King Alfred Diete-Spiff, the Amanayanabo of Twon – Brass, in Bayelsa State, was the governor of Rivers State at the age of 25 from May 1967 to July 1975 during the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon.

He is presently a delegate on the platform of Elder Statesmen Category to the National Conference and a member of the confab’s Committee on Land Reform and National Boundaries.

In this interview, he bares his mind on the conference, what Nigerians expect from it, state police, federalism, resource control, the role of traditional rulers, NYSC, among other issues.

What  is  your impression so far on the National  Conference as delegates  debate reports from the 20 Standing Committees?
We are the last hope of the country. The composition of the conference is quite formidable; you have former governors, former presidents of the Senate, former speakers, former chief justices, former retired justices of the Supreme Court; you have everybody, all the way down to the people from the NYSC and civil and trade based societies.

Alfred Diete Spiff

Nigeria  is as though  in a bad dream; it is like we are being chased by the buffalo, we tried to run,  but we are being knocked  in the feet. This confab is a wakeup call; after  it,  it may not be so golden again.

So we have all those reports of past conferences, reform committees, the review committees and the presidential committees on the way forward. This is our last chance; the only challenge we have now is the final approval.

Former members of the National Assembly  in the confab should be able to persuade the incumbent lawmakers to grant us a referendum to endorse the outcome of the National Conference. They should not  tinker with it.  I think we have learnt from our past  mistakes.

So all we need to do is read  the old reports and look at the recommendations and check which of them has been  implemented and what the others are. We now prioritise it and present it  as  referendum, then Nigeria will start moving.

You are at  the plenary  stage where recommendations of the various committees are to be subjected to scrutiny, adoption and the rest. What are we looking at?  One of the major recommendations of your committee is mapping and registering the entire land space in Nigeria. How feasible is this?
The Land Use Decree  is a misnomer and should go. So what do you replace it with? That is what we are talking about: A  National Land Commission. It is our own modification of the Land Use Decree.

The inland waterways actors take away both sides of the  river up  to 500meters; so where do you want the Ijaw  communities to call their own land as  we live by the river? If you give out all that to the inland waterways, then we have no land.

Some of these laws were made by the military, but they were not written by military lawyers, they were written by civilian lawyers.

We  really need to look at  the issues dispassionately and come up with what is best for Nigeria. If we are going presidential, which is what we are doing now, then anybody that has the power to make laws  must have an enforcement agency of its own. States are not nonentities that they cannot have their own police.

Even before now, states were prevented from starting their own universities. We  should get to the stage where some of the things  in the Constitution needn’t be  there.

In advanced countries, for instance, there is nothing called NYSC. NYSC is national youth service, but we are giving that opportunity only to graduates. How many graduates are there out of the Nigerian youths? So we are deceiving ourselves that we are reaching out to Nigerian youths. Instead it has become another  robbing of Peter to pay Paul.

If  we are going  presidential, every federating state  must have their  own law enforcement agencies, including the local government. There are county police in America and then we come here and look at our local governments as though they are nonentities that cannot run their own system, it is insulting and, in that case, we should scrap them.

But  one  of the reasons people are saying the issue of state police should be jettisoned is because of this idea of it being used by  governors against others.
Does it matter if the commissioner of police is used by the governor? Young men who have been rascals in school, you make them prefects and they change. So give the governors the power; their states assemblies make  laws, they should also have bodies  to enforce the laws.

Even now, how much money is being spent by the state governments on the police? So let it be the full responsibility of the state to set up. If any of the state says they don’t want, that they cannot afford to train, equip and manage their own police, fine, let them come together to run the police if  they can. They should not hold back the rest of the states. A law should be there to set it up.

Oil theft has remained a major problem in the country. How do we  address the problem?
Fortunately, oil has  signature; so anywhere Nigeria oil appears, they can trace it back to Nigeria and more than 50% of it is being stolen. Well, this is Nigeria.
Like somebody said, it is only in Nigeria that people  put  oil  money  in their pockets  instead of  the national treasury.

But if you are now robbing Peter and taking the oil from the people and denying them, they would not  have the zeal to protect it. We can  get back to the stage  where oil is treated like any other mineral and  prospectors  now pay government royalty and  tax and  the people themselves are  part of the  prospecting for  oil.

Oil can  be found in Nigeria everywhere later.. We have minerals; there is uranian, there is gold, there is bitumen; many of these other things, but we just  concentrate on  oil and how much of the oil money am I benefiting from?

People who are not in the oil producing areas are the ones who you find in London parading themselves as coming from an oil rich country. So it is the same  robbing of Peter to pay Paul and it is very bad because it kills incentive and initiative. We really should encourage every federating unit to improve on its resources.

The issue of resource control has been generating bad blood. Some conference delegates are  saying derivation should be 5%. What is your take on this?
People should take it easy. It is a matter of saying, let every state develop at its own pace and this is what Zik, Awolowo and Sardauna agreed  to  in 1957 at the London Conference. It allowed every federating unit to develop at its own pace. Don’t slow others down; this is the same principle we are working on.