By SIMON EBEGBULEM, BENIN CITY

Senator Domingo Obende is the senator representing Edo North senatorial district of Edo state, where Governor Adams Oshiomhole hails from. In this interview with Saturday Vanguard, the APC senator gave reasons for sponsoring the same sex prohibition bill and why he wants his people to support his second term bid. Excerpts:

The same sex prohibition bill which you sponsored attracted interest both in Nigeria and the international Community, what informed your action?

What I do is that first and foremost, I see myself as an African that has a culture. Secondly, I try to uphold the value that is attached to that culture.

Domingo Obende is a Senator representing Edo North Senatorial District in Edo State.

Now the anti-gay bill is to protect the menace of importation of morals into Africa. You will agree with me that the social media today as we speak has impacted so much on this country and has made our youths to lose focus and derail either from their family values, or from their cultural values as it affects their communities. So, I believe that this anti-gay law is a way to strengthen our morals.

We do not want imported morals, what we want is of course transfer of technology for our people to be relevant in the industrial world and not things that are unAfrican. Let us look at it: it is evil both in the sight of man and God for a woman to be making love with a fellow woman, or man with a fellow man. For me, it is madness and we cannot condone that. Particularly this is coming at a time when we are complaining about the moral decadence in our society. I believe that rather than compound the problem, we must stop further actions that will compound it. For me, it is immoral, it is dirty for same sex to be lovers.

That is crazy and we must not encourage it. Those condemning it should know that it is not our culture. As a Nigerian, you cannot go to America and obey Nigerian law. So, when they come here, they should obey our own law but if they fail to do that, the law will catch up with them. You can practice same sex marriage or whatever outside Nigeria but when you try it here, you will be punished.

You recently declared to run for a second term in the senate, what makes you think you deserve a second term?

I have been able to lay a foundation. I have been able to make the office of the senate very relevant because if I were irrelevant, it obviously means that the office would have been irrelevant. Like I cracked a joke with the Etsako people, that because of the relevance that is now attached to the seat of the Edo North Senate, a professor is now interested in the senate.

That shows that I am doing the best to bring services to the people and delivering on the services to the people pre-surposes that it must be verifiable and of course people must be able to testify to what we are doing. We have had eight years of unhindered representation coming from Victor Oyofo and we have also had four years of unhindered representation coming from Senator Yisa Braimah and I want to quickly add here that Senator Yisa Braimah was given the ticket for a second tenure and another political party feeling indifferent about that fielded another candidate in me and of course, we defeated him which is kudos to all of us that worked hard to make the then ACN get victory.

So, if somebody in his own fallacy would want to imagine that what I have done is less than 30 per cent, at least he should show us somebody that did more than that before I got there.

There’s a rumour of you decamping to PDP like Uzamere

I am a very focused person. I know the meaning of shame because as a human being coming from a royal home, I should know what is called royalty. I want to say again that on the 12th of February 2010, I resigned from PDP  and joined ACN and I also want to say that I was never kicked out.

I was not under pressure. Even after the PDP primaries of 2007 which was a clear case of robbery, I stayed in PDP to work for the PDP and brought victory to it. So, I was convinced in my innermost heart that I needed to shift ground and I did shift and for shifting, I got probably exactly what I was looking for in 2007. Then, the question is this; when you are hungry and someone refuses to feed you, now crossed over and you are eating and you have enough to eat, will you  carry your food and give to that person that could not feed you?

The answer is no. So, the issue of defection is not in the dictionary of Domingo. It is not in my character and it will never be in my character because every political stand anybody takes has a local stand because there must be a local reference of your action. So for me, APC is the party where I belong right now and that is where I registered and I participated in and I want to belong to APC.

What is the senate actually doing to help in the fight against Boko Haram?

Even in simple economics, where the raw material is, that is where you move the industry to. So in line of insurgency, it becomes the raw material for the military to act. So people saying and insisting that the base of the Chief of Army Staff and others should be moved to the north-east, I don’t think they are missing it at all.

They are right and they are apt with such suggestions. And haven said this, the governor of Borno made a statement very clearly that the Boko Haram are more equipped than the Nigerian Army. It is possible he might be saying the truth and it is also possible that he might not understand the operations of the military but one thing that is clear is that all that he said has to do with the fact that he is seeing his people being killed everyday and he needed to speak out and I don’t think he should be so castigated for saying so and as far as I am concerned, the federal government needs to buckle up in the sense that every soul lost, whether in the west, east, north or south, that soul is a Nigerian and of course that represents a whole family and so the federal government needs to buckle up.

It needs to understand that if America can go to war because of one human being, then of course, Nigeria should be able to go to war because of more than 10,000 because as we speak, I know very well that more than 10,000 must have gone in these insurgencies.

INEC and 2015

When you have a challenge, you must first of all understand it and when you understand the challenge and then discuss it, then of course, you are having a head way to finding a solution to the problem. For me, in all elections that the INEC has conducted so far, they will always tell you that all arrangements are in place and that they are going to have a very perfect and fine election or outing as you will call it.

But at the end of the day, you will always see those challenges staring them on the face.  For me, the INEC has never admitted that they have a challenge. If they admit that they have one, then they must tell us what these challenges are. Because if it is a human challenge, it is easy: do more of orientation; if it is financial, it is also simple, request for more funds to be able to tackle the election that you have at hand.

But as far as I am concerned, I don’t see INEC conducting a general election that will be free and fair. If Anambra election went the way it went, how do we know what is going to happen in Ekiti and Osun states? Let me remind you very quickly in Edo state that if not for the sagacity of the governor, his re-election in 2012 would have been messed up. So, I am of the view that the INEC needs to tell us what their problems are and it is only when the problems are placed on the table that the National Assembly will be able to discuss it and find a solution to them. We cannot do anything about it when we don’t know what their problems are.

There are fears of division in the APC in Edo ahead of 2015 and 2016, are you worried about this development?

For me, I do not see any problem in APC in Edo state. As we speak, the structure has not been put in place. What we are doing is registering for membership that will make us founding members of APC. And there is no founder that is higher than the other and then, we will go for congress and after congress, the executives will be out in place. Then, we will now have a formal structure of this our great party called APC.

I don’t know if there are grievances anywhere and if there are, I am yet to be told  but as far as I am concerned, in Edo North, I think all is well. The agitation you find in Edo North are agitations of those who want to go to House of Representatives; of those who want to go to House of Assembly and those who want to go to the senate.

These are the agitations and it is clear that in politics, you have three periods in which there will be problem: before primaries, before election and during sharing of positions and APC cannot be excluded from all these but I believe in the leadership qualities of our action Governor, Comrade Oshiomhole and other APC leaders in resolving any contending issue.

It is also my message that God has blessed us with good representations starting from the Comrade Governor, Adamso Aliyu Oshiomhole who has performed very well and he is still performing and we of course from the National Assembly and that of the state house of assembly, we are complementing his efforts.

All I think I will want to beg our brothers and sisters is that we should be patient, 20 people in the pit of poverty cannot be brought out in one day but if we strive together, we will all have that liberation, we will all have that feeling of freedom, we will all have and see that development will come our way and they should also remember that to whom much is given, much also is expected and one good term deserves another. We are serving them well and we believe that our second tenure will be assured coming from their votes.