Leadership (Abuja)
17 November 2008
interview
Senator Anthony Manzo represents Taraba North on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Focused and organised, he brings a stabilising voice and influence to the upper legislative chamber. In this interview with STANLEY YAKUBU, the senator dispels rumours of serious cracks in the National Assembly leadership and also shares insights into other topical issues.
The present crop of Senators have been around for about two years now. Would you say with all sincerity that you are on course?
I think we are. First of all, the most important ingredient is stability; we have been able to provide stability especially in the senate under the leadership of the senate president and other principal officers. And being in a stable senate, it there fore means that at least one component of the country is stable and because of the stability, we hope that the country would benefit from it in terms of the dividends of democracy reaching the people.
The Senate President at inauguration set out to make the senate a place where all Nigerians shall be the centre of legislations. And you can see by way of resolutions, motions and so on, which have been in the news on the issues that touch the very essence of Nigerian man, woman or child on the street. Basically, working on measures that would reduce or minimize poverty, putting measures that would fight crimes and other vices. And we have also cooperated well with the executive by ensuring that budgets are passed on time and Mr President's nominations on various positions are given speedy and thorough considerations and passage. At another level, of course, the senate has the largest party members in the senate, that's the PDP try to work with other parties at the headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party. So, I think in these areas, we are on course. However, there is one or two other things that have been delayed, one would have hoped that the issue of constitution review ought to have been taken seriously.
Yes, like you rightly pointed out, Nigerians are waiting for the constitutional review to commence in order to address certain issues in it, what is exactly happening, what is exactly the problem that despite several assurances, the committee is yet to be inaugurated?
There is no problem, it is just that we want to be very thorough so that we don't make mistakes. The previous National Assembly had embarked on this issue but was unsuccessful. We want to engage in a successful attempt to amend the constitution for our people of this country without anything being aborted or hijacked by one agenda or the other. So, because of what we have seen, we are being very careful and as detailed as possible and I am sure it is something that we should do and would be done.
There is this rumour all over that one of the reasons delaying the inauguration of the constitution review committee is that the leadership of the national assembly, that is the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives are not in good terms. Is this true?
It is not true. It is certainly not true. These people are occupying constitutional positions the Senate president is president, the speaker is speaker, the constitution is very specific and very detailed about the role, these two people perform. And to the best of my knowledge and that is the fact, there's no friction whatsoever between the two offices.
Because there is no need to have frictions because the work for both of them is so enormous, so there's a lot for each of them to do. There's no room for conflict, I think a lot of these is the imaginations of friends and the press. The senate president is the chairman of the National Assembly, so therefore, the speaker of the House of Representatives compliment him, one cannot function without the other.
Sir, one of the issues you are contending with is the issue of states creation. Is it possible for a civilian government to create new states?
I think the states we would create will be the states the people want. All the states we have, were the creation of the military and the constitution is very clear obviously on the states created, if were possible, we would not have put it in our constitution. This is something that can be done and any state that we create in this civilian democratic dispensation, will be the state that the people want and it is not going to be any artificial contraption or anything of that sort. Yes, that is possible, the state is not the only issue, there are many issues facing Nigerians. I usually caution that people think amending the constitution will bring bread and butter on peoples' tables. No we are trying to redefine the frame work in which this country is ran. As a basic law, it doesn't necessarily translate into bread and butter on the peoples' table.
But there are other issues as you know we as a National Assembly we are doing as I said earlier on, resolutions, tabling issues of national importance from time to time. And don't forget, the National Assembly is democracy. It is the essence where the democratic government because of the national assembly and the various states house of assembly.
We have governors, local government chairman in the military era and people use side of that we are the elected representatives of the Nigerian people and we ought to be the channel through which development will come tot his country. It is a pity, sometime these things are not underlined in various discourses and some of the things taking place across many of the situations in this country.
Nigerians out there are crying, lamenting that against their expectation, things have not changed. Is this lamentation justified?
We are with the people, you are in my office and you don't see police, we don't have police, we have direct access to the people. We are not an executive arm of government; every legislator has access to his people. Because we are representing people, we are the ones feeling the pains and the suffering of people, because we are with them. We go home to conduct our constituency service delivery very often. It would really be a misplaced statement to say we are only after our interest, because if we are only after our interest, we would not e taken the risks, sometimes the risk is something that we put our lives on the line to see that we do what is right for the people. Sometimes it means we have to oppose the executive, sometime we have to oppose the other arm of government. I think, it would be wrong to assume we are looking after our interest, certainly not. The opposition has had cause in the past to call for the resignation of the president because of alleged illness. Do you subscribe to that call that the president should resign because he is sick?
