By Emma Amazie, Regional Editor, South-South
THE worried visage after his tenure as Governor of Delta State was brusquely terminated by the Court of Appeal last November was missing on the face of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan on New Year day when he spoke in an exclusive interview with Vanguard at his Warri residence.

Refreshed and beaming with optimism as he opened up on the affairs of his government between 2007 and 2010, Uduaghan used the opportunity to react, for the first time, to several allegations against him including his alleged indictment over money laundering charges by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC and the popular story that his wife supplies the fuel for the Asaba and Warri Street lights.

He equally speaks on his prospects in the forthcoming re-run elections and how that he speaks Urhobo more than his two major challengers who are from the Urhobo-speaking area of the State. Excerpts:

Expectations on the re-run

WITH what  we have done on ground, our expectations are very high and I believe that as a party, we will come out victorious.

On agitations for the postponement of the election on account of flawed voters’ register

Uduaghan

First, let me say that the umpire in this election is the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and from the time table of the Commission, its registration process will start from January 15 and of course, from what the chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega said, the process may get well into February and by then, the 90 days given by the Court of Appeal, Benin City would have passed the time for the election to hold. And INEC has said, look, the only register available to us is

the old voter’s register and we can clean it up. It may not be the best but we will clean it up so that it will be acceptable.

For me, we have to obey the court order; the INEC is doing its best to ensure that the court order is obeyed. So, I don’t see any reason for the hue and cry over this voter’s register. Secondly, like the chairman had said, he is not legally bound to display the voter’s register, but having said that, he also said that before the election, he would give us the voter’s register to go through as he said. So with all these, we should all go to the field.I think some people are crying, oh, we cannot use the available voter’s register because they are not prepared, they were never ready. My position is that we must obey the law and in the PDP, we are ready, whether it is today, tomorrow, on the 6th or any time.

The impression that has been created about you by your political opponents is that you participated in purported looting of the state by the former governor, Chief James Ibori  by laundering money for him and that the EFCC, has found you guilty…

EFCC would not have allowed me to walk away if I was found guilty. What happened was that in 2006, I got a letter as Secretary to the Delta State Government to come and testify over some allegations against certain persons. I was invited as a witness and I went there as a witness and I was asked questions and to make statements.

First, the person who was asking me questions used the opportunity to ask me several other questions pertaining to Delta State, as secretary to the state government. He wanted to know certain information about the government, the one that I could give them, I gave and I left.

Since then, nobody called me, nobody indicted me. And let me say this, at that time, Nuhu Ribadu was in-charge of the EFCC because I hear it is because of the woman that is at the helm of affairs now and I think you will agree with me that if there was anything wrong at the time EFCC invited me under Ribadu, the Commission would not let go.

It was even after that I went into the 2007 Governorship Election. In fact, a group of elders at that time carried some documents to the EFCC that time and of course, they were all found to be false documents and from the account of the elders, take Prof Benedict Ijomah’s own account, which was published, telling the details of what happened and who did what, you would see how mischievous some people were at that time. And in all, Ribadu told them that what they were doing was political because they had no evidence of what they were saying.

Is it blackmail?

How can you say a man was arrested … you are telling a government security agency like EFCC that somebody was arrested with foreign currency. Who arrested the person, are you the person to tell the EFCC or Mr. President about the arrest of a top government official with

foreign currency or they would tell you? It was that kind of allegation they were making, it was like a joke  and they were told it was political and since then, I have not had anything to do with EFCC and so, where these stories are coming from, I don’t know.

People just sit down and manufacture stories because they want to blackmail me and all that. You will recall as soon as my election was nullified, it was reported that I had been arrested, it was published by Sahara Reporters but I was not even invited and people are behind all these things.  But what I can tell you is that those people in the EFCC are not robots, they work on facts.

How do you feel when people say the only thing you were able to achieve in three and half years before your election was nullified was an airport project at Asaba that was not completed and streetlights for Asaba and Warri. It is also allegedly that your wife supplies the diesel for the street lights?

When these allegations are made, as a human being, you don’t feel good about them and they give you a feeling of disappointment at the level some people who you expect would be rational would go to do untoward and mundane things that you could not have imagined. You would start to

wonder whether they went to school at all or they went to school and passed through the school, but the school did not pass through them.

Now for the airport, I have said it over and over again, it is not even up to three years that we started construction on the airport. Construction of an airport is not building a hut, there are certain regulations that you have to comply with and from time to time, the appropriate authorities come to assess what you have done and what you want to do, they make modifications and all that. The construction of that airport started around February, 2008 if my memory serves me right and it is not even three years yet.

Understandably, people are anxious, people want to start using it and we also have to look at time in constructing the airport. But I can tell you that what we have put on ground is one of the best airports ever constructed in Nigeria. It is an airport that the Federal Government had already commended, the project is there and nobody will muzzle us not to do it the way it will meet the expectations of Deltans.

On the issue of street lights, well, short of sounding like a broken record, from the word go, I told my wife, don’t touch any government contract and thank God, which was exactly what she had done. And when she came out of Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, with the money she was paid, we were able to open a restaurant for her and she is running the restaurant in addition to her non-governmental organization projects.

The fueling of the generators like I said -the streetlight on its own is a turn-key project, that is you install the streetlight light, you install the generators, you buy the fuel and you run the streetlights, which means there is a maintenance contract for it. Why I did it like that is that street lighting is something very sensitive and it’s something you can see and if there is anything wrong, you know who to hold responsible. I don’t want anybody to give excuse, say this person bought fuel or diesel and has caused problem to the generator.

