Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State stepped out with little or no fanfare to usher the journalists into his expansive and freshly furnished living room in the just completed sprawling Government House complex in Asaba, the state capital. He was dressed simply in T-shirt, a pair of trousers and casual shoes. Of average height, he had a soothing unintimidating presence. He spoke in soft but clear, audible voice to attend to all the questions thrown at him in the course of the engaging interview with DELE ADEOSUN and TAIWO OGUNDIPE. Now spending his sixth year in the saddle, he went into the depth of his being to explain the steps he has taken so far in tackling the challenging issues of his state.
AFTER six years in the saddle, can you relate your experience, what it has been like governing a state that is multi-ethnic arranged like Delta State? It’s been quite challenging, it’s been quite interesting. I’ve also learnt a lot from governing this state. I have virtually lived my life in the geographical entity called Delta apart from when I attended university for my post-graduate course. Every other thing, from primary school to secondary school, to my working life, had been virtually lived in this entity. But I think the period in which I’ve been the governor, I’ve come to know the state more than the previous years I had lived in the state. Regarding the issue of ethnicity, before I came in, we had a lot of ethnic challenges that even led to inter-ethnic crisis with fighting, especially before my predecessor came in and while he was there. Even before some of us were born, the challenges had been there. My predecessor tried to manage it while he was there as much as possible. When I came in it was still there. We still had inter-ethnic challenges. And in fact, my emergence was a sort of a big surprise in terms of ethnicity considering the fact that I’m an Itshekiri, one of the smallest ethnic groups. And an ethnic group that has been in crisis with big ethnic groups like the Urhobos and the Ijaws. However, by God’s grace, my emergence sort of went on to improve ethnic family’s relationship in the state. What I’ve tried to do is to as much as possible give to each ethnic group what is due to it in terms of appointment, spread of developmental issues, whether infrastructure or human capital. And I think that has gone a long way in dousing the ethnic tension that was in the state. So there is no ethnic group that would say this other ethnic group has cheated us or I’m not getting this because of another ethnic group. There is no doubt that you still have people who are talking on ethnic basis but those are just people that are few and far in between; people that want to create political tension, or people that want to draw personal attention to themselves, and are still living in the old era of throwing up ethnic issues. Most of the things we do are not ethnicbased. They are developmental programmes that you cannot say were driven because of this ethnic group. An Asaba airport, for instance, is not for the people in Asaba alone or for the Delta North people alone, it’s for the whole state. When you land in Asaba airport you can move to any part of the state. So, these are things I’ve had to do. Again, it has been challenging and interesting but I think we are winning on ethnic issues. Apart from the ethnic issue, the other challenge was that of youth restiveness and militancy. How were you able to manage this? My strategy was that of engagement on one side, then law and order on the other side. The law and order bit was about an outfit, the Joint Task Force (JTF), set up by the Federal Government, which had the army, the police, the air force, the navy, the SSS in this area that was maintaining law and order. But for me as a governor, what was more important is the engagement. First of all, these guys were fighting for a reason – developmental reason. They felt marginalised; they felt cheated both by governments – local government, state government and federal government as well as the oil companies. The thing was to ensure that some of the things they were fighting for were dealt with. I brought a lot of them into government. Many people hated me for it. They didn’t like that I was bringing militants into government. But I said these are people who had stopped whatever they were doing. They had stopped fighting one another. They had embraced peace. They are qualified to occupy whatever positions they were being given. My bringing them into them helped a lot. We formed what we call the Delta Waterways Security Committee. They are mainly youths from the area, who understand the complexities of living in this area; who were also leaders or parts of the crisis at its peak; who had access to the very grassroots, some of the youths that were carrying guns. So they were dealing with people that were mainly on the field. They could go to any part of the state no matter how far it is and no matter how dangerous the place is, to talk to them, engage with them, telling them, ‘Look, this thing you are doing is okay, come let us embrace peace, let us engage government,’ letting them know what we want. And let us see how far they can go. So, that helped. And we also have this outfit called Delta State Oil Area Development Commission (DESOPADEC), which we gave 50 percent of our 30 percent derivation every month. And it comprised people from those areas that understand the areas and their needs. There is no doubt they had challenges because when that kind of money comes in for the first time into that