HomePolitics Why I opposed third term —Victor Attah
Why I opposed third term —Victor Attah
Written by Dapo Akinrefon, Charles Kumolu & Gbenga Oke
Monday, 17 November 2008
*Says off shore/onshore dichotomy was a set back *Laments absence of true federalism *PDP umbrella is not torn, he maintains
PERHAPS, many may call him the hero of the struggle for resource control in the last dispensation. Being prominent in the offshore/onshore dichotomy saga made him louder than his colleagues. Victor Attah’s voice was strong during this struggle for the control of oil resources off and on the shores of his state and other oil-producing states. This saga, the former Akwa Ibom State governor said, affected him early in his administration.
“Obasanjo brought a lacuna called Onshore/Offshore dichotomy; that is the one that really created the big hole because at that point, he reduced Akwa Ibom to a non-oil producer because most of our oil is offshore. He was giving me N600 million a month and yet, my salary bill was about N800 million,” Attah lamented.
Obong Victor Attah
Aside that, the former president of Nigerian Institute of Architects, told Vanguard that ballot boxes must be respected, if Nigeria must have true democracy. Attah, who acknowledged that Nigeria derailed along the lines of true federalism, lamented the absence of participatory democracy in Nigeria. This view, is largely present in his party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, where imposition of candidates has become a norm. Taking cue from the election of Barack Obama in the USA, he said politics must be based on values and issues in Nigeria.
“Even in America today, Colin Powell’s support for Obama was not strictly on party lines,” he noted.
The former governor, also spoke on ten years of PDP leadership, his failed presidential aspiration, the emergence of candidate Yar’Adua in 2007 and other national issues. Excerpts:
IT has been one year and some months since you left office, how has life been outside government?
I will answer that by telling you a story that happened in 1962. That was when I left this country for further studies. I stayed there for eleven years without coming back to Nigeria. At the airport to receive me was my immediate elder brother. When I left, we had civilian rule but coming back, I met military rule. I left him to relate with the soldiers. When we checked in at Ikoyi Hotel, a small incident happened and he commended me saying “Victor, it’s like you have never left this country.” I have always been the same each time I leave any phase.
I left my practice for service and now I am back to my practice. I left my practice of many years and started my office in 1974 having worked for people for many years. I contested election which I won by God’s grace. The victory was repeated in 2003. I then went back to my practice as if I have never left it. I have this passion for my profession. That is why I go back each time I leave. So that is the point of the story I am telling you. In all honesty, I am back to my first love.
There was also a time when I landed in Abuja and wanted to bring down my luggage, then someone said where are your aides? I replied, that it came with the office and has gone with the office. Some may think that things would not be the same after leaving the office but it is not like that. People think that one can’t go back and be himself again after leaving the office. I didn’t find it that way. I am an architect and town planner and I am behaving like any other architect and town planner.
The explanation you gave now would be possible in developed democracies. Does it mean you don’t have regrets leaving the office.
I don’t really know what you mean by regrets because having had the opportunity of coming back for a second term, one should be satisfied and be grateful to God. When you go into office, you should know that there is a limit. If you are lucky to have a second term, what else is the person seeking for? One should know that if he is through with governance, the next thing to do is to walk away from it. It is not a matter of regretting and wishing that I will stay back in office. I knew it was going to end and it has ended. I am happy that it has ended. If I regret anything, it’s the normal fears anybody can have not because I was in office.
What are those normal fears?
Today, there are a lot of people who regret certain things about Nigeria. There are some who wish the country had continued along certain lines. They wish the country had continued to develop along certain ideals. That is the failed expectation that we ought to be developing on the part of true federalism. If you mean regrets in that sense. But otherwise, I knew it was going to end and I am happy it has ended the way it did.
Given the prospects that Nigeria had in your youth, what would you say is responsible for their absence today. And how do you think it can be recaptured?
There are a lot of things to regret about Nigeria, not even my regrets at 70. At one time, we were moving on the part of democracy and true federalism. And we were developing. We were truly developing in fields like agriculture and industrialisation; and even infrastructural development. Suddenly, we did not only become stagnated, we started going back.
