Former Minister of Petroleum
Resources, ex-Governor of old Cross River State (sic) and Chairman, Akwa
Ibom APC Caucus, Chief Don Etiebet, spoke with Vanguard in Uyo on
President Muhammadu Buhari and his policies, issues in Niger Delta
development and politics of Akwa Ibom State.
He also took up the former
governor of the state, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and PDP to task, saying
the past 18 years of PDP rule of the state brought nothing to the
state. Excerpts:
The decisions President Muhammadu Buhari is
taking on Niger Delta problems will contribute seriously to the
development of the area.
The first of these decisions was his order to
clean up Ogoni land. The important thing about the approval of modular
refineries to replace the illegal refineries is geared towards producing
petroleum products that can meet international standards.
With the use
of standard equipment in the production of petroleum products, there
would not be an adverse effect on the environment with spot and many
other things that are already descending on places like Port Harcourt.
He recognizes how important Niger Delta region is, that is why he is
paying more attention to the zone; that is where the oil comes from.
When he came, he appointed a South-South man from Niger Delta to be his
Minister of State for Petroleum, holding the portfolio himself because
he knows the importance of the region and its oil to his government.
Kachikwu’s appointment, a masterstroke
His Minister of State is a professional in the industry, who knows what
to do; a man who was already rich who has come to give his all to the
country.
And since Ibe Kachikwu came on board, we have seen what he has
been doing. He got the elders of Niger Delta to come together and to
tell the militants to stop the bombing. The militants have stopped
bombing and I pray they stop forever.
May God break into their hearts
for them to stop bombing for ever because whether you like it or not as I
said in one of the South- South Leaders’ meetings, we suffer the most
when they break the oil pipeline; the oil flows around our farmlands and
pollutes our rivers?
When you break the gas pipeline, the gas is poisonous and can kill if not immediately blocked.
We cannot achieve good governance or development through that and we
are happy that they have stopped the bombing and the volume of oil
production is rising and stabilising again.
So, with this background,
all the things that the Federal Government has promised the South-South
will come.
-NDCC, formerly an ATM machine for top officials
If you read the papers, you would find out that NDDC was corrupt. Yes!
It is true from what they were doing in those days.
NDDC was like an ATM
machine to the people in the presidency and Abuja because NDDC was
under the Presidency.
When they called the managing director of NDDC and
said we want N200 million tonight, where do you think the MD would get
the money from? He has to award an emergency contract overnight to
somebody and pay the man up-front in order to take N200 million in cash
to Abuja. So, that is how these contracts have been piling up without
being done and you hear now the backlog is in trillions of naira.
But when Buhari came, he saw the abuse in that light and decided in the
interest of the Niger Delta people to remove the NDDC from the
presidency, so that they cannot say oh, the presidency is asking me to
do this or that.
This is the first time NDDC is being coordinated by the
Niger Delta Ministry, so the Presidency would now be in a monitoring
role to ensure NDDC performs its primary function of developing the
infrastructure of the zone creditably and satisfactorily.
Everything
must now follow due process to ensure the contracts are executed
properly. I am optimistic that the new MD, Obong Nsima Ekere, will do
well and if he does not do it, I would carry a placard in protest for
him to identify all those defaulting contractors and punish them. We
cannot go along like before and expect development.
-Media should ask questions
You guys in the media must start to ask questions. That is why all
these 56 years of independence we are nowhere in development. It pains
us a lot and that is how PMB is feeling because, before his
administration, corruption had killed development.
People were so
corrupt and government agencies were so corrupt that on almost every
desk was a corrupt man. Governors did everything with impunity, state
revenues were shared as it is being revealed every day.
See how
much has been recovered into the TSA. As at the last count, it was about
N5.1 trillion! Where would that money have gone otherwise? Would you
have seen it or what it has been used for? How much is the proposed 2017
budget? About N6 trillion, so, we already have enough naira to run the
budget except for the foreign exchange content, which is improving by
the day.
I believe immediately the budget is approved, more dollars
would come in from foreign investors and development partners in
infrastructure.
Moreover, those government people, who used to take
government money during monthly allocations to buy dollars, at any rate,
to stash away, may not have that opportunity again.
There would
be no more money to buy dollars in the black market and keep in
containers, in houses, and in tanks again.
If anybody is saying Buhari
is not performing, that person is a mad man because, within two years,
he has laid a foundation for growth, foundation for development. We must
have that foundation first.
For 56 years of our independence, that
foundation was not there and that is why you see things like this. So
with this foundation laid, we are now going to have something to stand
on to develop.
-Senator Godswill Akpabio’s comment at Osinbajo’s meeting with A’Ibom stakeholders
The only thing that saddened me with the whole presentation at the Town
Hall meeting with the Acting President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, is the
confession of the former governor of the state, Senator Godswill
Akpabio, on that day. It was an involuntary confession.
