Obong Victor Attah is a former governor of Akwa Ibom State. In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on the appointment of Abubakar Momoh as the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, why the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is not serving the interest of the region and need for the Federal Government to allow for resource control, among issues. ANAYO EZUGWU reports

If they have failed, giving them resource control would mean more money in the pocket of people who have failed to manage the little and it means you are giving them more to waste. Is that the case?

It is difficult to define an agenda for a ministry; what we should define is the purpose for which any organisation forms its objective. Why I’m trying to tell you is that there is a lot of confusion in the concept of development of the Niger Delta. You brought the Amnesty Programme, you brought the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), you brought 13 per cent derivation, and now you have the Ministry of Niger Delta. All these came about because when we start one thing, we find out that it is inadequate, we start another one and we find out that it is inadequate and so we keep going and yet we can’t focus. I believe that ultimately, we have to start from the end to come back to the beginning. Ultimately, the answer lies in total resource control and I don’t see how anybody can oppose that. If we have our resources and nobody was stealing our oil as being done now, for goodness sake, Niger Delta region will develop. But let’s take it one by one, you set up NDDC; I was there when NDDC was being set up by our president at a time and I made a suggestion to the president that we don’t need a big bureaucracy. Just a few persons in the presidency, and at the end of the month, we will tell you projects that we would spend the money on and you will award the contracts. And we the governors will supervise it. By the time we remove the bureaucracy, the system will run smoothly and at the end of every month, just as you give money from the Federation Account for the governors to develop their states, I will bring projects and you will approve. But the president said it is better we set up an organisation and the organisation was set up. We went to see the first chairman of that organisation called NDDC and we tried to put to him a system whereby this organisation would be run smoothly and strange things happened at that meeting. The chairman looked at us and said that we were working at cross purposes and I will quote him.

He said: “The man who sent me here asked me to come and empower his supporters.” Now if that is the purpose of NDDC, how can it develop the Niger Delta region? It is there to empower the supporters of those who created the institution. You leave that and you take the Amnesty Programme, which one of these is working. I will say this openly, I wrote a memo, when President Goodluck Jonathan brought up the idea of having an organisation to bring up programmes for the region. I wrote a paper and said that what the British government did after the Second War World was to create new towns, and at the time I wrote that paper, I could name 22 new towns that were created and the Prime Minister then was talking about creating 12 new towns. I said that we should consider using the concept of new towns to develop the Niger Delta region. The only new town I know effectively in Nigeria is Abuja but that was done without the new town policy. That is why Wike is having problems today because the minister that comes does what he likes because there is no policy. I said let’s develop a new town policy and use that policy to develop at least four new towns to start within the Niger Delta region. If you are serious about developing the Niger Delta region, you must have a ministry. This FCT could not have been what it is today if we were depending on the Federal Ministry of Works to build roads in the city or the Ministry of Health and Education to provide health facilities and education. Create a ministry that is properly funded and I’m hearing the new minister, Momoh saying he is going to transform the Niger Delta region. He cannot do it unless it is in the budget for him to do it. So, there will be a budget that will provide for work, health, social amenities and other infrastructure that we need to develop the region. But that is not happening. Today, there is a fight between NDDC and the Amnesty Programme on who should be awarding scholarships.

We just have not defined what we want to do and there is a need to define it. But ultimately, whatever we are doing is just ad-hoc. The ultimate answer is full and total resource control. I will tell you something. People who oppose this resource control, tell me that they are Christians and I asked them whether they did not read the story of the man who found hidden treasure under a field and he sold everything he had to go and buy that field. It is because he knew that whatever was under that ground as long as the land belonged to him. But in Nigeria, we want to say that the oil in our soil doesn’t belong to us but it belongs to everybody. And that is why everybody comes and steals it away. It does not happen that way. We have to accept fully the concept of resource control and acknowledge the fact that what is yours is yours but you have to share it because that is the concept of a nation or a country. It is not because somebody will come and take it away and give you what they think they should you give. That cannot work and we have to go back and have resource control and move away from all these vices. Ultimately, the people must be given the opportunity, means and facility to develop themselves and that comes through resource control.

In 2022, you described the state of the nation as depressingly dire. What is your take on the state of the nation today; do you still think that it is depressingly dire?

I would ask you to do me a favour, and find me adjectives that can define something worse than depressingly dire because the situation today is worse than it was in 2022. I don’t have to describe it as dire because it is worse than the situation in 2022.

