‘How civil servants sell govt land’ Nduese Essien, former Lands and Housing Minister, former Chairman of South-South Parliamentary Caucus in the National Assembly and a delegate to the last National Conference was last week honoured by the Eket-speaking people of Akwa Ibom State to mark his 35 years active service to the community and Nigeria. In this interview, Essien insists that given Nigeria’s rising oil wealth, the country has no reason to be poor and to seek foreign loans for its development. He also speaks on a number of other burning national issues and Akwa Ibom State politics. Excerpts: After 35 years of service to your father land, do you feel fulfilled or are there things that you are still looking forward to doing? Somehow, I will say, I feel fulfilled with the services that I have rendered and with the role that I have played in my community, the state and the nation. But you know that having served for 35 years, there must some areas that you would want to treat differently if the opportunity arose again. Now, I have reached a maturity level, which makes me to look at certain things differently. But since I cannot reverse what has passed, I just thank God for arriving at where I am today. In all of the positions that you have occupied over the years, what has been the guiding principle in your life? My guiding principle has been that one should take decisions with an open mind because when you have tentacles around you, commitments here and there, your decisions will tend to be influenced or you may not even feel free to take a position on issues because if you do, you will hurt one tentacle or the other. What I have tried to do all along is to keep myself free from entanglements that could impede my decision-making. I am saying this because I have come to see that some of the commitments that people make because of some situations turn out to influence them against a better position they would have taken at an appropriate time. You started as the secretary of the Eket community in your area in Akwa Ibom state and you know what has transpired in the relationship between the oil producing company and the communities. How were you able to forge a cordial relationship between the warring oil communities and the oil company there? My entry into community service was soon after my graduation, when I was appointed secretary of the village union and then the Eket Union. It was on that basis that I got involved with the various activities between the companies producing oil in our area and the communities. You know, the company, Mobil, had just come into Akwa Ibom state and established in Eket and at that time, the people where not really interested in what the company was doing. But after ten years, it became clear that Mobil had made some wealth and where moving ahead, while the communities where still lagging behind. In 1979, there was a protest and I was invited to join in the negotiations between the community and mobil. It was then that we told the company that it has left us behind, while it was far ahead in terms of development. We pointed out to the company that it was wrong for them to be building housing estates, flying in their staff and contractors from Lagos into Eket to work for them while the local people had nothing to gain from their operations. We asked them to try to provide infrastructure, do other things and employ our people. So we succeeded in a way to get them to engage the communities. Then, in 1989 there was another protest that resulted in Mobil coming back to construct several roads in the area in addition to providing electricity for the people as part of their effort to connect with the communities. Then in 1998, there was a military governor that was there and there was a protest because the company had again abandoned the community. The governor mistakenly said that the people of Akwa Ibom state did not have qualified persons amongst them to serve in positions in their company. He said that the people only study Religion and History and cannot work in an oil company. That infuriated the crowd to boo the Yoruba governor and deface his official car. That also led to a major protest that led us to enter into negotiations for four months with the company resulting in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU. We were able to stabilize relationship with the oil companies and I think it is a good omen for the state. I was a member of the MOU committee while still being secretary of the Eket community. Have you ever thought about it in the course of your work, that Nigeria is not making progress commensurate to its potential? Well, Nigeria is a very complex society. We have attained various stages in our march to succeed as a nation. Nigeria should have made more progress than it is today. Why do I say so? During the agitation for the end of colonial rule, it was people in the ages of 30–45 that led in the agitation with the elders backing them and of course the youths serving as activists. That worked out and we were able to get the colonial masters to go. But soon after that, the military came. Again, it was people in the age bracket of 30-45 who were appointed military governors, the Head Of State himself was 32 years old. These people had a vision for this country. While they were at the forefront, they employed experienced civilians and other people to assist them and we made tremendous progress and became the envy of other nations of the world. Nigeria was highly respected globally. But since the democratic dispensation came, a dichotomy has risen, pitching the youths against the elders. Now, the youths are saying that the period of the elders has since expired and that they should quit the scene for them alone. In other words, the youths do not think that the elders have any wisdom or idea to impart to them in the running of the system. On the other hand, some