By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, the Senate Leader is spending his third term in the Senate having entered the lawmaking body in 2003 after a lucrative law practice that gave him the reward of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN.
At the commencement of the present legislative session he was easily lifted from the position of deputy leader which he occupied in the preceding Senate to the post of Senate Leader.
The Senate’s number three man last week responded to questions on contemporary national issues including the proposal for a legislative framework to transfer Nigerian born prisoners serving in the United Kingdom to Nigeria. That proposal which has since been dubbed as the Tokubo prisoner scheme. He also answered questions on the single term proposal, the proposal for non_interest banking among other issues: Excerpt

Has the proposal for a single term for the President and Governors come to the National Assembly?
The six year single term bill has not even gotten to the National Assembly for us to consider taking it or throwing it out. It is a proposal that we read on the pages of papers and hear like any other section of the Nigerian public. The proposal hasn’t reached us. When it reaches the National Assembly, we will then have a process.

The proposal will require constitution amendment and if you know the mechanics for constitution amendment, the states are also involved; there is no constitutional amendment that started by the National Assembly and ended with the National Assembly.

For any amendment to pass you must have the approval of at least two third of the state Houses of Assembly in the country. The implication in my view is that before you can pass any amendment to the constitution including a proposal for a six year single term, you must have had enough national conversation around the issue and a national consensus  has been built around that issue. Before that every proposal is subjected to public hearing. You will hear the public and we will be guided by the public.

I think what has happened now is that a section of the public has hijacked the proposal and is giving it its interpretation. I am aware of the genesis of that proposal, I am aware because I partook in some meetings when it started.

It is not original to President Jonathan. It was a proposal that came out of an all party meeting. So, he is just voicing what came out from elsewhere.

What is your opinion on the proposal for the introduction of non-interest banking otherwise couched as Islamic Banking?

I am a Roman Catholic and once upon a time the Catholic Church had a bank…and even as a Catholic, I don’t remember being told by my priest or my bishop that I must go and open account there. So even if you call it Islamic banking, I think the proper nomenclature I remember in the Central Bank Act is non interest banking.

*Ndoma Egba

So, whether it is Islamic or non interest, there is nobody who is going to compel the next person to go and patronize the bank.

It cannot be compulsory, you must go there voluntarily. Yes, I have heard the argument that there is discrimination in the requirement for share capital, there is also discrimination regarding the kind of businesses that the bank can sponsor and cannot sponsor and that on the basis of those discriminations it is against the provisions of the constitution that says you must not discriminate against one on the basis of tribe or religion.

Well that is a constitutional issue, if any body feels very strongly about it, he should go to court. You know for me as a person if you like, site the bank in front of my house, you are not going to compel me to patronize it, so I don’t see any element of compulsion and for as long as there is no element of compulsion I don’t think that it should receive the kind of heat we are experiencing now.

 There is this controversy about you sponsoring a bill on political prisoners. What does it really involve?

There is no bill on political prisoners and I don’t know if we have political prisoners in Nigeria. Political prisoners are prisoners that are unduly incarcerated for their political belief. What we have here are prisoners who have passed judicial processes for criminal offences and have been convicted.

Now first of all, let me situate what happened. As the leader of the senate, it is your primary function to introduce executive bills. We have three types of bills, we have executive bills, we have member bills and we have private bills. Now for any bill coming from the executive arm of government, it is the responsibility of the leader of the senate to introduce that bill whether you believe in the bill or you don’t believe in the bill.

It wasn’t my bill, it was an executive bill, a bill that came from Mr. President and I was just exercising my responsibility as the senate leader in introducing it. Secondly, if you recall the president had a meeting just a few days before with the British Prime Minister in Lagos and the issue of prisoners transfer was one of the issues that were discussed.

It is not a matter that has just started, it is a matter that has been there for a long time, in fact, there is a Common Wealth scheme agreed to by every member of the Common Wealth in which Nigeria is a member. There is a scheme for prisoner transfer and that scheme has been domesticated by most Common Wealth countries including Nigeria. So, there is a local law governing the transfer of Nigerians who are serving jail terms in other Common Wealth countries and we have decided to bring a reciprocal legislation.

Now in the legislation that we have, it is provided that for a prisoner to be moved from one country to another, you will need his consent and at the level of the common wealth it was discussed and agreed that you cannot begin to ask a prisoner to choose where he prefers to serve his sentence.

So, the Common Wealth countries agreed that there should be an amendment to the law that was passed by their respective member countries to remove the requirement of the prisoners consent which was just what we were trying to do. It wasn’t a new law. It is a law that has been there, it was just an amendment to give effect to an understanding that has been reached by common wealth member countries. So, it is not Victor Ndoma-Egbas law, I don’t have to agree with it, I don’t have to disagree with it, no matter how I agree or disagree, no matter how bad I feel, it is my duty to introduce executive bills and that was what I was doing on that occasion.

Is there any way the National Assembly can intervene to stop Governors tampering with local government funds?
The problem now is that, the 1999 Constitution does not see Local Governments exactly as a tier of government, it sees Local Government as part of the state and that is why if you look at the section dealing with Local Governments (Section 7), it just states that there will be a system of democratically elected Local Government and after that it now transferred how this local government should be run to the state.

So, do we agree on a two tier system or we agree on a three tier system? If we agree on three tier system then you must free the local government from the state. If we say it is a two tier system, then the local government joint account with the state will be. So, it is a constitutional matter at the end of the day it depends on what Nigerians say because there are people on the two sides of the argument

What is your reaction to insinuations that the Senate probe is targeted at some individuals like the  former Director General of the Bureau for Public Enterprise, Mallam El-Rufai?

Let me say this very categorically, the senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is too big for an individual. Why would it target an individual? First of all the 109 members of the Senate do not belong to one political party.

We do not come from the same geographical zone, we do not share the same belief, we do not share the same political experiences.

Some have had contact with El-Rufai others haven’t had. I as a person, I as Victor Ndoma-Egba, I have tremendous respect for El-Rufai. I see him as a friend, so, why should I target him? There are those who see him the way I see him, there are those who don’t see him the way I see him, there are those who don’t have anything with him.

The thing is that issues were raised about a process that involves your common wealth and my common wealth and the common wealth of our children and children’s children. And the senate says, lets look at it so if you have been involved in the process and you are sure of what you did why should you feel targeted or victimized?

I want to say categorically, that the probe is not targeted at anybody, it is targeted at a process and the provisions of the constitution are very clear.

The whole exercise is designed to meet the requirement of section 88 of the constitution; it is not targeted at anybody. I am not aware that the probe has indicted anybody, all I know is that they are on tour to some of the companies that were privatized, they have not got their report to the senate, when they bring it to the senate I will read it as a senator and not as Senate leader and form my own opinion, but I’m not aware that they have written a report and not to talk of the report indicting anybody.