In this interview, former President of the Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide, Engr. Udengs Eradiri, who was the immediate past Governorship Candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in Bayelsa State, but later defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) briefly assesses the performance of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the Niger Delta. Eradiri, who was also a former Commissioner for Youths and later Environment in Bayelsa points out some outstanding areas of Tinubu’s achievements. MIKE ODIEGWU was there.
How will you assess the performance of President Bola Tinubu in the Niger Delts within two years?
With what I have seen, I can authoritatively say that, yes, this President means well for Nigeria and let us give him the support necessary. Despite the kind of pressure and the kind of distractions from opposition within and outside the party, the President has remained steadfast.
For us in the Niger Delta, one of the key areas that we will be applauding the President is in the area of infrastructures. The East-West Road that had suffered neglect from leadership has seen a lot of attention and a change in structural strategy and that commendation goes to the Minister for Works, who of course is doing a very good job. If you go to the East-West Road you can see that, yes, an engineer, who first did an assessment on the road, was able to come and change the design in order for us to have a lasting structure on the road.
So, you can see areas that didn’t have culverts that allowed the flood to destroy the road now have culverts. Over 70% of the road has been dualized. I want to use the opportunity to thank Mr. President. There was a lot of agitation as a result of the neglect on the East-West road before he came on board. While ruminating on the matter, i said now that the road is making so much progress, why don’t we also gather our young people on that road and then use it to appreciate the President?
When you construct that kind of infrastructure you save a lot of lives because we have lost a lot of people as a result of that bad road. The economy was badly affected but today I can calculate when I will get to Yenegoa from Port Harcourt and I will be there. So, economically more value has been added to businesses. So, Mr President we commend you.
We also appreciate the President on the issue of developmental agencies that he has put in place especially the Southsouth Development Commission. The President has announced the board. We are waiting for their inauguration and their kickoff and so I want to thank the President that as much as every region is now having development agencies the Niger Delta also has its own.
But you see I like to be very frank. I am not too happy about the proliferation of developmental agencies. It is a demonstration that the governors have failed. States were created for development but for us to now snowball into setting up developmental agencies it means that the states have failed; the local governments have failed. The President must ensure that the funding meant for local governments, which the Supreme Court had already made a pronouncement on must be implemented without political considerations because they are still subverting the funds meant for local government.
How has NDDC faired under Ptesident Tinubu?
There is light everywhere at night in the Niger Delta because of the light-up initiative of Mr. President through the NDDC. The President appointed for the first time a very stable leadership in NDDC and that leadership has been able to focus on dealing with the challenges in the Niger Delta; dealing with infrastructures and dealing with educational problems. You saw what the President is doing in the educational sector using the NDDC. The U-Lesson initiative where every child is empowered with digital tools. Though they are not there yet, they are going there.
The initiative is to ensure that every Niger Delta child has an electronic tab, where all the educational materials are installed. So the children of the Niger Delta are now going to class with their U lesson tabs that have all lecture materials. You can just scroll down and you are there. Educationally the President is adding a lot of value and preparing our young people for the challenges of tomorrow and that is ICT education. This is what the NDDC is dispensing to the Niger Delta people. They are renovating their schools and those schools they are bringing in electronic learning materials. All this is the initiative of Mr. President working through these institutions. I can go on and on.
READ ALSO: Ileya, four other popular festivals in Nigeria
How far has the President’s students loan initiative gone in the Niger Delta?
Another commendable programme of Mr Presisent is the Students’ Loan Scheme. Even though we have a serious problem of President trying to get things moving, most of the people within that are supposed to help him move these things don’t understand the body language and follow suit. So, if the President dispenses an agenda, you find people trying to bring in their interest and use that to destroy some of these things.
That’s why you see some of the complaints coming out from the student loan scheme. It is a scheme that the President has put in for indigent students. You find a lot of funny things but I think that it’s also a call on the EFCC to sit up. The EFCC The ICPC must ensure that while these things are put in place for the benefit of Nigerians, these phony characters do not find their pilfering fingers into the agendas of the President.
How have the oil sector and security faired in the Niger Delta region under the President?
In the oil sector, we have started producing above two million barrels and we are looking at hitting three million barrels per day. This is all because of the policy, the security strategy and economic engagements that the President has brought on board. The President’s National Security Adviser (NSA), I think is one of the best NSAs we have had because Ribadu is always engaging stakeholders any time there are issues. He is always on top of it and I am sure that these were the qualities that the President saw before he appointed somebody like him.