There was a time that people sought after Nigerian graduates for jobs because they know what they are capable of doing. But you can't say that about our graduates today. If you take a Nigerian degree today abroad, you still have to sit for exams because they know that our educational system has collapsed. If you don’t do that, they treat you like their secondary school leavers. Some of them have justification because our graduates barely defend their certificates now. Yes, so much has retrogressed that there are reasons to feel bad about Nigeria.
As an elder statesman, what is your advice on how to restructure Nigeria?
These things did not happen overnight. And it isn’t only one thing. You need to ask if there are people who really believe that the country should be restructured. How many people have the attitude that they want to use their position to develop this country? How many people truly believe that the country should remain one united nation and continue to progress? It sounds right to say that there was a time we had a northerner as a mayor of Enugu. But today, it does not matter how long you have lived in a place, where you come from really matter in the polity and it has constituted a problem to the task of nation-building.
It is like our people are more concerned about ethnic affinity than coming together as one nation. It starts with the attitude of the people and it goes to other areas. That is why it appears like every man to himself and only God for us. It is very sad that people are thinking that Nigeria is an experiment that will fail at any time. We have to reshape the attitude of the people by making them to understand that this is our country.
In 1999, when you were the governor of Akwa Ibom State, having been the President of Nigerian Institute of Architecture, you were one of the few professionals that people looked forward to impact positively on the people. Within the eight years, can you say you were able to achieve your purpose in politics. Can you say ‘yes I succeeded with every sense of responsibility’?
I can look at myself and say yes, Obong Victor Attah you did very well. It happened in every area. If you were in Akwa Ibom before or you have been there since I left, you will know what we did. You will see that development has meaning in the state. We succeeded in the area of physical development. We provided good roads taking into cognisance the topography of the place. And Uyo is a flat land. We prepared master plan for it. We spent billions of naira trying to drain Uyo. We succeeded in doing all we did despite going through a very dry period because of the onshore/offshore dichotomy. You know our resources went offshore according to the dichotomy theory. We didn’t even have money to pay salaries.
We also created a good master plan for Uyo by making it to meet modern standards. I also tried to change the state from a civil service state. I did not consider agriculture because we don’t have the land for it. We now used a domestic type of agriculture. And Kwara has amplified that and I must thank the governor for that. The progamme was used to take graduates off the streets. We also rehabilitated the rural areas by giving new life to the plantations there. It was like a silent revolution was going on in the state. Some of these projects were completed while some were at the point of completion by the time we left.
One of them is the five-star resort hotel. It’s a very unique thing. I made Uyo a place that people will come and would not want to go back. I decided that I will build an airport with economic base because I knew that this country had struggled to build a hanger for maintenance of aircraft for the past twelve years.
I decided to build a national hanger. We included a maintenance hanger and an overhaul. It was an MRO facility. We found an American group called Giant Core. This group maintains the presidential fleet in the US, apart from Airforce One which is maintained by the airforce. I discovered that we cannot run this thing alone on generator. So, I decided to build a power plant. That one was finished and commissioned by President Obasanjo. The power plant can deliver one hundred and eighty-one megawatts today.
We built it at Ikot Abasi which is very close to ASCON. We also aimed at providing a university of technology. We agreed on having few faculties with specialities and we will take these faculties and ensure this university specialises in a particular thing and I developed the programme for the establishment of this university. Even while we didn’t start physical structure, the university programme has in fact started. I did something else, I decided to find out why the universities are always going on strike.
I studied them so carefully and I found that Delta State University, Abraka pays the highest in terms of salaries in the country.
We studied a university in Botswana and made some conclusions. We have a lot of Nigerian professors and lecturers in that country. I was wondering why they were attracted to Bostwana and I found out that the salaries there are quite high. When you look at our income with that of small west Indian Islands, you will find out that ours is low.
I made conclusions from these researches that our salaries must be attractive in order to attract the best. Though I was told it may not be entirely successful because of militancy and other risks. The bottomline is that condition of service and salary are important if our university system must succeed. We also agreed on a non-unionised system like the third generation banks.
We looked at the oil industry and we found out that billions of dollars are spent on simple things like seismic interpretation. If this university can handle that, then we can make millions as revenue.
