Lagos — Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe represents Abia South in the senate. A former deputy governor, he x-rays the political situation in Abia, accusing the Governor Theodore Orji of displaying incompetence in the handling of affairs of the state. He also provides insight into the recent resolution by the senate making Dr. Goodluck Jonathan the Acting President.

Of what influence is Ukwa Ngwa in Abia politics?

Ukwa Ngwa is nine local government out of 17. And inside those nine councils is the city of Aba which has of course, the preponderance of the population in Abia state. In other words, Ukwa Ngwa is about 65 per cent of the population of the state.

Are you saying that whoever that comes from the area hopes to win the governorship?

No that is not what it means, what it means is that you have a bit of advantage. But politics is not like that. Kalu didn't come from there, it didn't stop him from winning in 1999. But of course, he got the preponderance of his votes from Ukwa Ngwa area, that is the point.

Where does somebody from Ukwa Ngwa contesting next governorship election leave the zoning arrangement currently in place in Abia?

It is not going to upset it. The zoning arrangement for those who have had it before will be able to have it. During the 2007 election, like I told you, people that ran for the election came from both the Central and the South. That means that if anyone of them had won, it could also have been that area.

Now, the party, PDP is not being restricted to the Central. We also know that the question of zoning is an arrangement that is done for the political parties. Zoning is not in the constitution but because we want order and fairness, that is why people advocate for it.

In the peculiar situation we find ourselves, people now feel that it should be for the best person from those who have not run before to fill that spot. This will satisfy two things - merit and equity.

Don't you foresee a situation where some people will canvass that the governor who is from the Central should be allowed to complete two terms?

The person from the central who is now the governor has made a mess of everything. And you cannot on the basis of giving him a second term further perpetuate misgovernance that is there. In 2003, while Kalu was there, don't forget that I ran against him. And if not for all the shenanigans that went on that time, he probably would not have done the second term. So nothing stops anybody from running.

What happens is that the whole population of Abia will look at you and decide whether they want you to continue and remain where they are today. The past 10 years have been terrible and everybody can testify to that. So we are not so much moved by the sentiment of let's leave it where it is. If Theodore Orji was doing a good thing, if he was doing well, there would have been no need for anybody to contest against him.

The governor recently lamented that he has a lot of distractions from people like you from Abuja, don't you think that some of these may have combined to cause the governor not to do well as you claimed. And what is your take on Onyema Ugochukwu going back to court to challenge a case that had been decided?

I am very glad that you asked him that question and he gave you such an answer. The essence of somebody being a modern day politician or somebody who is in a modern day corporate world is that there is a new concept called multi tasking. This means that I could be driving my car and also engaging in a conversation in a cell phone and it won't stop me from driving well.

Now when somebody says that he is being distracted and that distraction is the reason why he is not doing the primary job he was sent to do, the natural question that now comes will be, what distraction? You have got your budget, you are suppose to pay salaries, you are suppose to provide the basic things of life for the people - roads, water, healthcare, education. In what way will I distract you from providing those things?

Today as I am speaking to you my constituency office is delivering elementary school chairs in three schools in my constituency. I am a senator but I have to deliver elementary chairs to primary schools which is the primary responsibility of local government in the state.

So the buck stops at the table of the governor and he has absolutely no excuse. The fact that another person goes to court, in what way that stops him from providing infrastructure. In fact on the contrary if he had been doing those things maybe the man that had gone to court would have been discouraged from going because he would know that he had no support of the public.

On the other aspect of your comment which is that we should have helped him by removing him away from those that are holding him, he has not yet come to us to say these are the people holding me and because of that I am not performing. If he had done that, may be we would all rally around him. As I am speaking to you, as a senator from Abia, I have met officially with the governor only two times. It is not so, he ought to have called we in the national assembly and said this are my plans, this is my programme, this is where I am going.

In that case if he has any problem, he can say this is the man that is trying to prevent me from achieving this and that, he said I should bring this amount and that, but I am not going to do so, we will all rise up in unison with him. He is not doing that, we don't know what is happening; we don't know who is holding him hostage.

But as far as I am concerned, because the buck stops at his table, I blame him for the misgovernance that is going on. Let him come out as we are blaming him and say it is not me, it is these other people. When God asked, Adam why did you eat this apple, he said, it is this woman that you gave me.

Maybe as people are asking him why are you not performing, he can say, let me tell you who has made me not to perform. It is a difficult thing for him to do, the time is over. He has just thoroughly misused the opportunity given to him, the huge amount of money that came his way.

The very sad part is that primary school education is no longer going on in Abia. When people go to school, the first thing they are taught is the alphabet and then the figure.

Now, I have a brother who sent his daughter to come and live with us. The child is nine years old and she cannot read the alphabets. We enrolled her in a school in Abuja, but she just couldn't cope because she does not know the alphabets. This is the Abia state school system.