The new minister of the Niger Delta has said that he is going to tackle uncompleted projects, which project would you like to see him tackle immediately?

The projects I would like to see the minister tackle are not there. I will tell you why I said so. When you set up something like a regional development body and that body is the one buying school desk, drilling boreholes, supplying firewood and doing ridiculous things, that is not the concept of a regional development body. A regional development body should be developing major regional projects. Today, we should be talking about a trans-regional rail line, a power station that gives power to the entire region, a specialist hospital and things that have meaning for the region. Not these little things, and tomorrow you will say you want to do an audit, it is ridiculous. That was why I said from the beginning that we have not defined what we want to do and how we want to do it.

Some people believe that the problem of the Niger Delta is not that of resources not being allocated but that of the quality of people managing the resources. What would you say to those making such allegations?

What I will say is that there is always a defence. They will tell you that it is on paper and it has not been released. How do you know whether it has been released or not? That is the first problem. The second issue, you talked about the caliber of people, who select the people that form the leadership of the place in the first place. If I have my resources and you allow me to have resource control, I would elect people who will go and administer the agency and they will be accountable to me. Tell me who in NDDC is accountable to me. As I said, the first concept we got was that NDDC was created according to the words of the chairman to empower the supporters of the president. So, who are we asking to account for what? The way we are administering this country is wrong. When we had a parliamentary system, we had a much better, inclusive and accountable system. People could elect those they want to represent them, but today, believe me, many of us don’t even know who represents us in the state House of Assembly, House of Representatives and the Senate. Look, we have a situation that is not working and we have to wake up and admit that and change this constitution.

Why are you not holding the managers of the NDDC accountable because they represent the region?

I want to but how do I do it? Please educate me on how I can do it. The system doesn’t allow me to make them account for me. That is what I’m telling you. Let us get a system that will make them accountable to those they should be accountable to and not Mr. President. It is this system that is wrong, and believe me, I desperately want to hold them accountable but how do I do it.

What is your take on how NDDC should be run; do you think that the chairman of the commission should also be given executive powers?

I don’t believe there should be an NDDC. I believe I should be allowed to control my resources and develop myself. That was how the Eastern Region developed and that was how the Northern Region, Western Region and later the Mid-Western Region developed. There was no such body or equivalent in those regions. Who appoints the chairman? Who appoints members of the board? For how long did we not even have a board in the NDDC? So, I don’t want to get myself involved in this because someone will quote me tomorrow that I suggested how NDDC should be run. My own suggestion is that there should have been no need for NDDC if we were doing the right thing from the beginning.

You are of the opinion that NDDC should be done away with…

I didn’t say that. I said there should have been no reason for it to exist if we had done the correct thing in the first instance.

Despite your reason for the commission not to have existed, it does exist. What is your take on how it can be better run?

Seriously, I don’t engage my mind on things that have no meaning for me. NDDC has no meaning for me. I’m sorry, I have not thought about what will happen and what should not happen, but what should happen is that we should have resource control and then I can talk about how we can use those resources. I have said earlier that if there must be an NDDC, it should be a regional developmental organisation doing regional projects and I named some of them. However, you want to select the chairman or whatever, is that the responsibility of the NDDC and who is even responsible for the development of the Niger Delta? Quite honestly, I have not engaged my mind on these specific issues now that there is NDDC but I can define what I think if an organisation like that must exist and what it ought to be aiming at. It should be aiming at mega major regional projects to transform the whole region.

With the amount of money allocated to the region and the amount of money successive managements of NDDC have gotten since its creation, would you say that they have done well for the region?

The answer is no; they have not.

The answer is no and you are not doing that. What is happening is that a lot of them have not done well because they are not accountable to the people. We don’t even know how much money that is going to NDDC because when you have the budget, they will tell you that the money was not released. But if we have resource control, those of us who voted for someone to go and be our representative from among whom he would appoint his commissioners or ministers, we will call him to order, but today you cannot do that. This system doesn’t allow anybody to be accountable for anything.

Don’t tell me that we do not know how our money was spent in those regions before now and we could tell who was performing and who was not performing. Let me give you a good example, somebody who fails to win an election as a governor means that the people in his state have rejected him but such a person will be appointed as minister. How would the people go to him and say come and do something for us? If we really want to look at this very carefully, you will know that we are in a very sad situation.

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