kind of body, there are bound to be challenges. But the body has stabilised now and is going forward. It is a body that will do a lot in developing these oilproducing areas. So, that engagement process and law and order helped us to deal with the crisis. This seems to suggest that your government had introduced the idea of amnesty before the Federal Government launched its own? Yes, if you say so. I believe in amnesty. And I’m one of those who lobbied seriously for it. Let’s come to think of it, these are our own children, our own younger brothers, our own younger sisters who carried out (the agitation) for a reason and also agreed to drop their arms if some of those issues that caused their carrying arms were met. Those were issues that we as Federal Government, state government and local government, and even the oil-producing companies, can deal with. So, we should play our part while they play their own part. So, as for amnesty, I believe very strongly in it. I was part of those that lobbied for it. I believe we should continue to develop it because Northern Ireland today has become a country that is surviving through amnesty. The people that actually brought the peace to Northern Ireland were those who were part of the crisis. I took some of these young boys to Northern Ireland to understudy what was happening there. They were there for over two weeks. The people that talked to them were in the forefront of making peace there. They were the ones who were bombing houses and killing people. They turned round to embrace peace. You have been in the saddle for six years. What have been the high points of your administration? The high points are in various areas. One is ensuring that there is peace in the area, and ensuring that there is security. In-between, we’ve had security challenges because when the militancy was over, it brought out its challenges of security issues: The challenges of kidnapping; the challenges of illegal bunkering; the challenges of piracy. Of course, kidnapping is a brother and sister to armed robbery. Those are the challenges that came up. They are the challenges we are dealing with. I cannot go into details because they are security issues. But we are doing a lot. There is no doubt that of late we’ve had some cases of kidnapping not just because of the guns that were left behind from the militancy period. We are also now having political kidnapping, which some people in opposition are organising; kidnapping against relations of and even people in top government positions. In fact, one of the last ones, which I would call international kidnapping, was the mother of the minister of finance. You’ve heard from the minister herself that her mother was kidnapped because of her own actions as a minster of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So, we have all those challenges but we are also dealing with them. And I can say there is drastic reduction because we are arresting some of the kidnappers. In this state we’ve had the highest number of kidnappers being sentenced to jail, especially in the last three, four months. Do you have any frustration as the chief security officer of the state without the necessary statutory control over the police, the army and other security agencies? Obviously, there is frustration. We are chief security officers by name but not by control of the security agencies. Your ability to control the security agencies that are here depends on your personal relationship with them. If you make them your friends, then you can work with them. If you don’t make them your friends and you just want to deal with them on official basis, then you might be frustrated sometimes in making them carry out some duties. That’s why some of where we can have better control as chief security officers and have more persons on the field who know the area. Somebody who is not from Delta will not have emotional attachment to security issues in the state. Secondly, he may also not understand the terrain the way somebody from this area would. Thirdly, if you are from around the community and you misbehave on security issues, members of your family are there. The situation will also affect them. That’s why some of us are advocating for state police. But I would say in Delta, so far so good. We’ve had good relationship with the security agencies in the state. But there are some challenges. Sometimes, the security agencies are also implicated in some of these actions of late, especially kidnapping. You have to go through a third party to handle the situation. You cannot handle it directly if you have all these suspicions. That is fairly difficult to manage. One of the points against state police is that it might be abused by the governor to fight opposition. Somebody once said that at the national level we’ve seen what the state could do with security agencies. When we say state police, it is not about me. If we start it now, by the time we make the constitutional amendment, I would have left office. There is no doubt that anything you introduce has its negative and positive sides. But I believe that the positive side of the state police is much more than whatever negative side there is. Abusing state police depends on the person. I believe that with time, things will normalise. At the inception of your administration, you announced a three-point agenda and you said it would be based on taking Delta State beyond oil revenue. How have you managed the affairs of the state so far with that outlook? WHAT I believe at the beginning, now and in the future is that we need to build an