The last appears not to have been heard on the controversial $2.1 billion LNG dividend shared to the three tiers of government, principally to enable embattled state governments pay salary arrears to workers.

In this interview conducted in Lagos, Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State says President Muhammadu Buhari didn’t dash states the money contrary to the belief in some quarters. Umahi also speaks on issues affecting his state.

By Wale Akinola

We know there are problems in the states including the problem of salary and there is bailout. What is the situation in your state?

Ebonyi State is culturally a very peaceful state. We have very peculiar way of approaching things; very contended people. This issue of bailout, I’ve had to talk about it  at different fora. Somebody even said he is taking the president to court on the bailout because the money he was sharing to the states was not appropriated and I say yes to him and I laugh at his  ignorance. I call it ignorance.

Yes to him because of the much talked about bailout. There is nothing like bailout. The very significant thing Mr. President did was one; he recognises the fact that the money coming  into the Federation Account belongs to the three tiers of government; the Federal Government (52.67 per cent), state governments (26.76) and  local governments (20.06 per cent). That is what the president has recognised.

Gov. Dave Umahi

Mr. President has also recognised that RMAFC ought to review the sharing formula between these three tiers of government every five years. And I think it is over 10 to 15 years  since it was reviewed last. And so when the governors went to the president, they told him about the need to review the sharing formula and Mr. President encouraged it. And I see a man of honesty in that sense of encouragement. He recognises the fact that the states should get more because of the challenges.

When you talk about bailout and talk about owing workers’ salary, it is not actually the doing of any of the state governors because, until the oil price went down, nobody in the states would say he or she was owed salary. It is because of the situation in the country and so there is a need to adjust to the realities of our challenges. And that is what is happening.

So, what Mr. President simply did was to say, ‘NNPC, don’t spend money that was never appropriated. The old system of making money for the nation and keeping half of it and spending it  the way you like; without having a budget; without appropriation’ – Mr. President had to stop that and that is a major bailout. And then he said, ‘you have so many accounts that you have even lost account of bank accounts you had’ – I think he directed them not to have more than two or three.

That is a major bailout for the entire citizens of this country because oil is the mainstay of our economy, so if the NNPC that manages our earnings should make money and keep half of it and say it is their running cost, that is a very terrible trend. So, that is the bailout I can understand.

But when you talk about the tax that was paid by the LNG to the Federal Government; that is one of the earnings – there are a couple of income that come to the basket of the Federal Government that stand for sharing – that’s the Federation Account. We get funds from taxes, oil, Customs and DPR. So, LNG pays taxes and I think one other paid. It came to $2.1bn and, when we met with Mr. President, we said, ‘Mr. President, we are told there is $2bn in Excess Crude Account (ECA). The states are in trouble – not caused by anybody’.

Why is this tax paid by the LNG so different from other funds that come to the Federation Account? That is what the people that said they want to take Mr. President to court should explain. Of course, it is part of the Federation Account! That is part of the earnings of the Federal Government which is shared by the three tiers of government.

So the CBN Governor said let us share the money that came from tax from LNG, let us not touch the ECA so that we can protect the Naira a bit and the governors said this will not be enough and Mr. President, the governors and the CBN Governor said there are three lines of operations to solve this problem: number one, let us share the $2.1bn and that is what we shared! That is money that belongs to the Federal Government, state governments and local governments and it was shared according to the sharing formula. So, there is nothing like bailout because it is money due to us.

It is just like the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). It is money due to the three tiers of government and we said ‘let us take $1bn and put in there for the rainy day and we would have our share certificate earning money for us’. If this $2.1bn is not shared, it is not Federal Government’s money; it belongs to the three tiers of government. So, there is no bailout there.

The second thing they did genuinely was to say let us make available loan of between N250bn to N300bn so that states that are in trouble will be able to borrow money from there and pay salaries and, when you do that, it is a task; you have to repay whatever you are borrowing from there from the FAAC, which means if you are earning XYZ and you borrowed, then when they are sharing you have to reduce by the percentage of what you borrowed and it goes on until you have fully paid. So, there is no bailout there because if you borrow, you have to pay for it.

Then the third one is: all the debts that we have in the banks; the Ffederal Government and the CBN said we can make it to look like bond money. So, instead of one year to two years, we can make it last for 25 years. If you call that one bailout, I would say yes, but he didn’t dash anybody money.