elders who have been there for far too long are not prepared to relinquish the seats and allow the youths to gain the experience while they advise them. That is one level of setback that we have been having in this country. The next one is that Nigerians have become so inclined to accumulating wealth, wealth that they can never use in their life time, wealth that is stored away in foreign countries and in most cases we lose it when they die. We should begin to feel that there is the need to develop our own country and make it good enough for us to stay. It amazes me that many top Nigerians who have been travelling routinely from the country to other parts of the world and who have been seeing the way other countries organise public facilities, still come back to Nigeria and do the opposite. They see the development in those other countries but they come back home to find a stinking airport, absence of road network and other vital infrastructure. When I went to Malaysia in year 2000, I saw shopping malls and was amazed, not having seen such back home in my country. So, you can see that many Nigerians are not really keen staying back in their country and doing the best they can for the nation. They rather want to accumulate wealth and store abroad. They only think of taking the wealth from here and going outside; otherwise, how do you explain our current state when, since 1970, Nigeria has been having an increase in oil production on a yearly basis? At a certain point a certain Nigerian leader was telling the rest of the world that the problem of Nigeria was not money but how to spend it. So I wonder why have we made so much money but are still wallowing in poverty and still asking for foreign loan as if it is mandatory to receive foreign loans? Nigeria has no business asking for loans. And the Nigerian government is always talking about lack of money, insufficient funds to do projects despite all the oil revenues and all the loans that were taken. So, there have to be some solutions to this situation. Let me take you to your brief tenure as minister of Lands and Housing. You knew that Nigeria had a housing deficit of 17 million and sadly there was nothing much you could do to help. What happened? There is no way that I could have cancelled the housing deficit within the 13 months that I stayed in office as minister. Is it not so funny to be hearing of Nigeria having 17 million deficit every year as if nobody is building any house? For what I know, houses are being built on a daily basis and the 17 million figure cannot still be the same till date. When I came into office, I saw a programme that was to produce 500 houses per senatorial district of this country and we hailed the programme and announced it for local and foreign investors to take advantage and build more houses for Nigerians. Within a short time, a lot of foreign developers came in at that time because the property market in Europe and US had crashed. Many people were interested in coming to invest in Nigeria. So I believe that with that interest of property investors into the property market, we would be able to achieve the target of building the 500 houses per senatorial district. But unfortunately, it took me six months in office before I could get a document showing me where the Federal Government land was available and this was a printed document that I obtained from outside the ministry. So you can now see the level of impediments against the development of housing for Nigerian by the government. When I got that list and wanted to verify it, I realised that most of the plots of land that were said to be owned by the government had already been encroached upon by either the owners or the civil servants who had sold them. I tell you, in most cases, land acquired by government for public purposes is sold by civil servants after the government might have used a very small portion. So since I couldn’t stay long to take care of the problem I couldn’t help the situation. You were a member of the just-concluded National Conference. Are you satisfied with the outcome of the national conference? At the end of the conference, you could see that Nigeria has the potential to remain a strong, united and developed entity, because all the cries and rumours that had erupted at different times in the country all collapsed in one day when we agreed that the status quo should remain and that we should continue. And then, you also find that the recommendations of the conference covered a lot of areas that if implemented, could bring about a prosperous nation that will be the envy of other nations. Tell us more about this your reception by your people. Some may suspect that it is a platform to push you into the 2015 election. What is the reception all about? From what I gather the reception is nothing more than an appreciation of the services I have been rendering to my community, state and the nation for a period of 35 years. The uniqueness of it is that this time around, various other groups in the state joined to organise the reception and I am looking forward to the outcome. But in all honesty, it has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Let me tell you, in 1999 when I ran for the Federal House, I didn’t show interest to contest, I didn’t join any political party but it was my people, who came to me in Calabar and invited me to come and contest based on my relationship with them. So I came and they ensured that I won the election. I did not really put in much. In 2003, apparently because of my performance during my first term, I also won re-election to the House of Representatives. Thereafter, it has been a different story. What is your philosophy in life? It’s to live and let others live and assist people to move on.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 09:52:16 +0000
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