economy that is not totally dependent on oil. It is something I’m very passionate about. It is something I believe in. This is because oil is a very volatile commodity. It is a commodity that you might just wake up and see that it is no longer there. It is a commodity which experiences price variation. And each time there is price variation, it affects the economy. When it goes up or comes down, it affects the economy one way or the other. It is also a commodity we believe we can use to build up or to develop other areas of the economy. That has been our approach. Delta Beyond Oil simply means, how do we use the oil money that we have now to develop other areas of the economy? In terms of how far we have gone, I think we have gone very far. We’ve recorded a lot of successes. Our strategy is anchored on the three-point agenda of ensuring there is peace and security so that investors can come in by our providing a secured environment for investment whether micro, small, medium or large enterprises. Then two, develop infrastructure that will also attract investment. You know without infrastructure, it is quite difficult for any investment to succeed no matter what you are doing. From the barbing salon to the very heavy industries, they require some basic infrastructure. The significant ones are the areas of power and transportation. For transportation, we are talking of roads, airports, seaports and railways. We are also talking of the ICT, industrial parts and urban centres. So, how do you develop those infrastructure that will encourage investments? How do you also develop the human capacity or the human capital that will ensure that these investments succeed? That is the kind of strategy that we have used. I would say so far so good in the sense that at least we have attained some measure of peace that has been attracting investments. And I would say that Delta State is one of the states that have attracted a lot of investments in the past six years. Some have started, some are still ongoing in terms of discussions and enquiries. We are dealing with infrastructure in two parts. We have the long term heavy infrastructure. Then we have what we call the social infrastructure that allows us to achieve some success on what we call the low-hanging fruits. In terms of heavy infrastructure such as in the area of power, we are working with the Federal Government to improve generation capacity, transmission and distribution. We are involved in the three areas. We paid our money into the federal coffers, about N15.7 billion to complete the Item national independent power plants. We are part of the management team that will complete the power plant. We are also building our own independent power plant that will ensure that we generate something that will help Delta get more power. We have a lot of transmission and lines that are ongoing. We have purchased and installing so many transformers. We are also improving the transportation situation. We are constructing a lot of highways including major ones that are supposed to belong to the federal government. We are focusing on federal roads because they link the major parts of the state that are of economic value. We are also constructing rural and urban roads to improve the movements between the cities and the communities. We have an airport that is already operational although not completed. We are starting another one. It seems to be the only state where two airports are being developed because of the necessity and nature of the state. For seaports, we have been working with the federal government to open up all of them. We have a dredging problem though. Some of the channels are very narrow. They need to be dredged. We have one of the most comprehensive mass public transport system in which we provide for every segment of the society from the tricycle to taxis to small and big buses. We have an ICT park that we are developing for training our youths in various areas of ICT. We also have the Warri Industrial Park though still at the planning stage. Those are the things we are doing to attract heavy investments. On the other side too, we have the social infrastructure in which we are doing a lot in the areas of education, health and water. If you go round you will see massive renovation and rebuilding of some of our schools from primary, secondary to tertiary institutions. We are also working on our hospitals from primary health care, secondary health care to tertiary health care. We are improving on our water supply to the various communities within the state. THROUGH our human capital development efforts, we are trying to ensure a population that is ready to take on investment that is beyond the oil. And that starts from the first day of pregnancy to ensure that we have healthy children when they are delivered. We introduced free maternal health care service because one of the problems we have is that if you don’t take care of the baby while in the mother’s womb before the children would come out to become problem to the society. The scheme is also designed to ensure that in the first five years, they have free treatment. In the rural areas we have health care programme that is free for everybody. The programme runs for about three to four months in a year. We move from one rural area to the other. Overall, we have a comprehensive health arrangement to take care of everybody toward having a healthy population. In the education sector, apart from infrastructure, we are also making efforts to ensure that every child has access to school free of charge up to secondary