Does that mean that you left Akwa Ibom a fulfilled man?
I left as a fulfilled man. If not for the two years setback that I suffered as a result of the offshore/onshore thing, I may have completed some of them before I left office. If I had not had two locust years, many more of what I had would have been finished and people would have seen all that we planned. I left Akwa Ibom a very satisfied and very fulfilled person.
A follow-up to the Onshore/Offshore debacle. You were at the forefront of the struggle for resource control; given the level of prominence you had regarding that issue, one would have expected you to be prominent in solving the Niger-Delta crisis. What went wrong?
Well, I have contributed as an individual. There were two levels of struggle I really like to point at on the resource control. When Obasanjo came into office, he decided to pay one per cent on derivation. That was the first struggle. To get him to accept the 13 per cent as it is written in the constitution, it took one year. Then when finally he agreed to pay the 13 per cent, he now brought a lacuna called Onshore/ Offshore dichotomy; that is the one that really created the big hole because at that point, he reduced Akwa Ibom to a non-oil producer because most of our oil is offshore. He was giving me N600 million a month and yet, my salary bill was about N800 million. We had a lot of interesting exchanges.
In fact, one I can mention now is that after a year, I had to write him a letter saying ‘Sir, I am supposed to submit my budget to the House of Assembly and then, you have been dashing me N600 million a month and you have not told me whether next year, you will continue to be as generous or less generous, or what will happen. So, you can see clearly, I have no basis of preparing a budget. Is it possible to help me with the preparation of my budget because you are the only one that knows what my income will be.'
In all honesty, how could I prepare a budget not knowing what my income is as a governor? So, we had that kind of a situation, which was very sad. Thank God, it was finally resolved, but it took years out of my thinking and my planning and programming for Akwa Ibom.
Thinking about what I think should be done, I presented a position which I think was very well received by the entire country and everywhere and I was looking at it from my background as an architect and town planner.
You see, I went to a meeting, a Niger-Delta stakeholders' meeting where some people were saying that government is not sincere and I stood up and asked a question. I said ‘if a bulldozer arrived in your village today, what would you do? There was silence. I said you need to plan first.
What has been lacking has been the fact that, as a people, we have never gone to the government and say ‘we think you should do this for us.’ We complain a lot with justification.
Until we begin to tell the government what we think should be done to correct the anomalies, to a large extent, we will just be complaining because the Federal Government should not be the ones to come and tell us. We should at least have an opinion on what ought to be done.
A variant of the summit has happened now. The 45 technical-member team has come up with something and then, I followed that up with my own suggestion of new towns. I said, if this thing is going to be done by the Federal Government, certainly, you could not expect Abuja to be built by the Federal Ministry of Works, providing roads. Federal Ministry of Education, providing schools; Federal Ministry of Health, providing hospitals. You can’t.
So, they created a ministry for the Federal Capital Territory to develop it and I said perhaps it was time a ministry of the Niger-Delta was created. It was the only means whereby development could come to the Niger-Delta as an intervention agency.
It will be very sad if the governors of the Niger-Delta now turn round and feel that these has come to take over their functions.
This is to come and do a completely separate thing. It is the responsibility of a state government, with its resources to develop its state. This one would be a Federal Government intervention to change the developmental phase and the aspect of the Niger-Delta and it will be completely separated and not a substitute government for the state government.
I came out with this concept of new towns which I think I was called upon to present to the Ledem Mitee Committee. I have contributed and I will continue to contribute whenever I feel perhaps there is something to contribute.
With the creation of the Niger-Delta Ministry, would you say the Federal Government is sincere in solving the problems of the region now?
I honestly believe so, because otherwise why would it create the ministry? I think it is sincere now that once the Ledum Mitee committee comes up with something, that would be almost like the programme of activities for that ministry plus any other idea. By so doing, they will begin to change the face of the Niger-Delta.
The other thing is, you can now have a budget. Because you have a ministry, the ministry would have a budget; otherwise, you will be taking some from the budget of the Federal Ministry of Works; some from the Federal Ministry of Health and so on. But now, you can have a budget like the FCT has a budget to develop and it will be seen by everybody whether the budget is adequate or not.