Look my bother, I'm a medical doctor and I have spent most of my life before coming to the senate, looking after sick people. One thing I have discovered is that life and death are in the hands of the Almighty God; sickness is in the hands of God, we don't determine if we fall sick or when we fall sick and in any case, all of us can fall sick. The tragedy is that some people out there are using the alleged sickness of Mr President to sometime blackmail the PDP, particularly the oppositions. The opposition should put their act together. It is good to have opposition -the opposition is virtually not there. In the senate you can see that we have an overwhelming numerical superiority even into the House of Representatives. Of course, once you are in the senate, issues of party do not really matter because a senator is a senator whether you are from the ANPP, or PDP or what ever party, we work for the overall food of the country.
Please assess the performance of the Taraba State government, your home state.
The picture is encouraging.We have to know that people have different takes on things, the governor is a very sincere man, he is composed and is experienced, he has been a local government chairman and he has been commissioner, he has been an SSG, he has held very vital ministries in the previous government. We are working together with him because development involve different stakeholders. You have those of us in the National Assembly, we must work in harmony with the governors in the state (my own state) and the governors in turn, must work together with the local government chairman development will thrive when all the components in our system work together; the legislature, the executive and the judiciary must work together, that's one of the components that pushes development forward. The other level of interaction will have to between the National Assembly at the federal level, the governments at the state and the local government levels. While these three components are working together, we see development. That's why in the state (Taraba) the governor has generated a lot of good will, he has demonstrated good capacity. But people have to be patient, people out there have different things, people have to be patient. He is genuinely sincere about the course that he wants to take the state. I urge all of us to support his and with determination and he will succeed.
During former President Olusegun Obasanjo's regime, Taraba State had two key ministers. Now, you have only one minister, infact, a junior one for that matter in the ministry of Science and Technology, Yar'Adua government not bothered about Taraba or you didn't lobby enough?
It is one of the things we raised with the president and the national chairman of the party. We raised it in several zonal meetings of our party, Taraba has been PDP since the inception of this democratic dispensations, it has been 100% PDP. Some of us feel we should have been given more.
Like you said we have only one minister. Borno State produced the SGF, now Bauchi State has produced the SGF and Bauchi is no longer a PDP state, so, some of things are painful to us but it would not deter us from supporting the PDP which is the only viable tool, in my opinion, that will bring meaningful development to our state. It is not about lobby, it is about justice.
We have a minister now who was a former SSG, he is a junior. There is a Bill we are going to pass that will remove that junior because the constitution says each state shall be represented in the federal cabinet. So, the minister is now qualified and fortunately he has been retained in the present cabinet reshuffle. Time will take us there. I have been speaking in the senate, of course, you know, the fact that we are the most marginalized state, the northeast zone is the most marginalized zone.
But in the terms of personal representation in government, in terms of institutions, we don't have the federal university, is only recently we had the Federal Polytechnic Kimberly. But we are democrats in our state, we would choose to fight it, using democratic instruments to put pressure here and there.
You said you are working in terdem with the state governor. What other things apart from the Mambila Hydro-electrical power project, are you doing, to attract at least one or two federal presences in the state?
First of all, the governor listens to us, he consults us. Sincerely, we have worked together with him, for instance, when this issue of lobbing sometimes to get things, we have been successful.
He has secured approval from NUC to start a state university in Jalingo, and I know that he has put in a lot of energy in seeing that the mambila hydro-project takes off. Also, in the National Assembly, legislators from Taraba State work together. Because all this thing is lobbying, we are chairmen of some committees here and there, we try to lobby our colleagues form other states, so that we have projects inserted in the budget. I think last year we did well but I am sure, hopefully this year in the 2009 budget we will even do better. Let's go to your constituency, there are constituency allowances given to members to do certain things to their people. What are you doing in your constituency to leverage the area?
First of all, there are two sort of measures there. There are temporary emergency measures, if people come with difficulties, within the level of resources that we have, we help.
But it is like fishing and teaching somebody how to fish and them giving somebody fish. What I try to do in Taraba North is to teach people how to fish. I have a scholarship programme which with some boards, committed large sums of money to at least sponsor about 200 people. Some are already in Universities with some kind of incomes that would help them. But my emphasis really has been on education because in those times, we used to be backward and that's the key and which is why I must keep commending the governor for thinking forward and setting up the state university.
Hopefully you don't have to travel far when you are in Taraba to go to University. Every man, woman and child is entitled to decent education because it helps the government, it helps the state. One of the things I have tried to do with my own constituency is to educate them, because we have been in the military regime for a long time. The criteria that we use to assess a legislator is not the same as set of criteria you use in assessing the person that is executing. A senator or a lawmaker should be assessed based on the motions he raised, based on the bills he's sponsoring, based on his activities in the committees. You don't assess senators by the contracts they give because we don't give contracts. Local government chairman, governors and the president are the people that gives contracts. We are given the funds to appropriate of behalf of the Nigerian people and I think that realisation is becoming very clear in the minds of many people.
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