level. We pay for their WAEC and NECO. At the tertiary level there are various scholarship schemes from bursary to scholarship for the very intelligent ones. For those who make First Class in the university, it is automatic scholarship worth N5 million a year to study anywhere in the world. We also have skill acquisition training centres for those who do not go to formal schools. For employment, we are creating enabling environment for investors to create jobs. We have also set up a micro-credit scheme which has benefited over a hundred thousand beneficiaries. When there is a beneficiary there is a multiplier effect when he starts a small business and employs others. Talking about the social infrastructure, we learnt that one of the scholarship awardees is a young lady whom you took delivery of as a baby, what did you feel when you learnt so? And secondly, we discovered when we recently toured the health facilities in the state, some people were of the opinion that you are paying much more attention to the health sector because of your background as medical doctor. What do you have to say about this? Well, as of paying attention to health, I don’t have any apology for it. It’s my field and I know the importance of health. A healthy population is one that can achieve anything. So we must pay serious attention to health. The attention should not just start from when the person is sick. It should start from when pregnancy occurs, from the first day when it is recognised as a human being. It should start from the first day the man and the woman sleep together and the egg and the sperm meet and form a human being, we should start paying attention to that entity. I pay attention to health because I believe that it is one of the ways in which you can have a society that is developing. As for the young lady, it was quite exciting for me. The background to that happened several years ago when I was practising. I practised actively for about 19 years. Although I ended up with anaesthesia but I did a lot of obstetrics and gynaecology because that was what I wanted to specialise in. I did it up to a level before I branched off into anaesthesia. I went practising in the Delta State community in Aladja. There was a hospital we used to call the German Hospital. It wasn’t the hospital where I was practising but it was more like a private hospital that the Germans built for themselves when they were constructing the Delta Steel Company. They had a doctor that was running it. And because it was a German hospital, many of our people had confidence in the hospital; they used to go there a lot. So, on that particular day, the doctor travelled. There was only one doctor there. And he was my friend. He asked me to cover for him, that if they had any cases, they should let me know. So, in the night, they called me to come and see this lady who was pregnant and in the process of delivering the baby but was having difficulty in doing so. I got there and I examined her. Apparently, the nurse that was supposed to take the delivery did not quite understand the slightly complicated case. She was an obese woman, very fat. And some skills were needed to be able to manage such cases. When I examined her, I found out that she was not ready to push the baby yet. The nurse thought that she was ready from her examination. It is a blind thing when you examine a woman that is in labour. The nurse asked the woman to push when she wasn’t ready. When I got there and examined the woman, I said she wasn’t ready to push out the baby and she shouldn’t be asked to push yet. Labour itself is a natural thing. It runs a natural course. I said she should be allowed to take her time. So, I was with her for about four hours while she was in labour. I was monitoring her to see that the baby was okay while the mouth of the womb which is called the cervix is ready to take the baby. At a point when I examined again she was ready and I personally took the delivery. That was several years ago. I had forgotten about it. After some years, I met the mother again on the political field. She is a politician. She reminded me of the incident. I reconnected with the family. The girl attended the millennium secondary school in Benin. On her graduation day, the mother invited me to the event. I was then still the Secretary to the Delta State government. I attended the graduation ceremony. But then the girl now gave me a name called FLT. I asked her, what is FLT? She said First Loving Touch, that I was the first person to touch her in life in the process of that delivery. Since then we call each other FLT. After that, once in a while we just meet. The mother used to be in government but she is no longer in government. I knew the girl had gone to the university in Europe but I didn’t even remember that she made a First Class. She came back and attended the Law School. So, when we were giving out the scholarships, I had actually made my speech and I was now giving each of the award winners their letters of award. They called her and it didn’t even occur to me until she got to me and I saw her. I was excited that she was the one. The point I’m trying to make is that our scholarship scheme does not require lobbying. First, I didn’t know that she was there until I saw her. If it had to be through lobbying they would have gotten to me and she would have told me, you are my FLT, please favour me. That was one of my excitements. Of course, the bigger excitement is that somebody I sort of delivered is now big enough to be awarded a scholarship. I have so many like her, so many of these