But the activity of that ministry will be to develop the Niger-Delta and I believe the President because he has always shown his commitment and his sincerity. He has also said that it is one of his major seven-point agenda; so, I have no reason to even doubt his intention. I believe he is very sincere and genuine to truly develop the Niger-Delta through the creation of this ministry.
Looking at politics, I was expecting that you will be at the 10th anniversary of the party that was held recently?
There are only eighty-two signatories that formed PDP and I am one of them. I am one of them So, when people say founding fathers, I laugh because I was in G-34 and G-34 metamorphosed to PDP. I was also in another association that later joined to form PDP and I was an officer in that party. So, I am truly a founder and a life member of the Board of Trustees. I am not one of the elected members of the Board of Trustees.
Naturally, anything that has to do with the party, I do it with passion and feeling to serve and contribute my quota to democratic growth. I regret not coming but it was not intentional. I even prepared a paper to be presented at the retreat titled: Participatory democracy: The foundation of solid party politics. Today, I may feel dismayed that participatory democracy is not obtainable. If you want to contribute, they will say no that the governor or the leader has the final say. How can we call ourselves Peoples Democratic Party, yet we are not consulting the people and not using democratic me ans?
I prepared this paper to deliver it there, but it didn’t work out as planned. Like I told you that I am back to my practice and one of the jobs we have is as consultants to the Federal Government on the boulevard project.
It happened that when this thing was to hold, I travelled to London for the best of Nigeria exposure. I was there to make some presentations on the boulevard. I also wanted to take the FCT minister and some of his aides to somewhere in London which started about the same time with Abuja.
I wanted to show them some of the ideas that I want them to introduce especially in the central area in Abuja. That will enable Abuja to have a proper down town facility. There is no down town and one of our responsibilities is to create this proper planning. There was nothing I could do about the PDP retreat.
But I wrote a letter to my party chairman with a copy to my governor regretting the absence.
At 70, are you satisfied with the level at which we play politics in this country, putting into consideration the way politics is being played in America especially during this electioneering period?
No I am not satisfied with the way we play our politics. I agree that we are still growing, I appreciate that we are still learning. But honestly, I thought that by now we would have advanced more along the lines of participatory democracy.
Why do you think we have not advanced?
I don’t know. It is very difficult to say that this is why it is like this. But I really believe that the day we can establish the sanctity of the ballot box, that if you are not visionary, your people will not vote for you, we will remain like this. It must not be based on the party choosing someone for the generality of the populace or the party saying that it will rule for so many years. I read Babarinsa’s book: House of War, and discovered a lot.
You will discover that in the book, they just decided to declare Omoboriowo winner not minding if he won or not. You can see that it did not start today or in the last dispensation. We need to move from that position and make it clear to people that we will play decent politics and respect the opinion of the people. It is a situation where the people’s vote and wishes will count. It is a situation that will put the people ahead of things, like party loyalty and godfatherism. The people should be allowed to elect who they want.
Until we do that, Nigerian politics will remain dirty. The dirt may not be in form of corruption but the corruption of the democratic process is what I am bothered about. And that is the worst form of democracy we may think of. Let me digress a little.
When Babangida set up a commission to seek opinions on how parties should be formed before he started the 'a little to the left and a little to the right,' I wrote a letter and that’s why Prof Nwabueze and myself are usually tagged the ‘no party politicians.’ Even in America today, Colin Powell’s support for Obama was not strictly on party lines.
The best way to start this thing, since we have been out of politics for so long, is let us do a no party politics.
I went on to show what I believed was the virtues of no party politics. The two first parties to be formed, you saw how strange bed fellows were brought together and this is what we did in SDP and NRC.
That is why people don’t join PDP because they believe in our ideals or our agendas but because they see it as an avenue for winning elections. That is why I respect people who either win or lose, they remain in their parties. Those that jump from one place to another are just looking for how to butter their bread.
There should be minimum use of money, to a very large extent in order to eliminate corruption. The police and whoever they use, even INEC, they use to favour anybody will not be there because they will never know who is going to win this time around and then, parties would have been formed along ideological lines and people who think alike, would have been founders of the parties. You would see who truly thinks what about Nigeria and you’ll have two parties based on ideology.