In my state we are managing well. We realised that we have some ghost workers; we have some leakages and so we are doing empirical evaluation of what our salary structure should look like and we would not have problem of payment, but one of the little things we have with our workers is that they want us to pay like the Federal Government. They took the Federal Government salary structure, reduced it a little and said we have to pay that and I said it is not possible. The Federal Government controls 52.67 per cent of the total resources and I control 26.76  divided by 36, and when you come to that, Ebonyi is always last.

For example, when funds were shared, Akwa-Ibom got N266bn and Ebonyi got N44bn. That was the totality of ECA running for one year. If there is any state that needs money more than any other, it is Ebonyi. The state is highly undeveloped. Ebonyi has a lot of mineral resources deposits and agricultural farmland and we need encouragement to deploy these advantages to the benefit of the entire country.

Sometimes people expect governors to perform magic and I think there can be no magic. All we need now is to sit down and engage our talents – God gave us talents, He gave us mineral resources, lets engage them. That is the way it is in Ebonyi.

But there are those who have argued that states should not depend totally on  allocation from the Federation Account?

Yes and no. when a child is born, you have to take care of the child till the child becomes 18 overseas. We used to hear ‘the young shall grow’ and people came up and lived their own generation; if not by struggle by most of us, they would have lived our generation and even extend to live the generation of our children. Some of us said no. We had to struggle with them.

Before you can say the states will not depend on the Federation Account, you have to develop the mineral resources in our states because there is no way we can develop Ebonyi State without assistance from the Federation Account. It is difficult and investors are very funny; most of them come as say they want to put a lien on the Federation Account. How many liens will you put if you want to develop five sectors and how much do I get? So, we need support from the Federal Government, we need support from foreign investors and even our banks.

Ebonyi is largely a one-city state. What are your plans to develop other parts of the state?

It is as a result of age long neglect. We suffered a lot of neglect when we were in Enugu, Anambra, Abia and  Imo States. We are doing a lot but I will tell you something, it is difficult to develop cities without roads. I’ve just made a letter to Mr. President to plead with him on two grounds; one, we have about five roads, some of these roads lead to very large deposits of limestone. I’m happy with Mr. President when he said you can’t import cement – that forex will not be available for you to import cement, toothpick, rice and all that. It is a wonderful step. We have large scale limestone. You know of Nigercem, the first cement factory in the whole country. We want to reactivate it. There is no road to get there and there is no way investors will come and build the road first. So, it’s a problem!

We have very large deposit of salt – incidentally it’s in my village – very large stream of sea salt and we have no road to go there. We have very large deposit of led, zinc, bauxite, copper and so on. So, we are asking the Federal Government to please do two things for us; one, there are some investors that are interested in PPP and are interested in building some of these roads and then put a toll on it and we are happy with that because it is going to cause a lot of economic value chain because if we build the roads and improve agriculture, if we harvest we will have the road to bring them.

Two, visitors will be encouraged to come because they will have access to the deposit sites and that will help. And three, the economy of Ebonyi State will be increased because most of these roads lead to Benue, Cross River and Abia States and it is very important to us because, when we have access roads, it means travelers going to Abuja will pass through Ebonyi – it becomes a transit state. If we have these roads, we will have cities. We have plans to develop the state but we need  roads.

Presently, we are trying to put street lights  in  the urban areas of the state and the capital city and then put water. When we do that, we will come up with a law; the moment water reticulation pipe passes your house it becomes a crime not to link to that because we cannot claim that we do not have problems from borehole because we have large deposit of lead. As you may know, the liver doesn’t digest it and that is what causes liver failure. So, we are doing very massive reticulation and, when we get water into some of these cities, it will help. We also want to get electricity to the cities. We are extending the street lights to our universities too.

How do you intend to manage the rancorous relationship between Ebonyi  politicians and Abuja-based politicians which characterises the politics of the state? For instance, Chief Anyim was at loggerheads with former governor, Chief Elechi.

Honesty, governance is a very difficult thing. It is not easy not to have friction with people. It is bound to happen and to be a governor is something that everyone should have tested. Just like in America, to be the president, you would have been an ex-soldier. It would have been good that everyone takes the seat of  governor. It is quite challenging.

There is no way you can totally avoid friction but you have to avoid it. You have to develop the attitude of being plain and honest. When you are honest you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide. If you are not cheating and not embezzling money; there is nothing else that can bring quarrel than money. So, when you are honest and your hands are open, then the stakeholders will tend to think twice. They will say ‘this man is honest, let us give it to him’,  but when you are transparently dishonest then people will suspect you and that will bring friction.