So, the supply of diesel to the generator
or the street light project of the state government has nothing to do with my wife. It is an allegation that was fabricated to blackmail me and you can see that God is vindicating me despite all the plans of the wicked ones.

Have you or the PDP settled with Chief Edwin Clark on the re-run?

(Long laughter) I don’t know, I will rather not make any comments on that (continues with his laughter).

What is your reaction to other allegations against you like inflating the Asaba Airport

project, looting the funds appropriated for the Oghara Independent Power Project and donating money to the Saraki Campaign Organization?

There are people out there who are not happy with the way I handled the affairs of government and I know that these allegations were brought out by such persons, a few persons actually but like I said, I was in the last administration for almost eight years and in those years, I was familiar with some of the things in government and I was not quite happy with some of the things that happened. And when I took over as governor, I had to do certain things to make things difficult

for some people doing what they used to do and even some of the people that were working with me were affected. And I can tell you that some of the rumours even started from some of them who are not happy with my insistence that government fund is public fund and we must be

accountable on how it is spent.

It is getting clearer to everybody now that what I was doing was in the interest of the people. My position is that the money that comes to the state should not just remain in the hands of certain persons alone, the common man should benefit, either through free maternal health care,

through healthcare for their children who are under –five, through taking care of their educational needs, micro_credits and all that, so these are some of the areas, it is not government of constructing roads alone for those who have cars to use or building airport alone for those who go by air, but, a government that touches every life, one way or the other.

From my findings, the truth is that the common man in the state in his heart of heart is appreciative, but sometimes they are manipulated by some of our leaders and elders.

tt thank God, the truth is gradually coming out.

The gubernatorial candidate of the RPN, Ovie Omo-Agege worked for your victory in 2007 in his area as a PDP chieftain, but today, both of you have fallen apart, what went wrong?

Did he at any time work for my victory?

He was a PDP chieftain then and mobilized for your victory

I don’t know about that, there was no result from his local government. You can say he worked for my victory in his area but I did not get any victory in his area. The results of that local government disappeared and we know those who were implicated in the disappearance of the result in that local government. He was the Secretary to the State Government at that time but the question to ask is whether he did the things he did then from the bottom of his heart or he was

doing them half-heartedly. Looking back now, I don’t think he worked for my victory.

Why have both of you fallen apart?

I did not fall apart with him, he is very ambitious and I think there is an element of desperation in his life. And that you can see from the way he has moved from one party to the other.

A chieftain of the PDP and a former managing director of the NDDC, Chief Emmanuel Aguariavwodo made an effort to reconcile you and the DPP gubernatorial candidate, Chief Great Ogboru after the 2007 election, what really happened , why did it not succeed?

No, he did not try to reconcile us, he was having a ceremony (laughs) and invited us and I went and I met Chief Ogboru. There was no discussion in the manner you suggested in your question.

Are you aware that motorcyclists (Okada riders) in the state have practically sworn to vote against you because you banned their business in the night in Warri and also bought buses to run the routes they run at cheaper cost?

First of all, I have no apologies for the buses that the state government bought to ease transportation problem for the masses. If they are angry because I bought buses, it is very unfortunate.They should actually be thankful because in most states, motor-cycle transportation had been banned in urban areas; both day and night and I have resisted that in Delta.

A lot of overtures were made to me to ban them but I refused, so they should actually be grateful that they have not been banned. As for the night ban, it was even before this administration and it was banned for security reasons. Some people were using Okada to commit all sort of crimes at night: snatching handbags, snatching phone handsets and terrorizing the people- these

were part of the reasons why the State Security Council banned it.

Some of your Itsekiri kinsmen, talking about a one_time Commissioner, Dr. Richard Tosanwumi  Chief Adolor Okotie_Eboh and others are not with you in your return bid, if charity, as they say , starts from the home, don’t you think it is an indictment that such known politicians have turned their back against you?

There is no way everybody will be 100 per cent with you. Even Jesus Christ that had 12 disciples, of course, there was a Judas Iscariot, so there is no way in life, even in a family where you have a wife and the children, you still have one or two children working against the family.  So I don’t expect 100 per cent support from Itsekiri people but most Itsekiri people are with me and I also don’t want to make the race look like an ethnic thing. I have support from every part of the

state.

From the indications on ground in the state, the permutations of political analysts are that Chief Ogboru has strong emotion_driven support from the Delta Central Senatorial district, where he hails and would beat you in the district …

There is no doubt that Delta Central is going to be the challenge in the election but I am quite strong in Central too. You see, these things have been playing up over the years but let me tell you, I have a blood relation with the Central, my grandmother is from there and I grew up in the district. I did my primary school there, I think the only time I left there was when I went to the university and I even worked there, the Delta Steel Company, DSC, Owvwian_Aladja for quite

some time and I know I can speak Urbobo dialect more than the other candidates and that was why I was itching to take part in an Urhobo-speaking competition with them who are from the district.

What I am saying is I have very strong presence in Urhobo land. But, like I keep saying, you don’t play ethnicity with the governorship of Delta State, it is a very dangerous trend and I find that some of them have ethnic sentiments, which is not very good. But why I am happy is that majority of them are rational people and they will assess us based on track records, our performance and ability to deliver what we have promised to the  generality of Deltans.