He would not
have known the impact and maybe he was trying to crack a joke, I do not
know. But specifically, he meant that the past PDP state governments in
Niger Delta were not interested in attracting Federal Government’s
presence to their states because they were PDP governments at the state
and at the national level, and according to Godswill, they did not want
to criticize their government at the centre and particularly in
- Akwa Ibom State, where PDP has been in government for 16 years.
Now, we are getting to 20 years in the present democratic dispensation,
we do not have any visible federal presence in the state.
I remember
Hon. Nduese Essien cracked a joke at the town hall meeting when Obasanjo
came to Akwa Ibom State, he was asked the same question and he said,
what about the policeman standing there, is he not a federal presence?
So the only thing the people of Akwa Ibom State see as federal presence
is the security people?
-Akpabio, PDP liable for lack of federal presence
So for the fact that a past governor of this state, who ruled the state
for eight years to say that he saw no reason, no need to get the
federal government to have a meaningful presence in his state because
the same party that was in government at the state and federal levels,
is a big shame and symptomatic of the corruption that was going on in
governance then.
It is very miserable and ill-conceived for him to now
like to criticize and complain about the new government of change at the
centre for not having a federal presence in the state.
It is a
statement that has indicted Godswill Akpabio and the people of Akwa Ibom
State should hold him and other PDP governments responsible for the
lack of federal presence in Akwa Ibom State.
-I brought PDP to A’Ibom but they sidelined me
I brought PDP to this state and I caused the first PDP governorship
candidate Obong Victor Attah to win the election in this state. However,
I did not participate in the governance.
They did not consult me and I
did not take part in the governance and many of you remember all those
fights I used to fight during Victor Attah’s time and all those things I
used to say about the PDP, which caused me to leave the party.
-Last insult
What Akpabio said at the town hall meeting is very revealing. It was a
miserable statement he made publicly and Akwa Ibom people should use
that statement to say that the presence of PDP in the state is no more
welcome.
If they fail to hold Akpabio and PDP responsible for the lack
of development in the state, they should not blame anyone for what is
befalling them.
There may be a few of them, who have benefited from the
PDP government over the last 18 years of PDP rule in Akwa Ibom State,
but the masses of the state are suffering because of misrule, businesses
have suffered setbacks in the state.
I am sorry to say that they
do not travel a lot to see what happens elsewhere, they are suffering
in silence. I hope the people of this state would take it as the final
insult they will receive from these people and vote PDP government out
in this state so that the government of change would also be manifested
here in Akwa Ibom State.
Godswill Akpabio accepted that there is a
change at the national level through APC government and it was not
happening when there was PDP.
I am a member of BOT of APC; a member of
the National Caucus of APC, who has access to the APC government at the
highest level but they did not allow me to speak when the Acting
President, Prof Yemi Osinbabo, came for the town hall meeting in the
state, can you imagine that?
-The waste called Ibaka Seaport project
Here in Akwa Ibom, if we can get the Ibaka Seaport done, it will create
jobs and lots of developments. Regrettably, the state government has
wasted so much money on the Ibaka Seaport project, lots of money has
been spent on frivolities.
Can you people in the media go and find out
how much money has been spent on feasibility studies and drawings of the
sea-port? Has anything been done? Where have all those monies gone?
What developments have we seen here in Akwa Ibom State compared to the
monies that have accrued to this state even from Federal Allocations
alone?
-The Buhari I know
Let me tell you, I worked with
President Muhammadu Buhari when he was not yet President. He was a
presidential candidate under ANPP when I was the national chairman and I
see a man, who is very sincere and committed to the development of
Nigeria; who feels the pains of why Nigeria is like this after so many
years of independence.
A man, always in a state of melancholy feeling
the pains of how Nigerians have squandered our resources, about the
enormous corruption that Nigeria has found itself in.
And when you see
him, you would feel his pains too about the overwhelming problems of
Nigeria; how Nigerians behave the way they are behaving.
It is for this
reason he ran for the presidency three times; it was the fourth time God
heard his prayers, our prayers and brought him to save Nigeria.
-Nigeria without Buhari?
And he has come and you know the enormous achievements he has made.
Could you imagine where Nigeria would have been by now if he did not
come? Maybe Boko Haram would have hoisted its flag in Aso Villa.
They
were already in Abuja. You saw all the bombings in Abuja, the previous
governments with all the money they allocated, they put them in their
pockets, sending soldiers so callously empty handed to be killed in the
field.
They were not sincere and honest in their dealings. They did not
love Nigeria, all the money that was given to them to fight insecurity;
they put it in their pockets and used the balance to buy people for the
elections.
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