Once you don't get the basic right, you are ruined for the rest of your life. And so if Abia state is not getting it right at the fundamental because of the misgovernance that is going on now, look at what will happen to us in 20 or even 10 years to come. In fact at the point we were having problem with Kalu in 1999, I predicted that 10 years down the line, we will suffer the consequences of what is going on. And 10 years down the line somebody tried to kidnap me.

When we are asking question, everybody said it is the hopelessness of everybody, that you people cannot be sitting in Abuja and we will all be here doing nothing. In other words there is no concerted plans to groom people, no concerted efforts to invest in the state, no concerted efforts to create employment for people, there is no effort to even get things right.

It sounds utopian in our context that somebody will go to work and come back and be sure that his salary goes into his bank account. We have to change that. We are not distracting him, rather, I think that he is already distracted by virtue of the manner in which he was smuggled into office. He didn't come by the will of the people, he has nowhere to fall back on.

You see if he had come by the will of the people, then you fall back on the people where there is a challenge and everybody will rise up to protect you and fight whoever that is holding you.

Recently former governor of the State Orji Uzor Kalu claimed that he had not visited Government House since handing over to him and that he was leaving the governor to his conscience, who do you think may be the real elements holding the governor down?

The right person to answer that question, I think is the governor. If the man who is purportedly holding him says that he has left him to his conscience that he is not holding him, I think we will have to look around to see if we can locate the problem.

To do a follow up to what you just said, may be also, the problem may be that the man is incompetent. Whatever way you elect a leader does not guarantee that that leader will do the right thing . The man is probably thoroughly incompetent and is therefore incapable of doing the thing we expect him to do. That is a possibility.

You claimed that there is unity in Abia PDP, but we are also aware that some tendencies like the Onyema Ugochukwu and Ojo Maduekwe still exist, don't you think that if you don't take time, you might be deceived, the same way you were beguiled into contesting on the ANPP ticket in 2003 by the PDP gladiators in the state?Do you also forsee Obasanjo still playing a role on who emerges the candidate of the party in the state?

What I understand your question to mean basically is that the cleavages that were there before are still there and that because those cleavages are there, Abia PDP would probably not still find itself unified to endorse one person in the next gubernatorial primaries.

What I can say about that is that the cleavages over time will have continually continued to fade away. What we see today is that the cleavages are very, very reduced. Don't forget that in 2007, Ojo Maduekwe had a candidate, Ogbulafor was running for governor and Onyema Ugochukwu was also running for governor. So all of them had to try to out do one another.

Today, Ogbulafor is the PDP chairman and he is not running for governor. He would not want to be chairman and his party will lose election. His first and primary aim will be to position his party to be able to win an election. That will necessarily also restrict him from playing a role that will be destabilizing.

Ojo is not running and because he is not also bringing a candidate and because he has also felt the bitterness of being a party secretary when his party lost election in his own state, he is also not inclined today to now say let me spoil matter in Abia PDP.

The final one is Onyema, he is not running for governor. What he has done is to go back to court to seek interpretation of the decision that was taken during his battle in the court. He cannot run and at the same time be in the court. We don't know when that case will end. And because we know the way and how slow the Nigerian court system is and how much the opponent who is in office try to drag out matter, we do not see that case being able to be ended soon. By the time we cross July, the guideline for election would have come out. Andy Uba didn't come out to vie for election until he had completed his court case. That is why we do not see Onyema participating and therefore it means he cannot have the same destabilizing effect that he had in 2007.

On the issue of Obasanjo's influence, I do think that the job of board of trustee is an advisory role and that the critical people who make things happen within a party are the National Working Committee (NWC), with the advice of the board of trustees.

Since Ogbulafor is a member of NWC, I don't think anybody would want to say let us ascribe to Obasanjo a destabilizing factor to somebody who is already there. So that is why I said that providence and time have helped us.

Finally and most importantly, everybody in Abia PDP has realized today the errors we made in the past because by not being in government and not helping to change the lives of Abians and getting blamed for it. There is a new realisation among the elements in the party that time has come to drop tendencies, primordial sentiments etc.

Is National Assembly likely to give Nigerians a new electoral law before next election?

I won't know because I'm not a member of the review committee. They have told us that they will bring it out. I do expect that the reform will come. Don't forget that there are two aspects now, we do our own in the National Assembly and then it goes out to the states.

Luckily because of this Yar'Adua's problem, we had a visitation by the state governors who came to thank us for what we have done and they said that they were also going to plead with their speakers to pass whatever reform bill that is brought as quickly as possible. However even with the promise you will also know that if there is any part of the reform that governors would be uncomfortable with there is no guarantee of the speakers passing it considering the relationship that exist between governors and speakers.

Having said that it will need synergy between the state assemblies and the senate. The speakers at one time came and met with the senate and said that they were desirous to assist in passing the bill. Everybody wants electoral reform. The truth is that if Jonathan can get the electoral reform right, he would have etched his name in the pantheon of Nigerian leaders.

