nigeria has been made to go through under that their platform. So, I can assure you that as the Lord lives, the hands that brought Udom Emmanuel in 2015 are not yet tired, the divine wings upon which he flew into government is still available.

There are rumours that stakeholders in the state may not be very satisfied with the performance of the Governor, probably because he is not really putting money into pockets. How can you be so certain about victory if the aggrieved keeps multiplying?

I don’t know who these stakeholders are? But I do know that if the stakeholders are members of caucus, if the stakeholders are those that have been attending meetings with us, I don’t know because for three stakeholders’ meetings, the Governor has been endorsed as sole candidate without any prompting. The difference between the Governor and other candidates is that the Governor is already a candidate, others would have to fight for nominations but he has already been endorsed. Now on the issue of putting money in hands, assuming but not conceding that what you are saying is the truth and assuming also that the people you are talking about are also members of the PDP, the question we would like to ask is; how far did we go in the past in putting money in people’s hands? The Governor is not about putting money in people’s hands, the Governor is more interested in creating sustainable developments that money can keep coming. That is the difference. Now, what the Governor is doing, rather than give you money to buy a car, the Governor creates an investment that, over time, would buy a car for you.  So, in the process of that investment you can have a car. Because if you are a young person, you have N3million and that’s all you have, if you buy a car, from that day the car becomes a liability. If you don’t use it well, it would not be an asset, but if you put that N3m into a venture that gives you N300,000 a month, your N3million is still there either in asset or liquid cash, now you can buy the car in 10 months while the business is still running.

So, the Governor is about creating values and sustainable wealth. You see, wealth isn’t money; there is a difference between cash, assets and currency. The Governor is interested in creating sustainable wealth. A lot of people have cash but they are not wealthy. Wealth is the capability to take care of your needs and the needs of others in a sustainable manner. No one can argue the fact that Bill Gate is wealthy because his company is moving. He can take care of his needs, if he wants a car he can buy, and he is donating to the poor, he is one of the heaviest donors to Rotary and other good courses, to fight polio and other deadly diseases in the world. So the Governor wants to create wealth he doesn’t want people with cash in the pockets. If you check around your community, you see people who were with so much cash, but today I’m sure you are sorry for them because they are not wealthy. Until cash is converted to sustainable wealth, you cannot say that you are wealthy.

So, if the Governor’s desire to create wealth is a problem to people, we apologize to them, but we can assure them that we will not deviate. Now you see people are going to farm, the same people who didn’t want to go to farm because, you see others make a lot of money from the farm now. It’s not how much you have now, but how much you are about to produce, is not how much you spend but how much you stand to earn. People are beginning to say look, I’m not a big man by how much to spend. We were the only people who felt that you are measured by how much you spend, no! You are rather measured by how much you earn, and that earning didn’t need to come from Civil Service, not government, it needs to come from enterprises we engage in. Therefore, the Governor is very serious, consistent and unrepentant in creating the value and sustainable development where enduring wealth can emanate from, so if you know those people, please apologize for us, but tell them that as much as we are sorry, we are not willing to change.

Akwa Ibom at 30, how far have we gone?

I am excited to live in Akwa Ibom at 30. I am also excited that I’m older than the state. So, I can tell the story of my state. I am excited that as a people, we have grown to where we are. But more importantly, I am excited that the hand of God has been upon this state, especially in the area of leadership selection. I tell you that I am the last person that would criticize past leaders. You needed to live in their times to know what they went through. Leadership is not easy, talk is cheap. Obong Victor Attah was not the richest candidate during his period, but God made it that a lot of people chose him through a consensus. I am not even sure that people who went for the consensus had him in mind but God chose him. Like some political commentators would say that if we had gone for full nomination as a party then, maybe Obong Attah wouldn’t have emerged, but God used the process to ensure that Obong Attah emerged. Obong Attah was one of the best Governors during his time. Attah gave us reason to speak up and strong voices at the National Assembly.

So, whether you had an Okon as a houseboy was immaterial thereafter, but you knew that was a Governor of that state. In Attah’s regime a lot of great things happened, you remember the Ethical and Attitudinal Re-orientation Commission (EARCOM), specially headed by Eseme Eyibio then, did a lot of things. Even people had to act movies about Akwa Ibom. So there was this rebirth of the Akwa Ibom person and the definition of the Akwa Ibom person in Nigeria. And therefore, we discovered that Obong Attah was the Governor for his time, when that period passed, Chief Godswill Akpabio was Governor for his time. He came with the drive and with the desire to massively transform the state. If he had the opportunity he could have done 300 things at the same time.

So, God brought him at that time when we needed aggressive development and we had that. Now we have a recession, the national economic situation that is affecting the entire country, God brought Udom Emmanuel to manage our resources. A man who throughout his life has been groomed in art and science of managing lean resources to achieve maximum results and you see what is happening here. If you are told what is happening at the Dakaada Secretariat, you would think it’s a joke until you go and find out that, there is an ultra modern facility, providing accommodation for thousands and they are working, and that was done with the least possible amount that you can think of. So when you look at the things he is doing, you look at the Uyo-Etinan Road, the Hospital, Etinan High School, the greatest happiness for me is that God has always intervened in the leadership of Akwa Ibom to give us a governor we deserve, not the one we desire. So I could say that we have always have the  governor we deserve, not the one we desired, so at this point of our history, what we deserved was an  Udom Emmanuel who can manage our  lean resources and give us maximal benefit.

As someone who has seen the state from birth, do you think we have kept to the vision and dreams of our founding fathers?

Well, the dreams of the elders men, and the visions of the youths must have a meeting point, a junction, must have a congress. What were their dreams? The founding fathers of  Akwa Ibom wanted a state where there will be equity, justice and fairness, and the fact that there is the geopolitical (senatorial) arrangement of Governorship. At 30 years, we can truly say that every senatorial district has produced a Governor in this state and that was their dream. They wanted fairness they wanted equity; they also wanted huge scale development with the things we have here. The Nigeria Football Federation makes the Godswill Akpabio Stadium the home of the Super Eagles. The people are dancing in their graves; they have brought Nigeria to Akwa Ibom. Now when you see that the conference of South-South, South-East Governors would, without pressure, choose their own son as their leader, the people are excited. These were things our founding fathers fought for. They wanted a permanent place of respect in the comity of states in Nigeria. They wanted the Akwa Ibom man to have a definition by honour, hard work and given his place without being cheated.

So, I am certain that we may not have reached the El-dorado even till the end of our life time because human development is continuous. Roads are still being built in America. So, we may not finish these things in our lifetime, but I am sure that by the time God calls our generation, when we look back, we will be proud of what we have done in Akwa Ibom.