By my nature and my upbringing, I don’t like stealing – I don’t like meddling with public funds. Nobody ever succeeded stealing public funds. So, my hands are very open and it is not difficult to manage the leaders of Ebonyi State; and of course you also have to respect them, especially those who have been in positions of leadership above yours and those who are below you, you also have to respect them. When they call you, you would answer their call to explain. You must deploy talking to maintain peace with people.

Then I want to correct the impression that Anyim fought with Elechi. Anyim never fought Chief Elechi for one day. What everybody did was to say, ‘Governor Elechi, you have eight years and you have to finish your eight years but we want to be part of deciding who becomes the next governor,’ and I don’t think anything was wrong with that. Both man and God were fighting on who becomes the next governor and that didn’t constitute Abuja group. We didn’t have Abuja group in the last eight years of our administration. I think the former governor was the luckiest because nobody gave him trouble but trouble had to come when change was needed.

What is your relationship with Elechi now?That of father and son, but you know father and son sometimes disagree and it is very natural. Whatever my father did that was right I must continue them, but there are also issues with some of the projects. And one thing that is very significant in leadership is that people do a lot of things without the leader being aware, and those people  cheating on the leader are the people who will gossip and tell you all sorts of fantasies so that you will continue to be in a cage, and you wouldn’t open your eyes to see what is happening.

There are a couple of projects that I’m sure the former governor was not aware were overvalued by more than 300 – 400 per cent. I’m not going to allow it. But the good thing is that all the projects he started, I’m going to complete them ‘but the bad side is that any project that is overvalued, I’m going to revalue it and bring it to the right price and even if that is going to constitute misunderstanding between us and he fails as a father to understand that the young shall grow, then so be it.

So, we have nothing to quarrel about. He was my boss, he is still my boss and he’d always be my boss. He is also my father. So, I have nothing to quarrel with him, I’ll give him peace.

Will you probe his administration?

I don’t know what is called probing. But don’t forget I was party chairman. Don’t forget I was deputy governor, but the truth remains that until the younger ones like us came into power, deputy governors never had a say, but it is not the same with my own deputy governor; he is my friend; he is my brother. I share a lot of ideas with him. I give him responsibilities. I give him a lot of respect. So, I would have said probing government is like probing myself, but the truth is that deputy governors, depending on what your boss wants, is more like – not like spare tyre this time around because some tyres never got tired – but the truth remains that if righting the wrongs means probing, even in your house; in your families you probe also. But to start writing petition against Chief Elechi to EFCC and ICPC I would not do that and I will not support doing that.

But if anybody embezzles the money of the state and the person refuses to bring it in a form of dialogue – sitting as brothers and sisters – there is no reason to take anybody to law. We need so much money in Ebonyi State, so, if anybody is having it, we would call the person and say ‘please let’s negotiate’. Of course we hear the story of land for peace in Palestine and Israel and we hear also the EFCC plea bargain. This is the kind of thing I love so much in Ebonyi State and I’m going to deploy the issue of plea bargain so that is if you have stolen we will come together and say ‘please I want the money’ and we will  find a way to write it off so that you will not be remembered. So that is what we are doing. There wouldn’t be any probe.

Are you already with the feeling that there are issues you need to look at as regards some people stealing from the state?

I’ve also discovered a couple of them. It’s not a hidden thing. You are aware that they published it; the House of Assembly published it; they probed past caretaker chairmen and found that they stole N1.8bn. That is what they’ve said to me and they’ve given me the paper and said you have to dismiss them from office and you’ve to recover the money. I’m bound by the law to recover the money, but dismissing them is within my powers; I may dismiss them or not – it’s an advice but the one that is not advice is that there is corruption and I swore to uphold the tenets of the Constitution, so, I’m bound by the Constitution to recover the money.

We are just doing a reevaluation of our schools; how many pupils do we have; how many teachers do we have? And in some few schools, you will discover over 20 teachers that were being paid over the years that are not there; the same thing in the civil service. The NLC and the NUT have promised us that we will be shocked to find over N150m to N200m monthly that people collected as a result of ghost workers and dishonesty.

Luckily, I’m a civil engineer and I’ve been into construction for over 30 years before I became the deputy governor, so, I’ve knowledge of some of this things and I’ve deployed my knowledge to know that you are cheating – in road construction – in all kinds of construction – you are cheating or you are not cheating. So, when we go to the first principle to do an evaluation; what we call take off – take off in bill quantity means the cost of building this house. So, when we get down to the first principle to evaluate these things – you know engineering does not lie. Everybody will be nicked before the truth and so that is what we are doing and we’ve recovered serious money.