How do you react to views that the senate's resolution making Jonathan acting president was unconstitutional?

We think that the decision was not unconstitutional. First of all we start from section 4 of the constitution which spells out the functions of the National Assembly which is to make law for the peace, unity and good governance of Nigeria.

That is the fundamental basic law for National Assembly to work. In other words when there is lack of peace or when there is something that is going to lead to a disorder, National Assembly is supposed to act.

Now on the basis of that, we now go to section 145 and because there is hardly anybody in Nigeria that can tell you with certainty whether the president of Nigeria has got the resolution passed by the National Assembly. Our belief from the basic decency of President Yar'Adua that we know was that if he knew that this was what was agitating the minds of Nigerians, he would quickly write that letter. But because we do not know, and nobody seems to know, the next thing to do was to look for a creative way of solving a problem that was dragging and dragging all of us down.

So what we did was an interpretation of the communication, in a creative way, to include electronic communication. At the time that the constitution was written, I think internet was only used by the US Army, there were no GSM cell phone in Nigeria. What we said was this, if I send a text message because the text message does not contain my signature, all that you know is that you saw text purported to come from my phone. You assume that the text is from me.

I get text from editors asking me to make a comments, the person writes his name at the end of the question, how do I know the text is from the editor? But because I have talked with him before and I know him, I assume that the text is from him. Then I will now send my own reply for which he will just assume that it is from me.

Now we have modified our evidence law that when you take to court now it will be accepted. When you come to court, you can be asked to take a court order, go to MTN office and get a transcript of that conversation. It means now that a transcript can be used in court now.

That was how we interpreted the Yar'Adua matter. We have placed section 145 for review, to make it mandatory, put a specific period, that if by so so time, this is what would happen, the VP is to act automatically. In that way, as I said before, those who want to interpret the constitution in the negative will no longer have that room or opportunity to do so.

Do you think that Jonathan operating in acting capacity will be in a position to take fundamental decisions?

Well, he is sitting on that seat and he will have to take those fundamental decisions if they are required because he is the president. He has the full powers of the president. Any decision that he takes today that is in the interest of Nigeria, nobody is going to controvert the decision because it will be in the interest of Nigeria.

He must always at all time take decisions in the interest of Nigeria. And I think where there is fundamental thing to be done, so long as it is in the interest of Nigeria and where he knows that posterity will judge him, he has to take it.

For whatever, he has found himself in that position and he must live up to the responsibility of that position.

What is the implication of him dissolving the cabinet when his boss can return any day?

That is where his judgment will now come in on what is expedient and what is not. But like I said, if what happened is in the interest of Nigeria and if there is clear evidence that he cannot work with the cabinet members, he can take a step to change them. He has to do what is necessary. I don't envy him (laugh). But I think that sometimes in life you are handed this type of situation, that means that you try to be very careful.

What role did the doctrine of necessity play in senate making this resolution and did you consider whether he has the capacity to occupy the position or not?

I think we looked at it this way, something that some of you will also be very familiar with. The doctrine of necessity says that someone will be found to be right if he does harm to another person but if in so doing he prevents a greater harm.

So in taking this decision of course if you notice, senate did three sessions - the first for about three hours, the second for more than six hours and the third one for another three hours at different dates to be able to come to the resolution. Within that period all manners and types of suggestions were raised. What was far more critical was to have someone to take responsibility for running Nigeria. For us it was better, never minding whether he will be this or that. We feel that he should take responsibility then we can deal with other things.

Is the senate disposed to impeachment option as canvassed by some or the invocation of section 144 as a permanent solution to the issue?

The way it is put in the constitution is quite right even though it is one item we copied without looking at our own peculiar circumstance. Section 143 is impeachment. Section 144 is where the FEC should take decision. The only point at which section 144 concerns senate is where a resolution from the FEC will come to the Senate President to set up the medical board. It does not even concern us, senators. It is the Senate president if such resolution comes, he won't call us, it is his responsibility and he must discharge that.

But having said that the problem with section 144 was very well highlighted by two key officers of government. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) when he met with the senate clearly told us that he does not expect somebody appointed by the president, in view of our cultural value and the way we do things to wake up and declare the person incapable. Aondoakaa, the former AGF also when he met with all the 35 lawyers in the senate restated that when they suggested to him that FEC can save the country from this entire problem. He asked how do you expect us to do so? That is why you saw that the FEC passed resolution adopting whatever that they did.

So, now that there is a delegation from FEC, what it tells is that they are coming to the realization that they must also do their bid as enshrined in the constitution. Section 144 is amendment 25 of the US constitution of 1987 which for a United States member of the cabinet will be independent enough to do that. But I don't think we have reached that stage of political development. And I don't blame ourselves; we are maturing in our democracy. Probably what the senate did may not have been possible in few years ago.