That was my submission, unfortunately, it didn’t happen. So, if you ask me about how politics should be played today, I am sorry, it is not what I really believe. That is why for so long, in spite of all the efforts, I resisted joining any party. I went to the constitutional conference in 1994 because I saw it as an opportunity to try and re-write the constitution of this country and right some wrongs. Immediately after that, I went back to my practice but people just came to me and said ‘we didn’t know there’s somebody like you from Akwa Ibom. We want you to come and run and be governor of this state.’
Well, I was convinced, I ran and was governor of the state.
PDP at 10. Do you still think that the umbrella is torn?
The umbrella is ten years old but that does not mean that it is torn.
State creation and constitutional review
People actually stood up when they were challenged and said if the government creates a state for us, they will fund us. Now, we have got to the point where people don’t even know that a state should fund itself. That’s where we don’t have federalism.
The states are no longer coordinate to the federal, they are subordinates because they are created by the federal, so they are funded by the federal. That is not what you should have in a federal arrangement at all.
So, I really don’t see any state that is so affluent; may be the oil-producing states and Lagos State are truly viable. A lot of the others are marginal. I think to have a parliamentary system serves the local government better and I did analyse to show that by the time you pay salaries of so many people from this allocation, nothing is left to develop the state.
In terms of a country, the size that we are and to have more than 36 states, I’m sorry, I don’t agree with that.
You aspired to become the flagbearer of your party for the presidency; could you tell us the untold story behind your sudden withdrawal from the race?
(Laughs) You see, I like you journalists because you already have decided that there is an untold story.
I don’t have an untold story. Clearly, the governors decided that rather than split our votes, let us poll our resources together and make sure that one of us emerges.
Would you say you have any regrets handing over to your successor, Governor Godswill Akpabio? Again, what is your relationship with him?
Let me ask you a question: ‘Was I supposed to hand over to another governor?’ Or was I supposed to stay on? I was supposed to hand over and I have handed over, so why should I regret the fact that I have handed over?
I have handed over to the person that was elected by Akwa Ibom people, so, why should I regret that I have handed over, unless I wanted a Third Term and I was never one to support a Third Term.
What is your relationship with the present President and the former president?
My relationship with the present president is that I will remind you of something. Kastina and Akwa Ibom were created on the same day. Only two states to be created on the same day; so we’ve always been like twins and I have worked closely with Yar’Adua as my colleague for eight years and the good relationship continues. That I can tell you.
Former president Obasanjo is a past president and I am a past governor and that is our relationship.
You mentioned earlier that you were not in support of third term. Why?
Because it was not in the constitution of Nigeria that there should be a third term. So, why should we want to go and do something that is unconstitutional?
Still on Chief Obasanjo. Was there anytime you had any cause to disagree with him as your Commander-In-Chief?
He really did not truly command me because I have always said that this should be a true federalism where the governments are coordinate and not subordinate.
Why should I consider myself a gover-nor commanded by a president? I am not. I am the Chief Executive of my state, the Chief Security Officer of my state. Do you remember that there was a time Alli said Shagari cannot enter Bendel State and he didn’t go? Could Shagari have forced himself to the state? That is why I’m saying we’ve lost a lot. I don’t know why we’ve lost so much in Nigeria.
I could not have been commanded by Obasanjo, I did not accept command from Obasanjo and that may have been part of the problem because as a thinking human being, I have the right to express my thoughts. You cannot tell me not to express my thought or that always I am wrong.
From your own opinion, where do you think we got it wrong as a country. What would be your recipe for this nation to move forward from an under-developed nation to a developing nation?
I think we started to get it wrong when the military intervened and it just continued to deteriorate and we have not recovered from that. We have to be honest with ourselves, we are not truly practicing true democracy.
That ballot box, believe me, that is the key. Until we find a way of making sure the people’s opinion is well respected and accepted, we will continue to have problems. Because if that comes, then you’ll see the meaning of democracy.
If you don’t do what you’re expected to do, the people will reject you; but when you feel that even though they don’t want me, I will come back, then, there can be no democracy. One of the things that can help us to develop our democracy is power. We have solved the communication problem to a large extent.
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