So, in terms of security, he’s engaging to try to see how the security is stabilized in the Niger Delta. We can see what is happening in the North. Unfortunately, politicians in the north use security for politics. Otherwise, when Asiwaju came in, and if you look at the statistics, we had recorded so much progress until when we started this politics of who, will contests 2027 election. You begin to see that the security issues are beginning to come back again as if somebody is somewhere turning up the volume of it.
But I think that the strategy that Mr President employed added so much value and tried to reduce the striking propensity of some of those terrorists. We can see a resurgence. We know that there are international dimensions to it. You saw what happened in America where accusations were flying in the Senate showing that it is not something that President Asiwaju himself can nip in the board overnight. It needs collaborative efforts of the international society.
So, in terms of security, which is tied to everything that happens in the country especially in the Niger Delta, we want to appreciate the President for engaging communities, institutions in the energy sector. We have opined in the past that for you to have peace, you must ensure that our people are part and parcel of the oil and gas activities going on in the region and today that has been largely seen by the way the President is engaging and you can see our people getting involved. Most of our people are now owners of some of the oil infrastructures and they are participating in the security of oil infrastructures. We have two Niger Delta companies and the Tantita is one of them. The Tantita Security Services has performed tremendously, reducing poverty by creating thousands of jobs to engage the youths.
The energy sector has actually seen a lot of boost from this President. He has reorganized the NNPC which has been the bane of the problem. We now have very experienced industry individuals, who have taken the leadership of NNPC. We hope that this will begin to change the fortunes of the NNPC
Another good move by the President is the CNG Programme. The CNG initiative is designed to reduce the cost of petroleum. But what Dangote is doing as a result of the subsidy and the open market that the President ensured, you can now see that gradually the price of petroleum product is going down. Nigeria is no longer borrowing to go and buy petroleum products. You can see that our foreign reserve is going up every day because of these policies of Mr. President.
But many people are complainng that these reforms have not really touched their lives. What do you think?
Remenber that this country was battered before the Presidenr came on board. You don’t expect Asiwaju to come overnight and stop the ills. Even if Jesus Christ came to be our President, it will take time for some of these reforms to reflect in the lives of our people. And of course, you know, Nigerians are very impatient. What we want is now, now. But we forget that these problems were not created by this man. Asiwaju never found himself in power from the point he left as Governor of Lagos State, which is close to 20 years today. He was never involved in the system to the point where you now accuse him that he was part of those, who destroyed the country today.
But the man is putting his best and doing everything possible to change things.
How will you assess the Bonny-Bodo Road under President Tinubu?
On the Bonny-Bodo Road, we saw how that road was initially consumed by politics before the advent of President Tinubu. But President Asiwaju is not talking about politics. He has gone over 70% of it. Recently, I saw the level of the bridge The bridge is almost completed and once that is done, the rest is going to be a celebration for our people. So, you can imagine the economic advancement of River State in terms of infrastructure, in terms of economy in terms of housing because a lot of people can now move and live by the Ocean.
I want to thank Mr. President because the LNG project will now be easier to manage because when you want to move materials you move materials via sea and it is expensive in construction. The Train 8 is another credit to Mr. President.
Do you think that going forward the Presisent should work towards establishing state police?
Let’s go beyond this rhetorics. There are already enabling laws that have allowed for states to set up their own security outfits. Those outfits should do the job of security securing their land. But not every day we talk about state police and yet those institutions are already existing. I think that the governors need to do their job. They need to be disciplined. I wish there is a machinery we can put in place to check governors. The incompetence of some of these governors is nauseating. You can’t even imagine you go to states all they do is once the money comes they will go and buy forex with it. We thank God that the CBN has put a lot of measures in place and you can see that they are trying to stabilize it. The federal government must devise a means to make these governors do their job. They must ensure that local governments are functioning. If they are functioning all these issues will not arise.
We are still having epileptic power supply in the region, how can the governors solve this problem leveraging Tinubu’s reforms on power.
Leadership at the state levels does not have the kind of individuals, who understand the nitty gritty of governance. It is always occupied by patronage without following the proper leadership selection. The end result is that you have people, who don’t invest their emotions in dealing with the problems of the state. We used to have gas turbine in my state put together by the Okilos of those days. Bayelsa is gas everywhere. Some of the institutions in Bayelsa decided to introduce gas turbines too because these days you buy them on the shelf. It’s not like the Okilo days when you have to place an order and they manufacture them. You go to Italy, there’s a company you just go to their shelf and buy according to the size you want.
The Nigerian Content Development Board In Bayelsa State, NCDMB, that is the local content bought an 11 megawatts power plant. That’s what they are using. They have 24 hours power supply and even the Government House is benefiting from that power. Some hospitals in Bayasa are benefiting from it. They have just used 4 megawatts of it. So there’s 7 megawatts of unused power.
In Gbarain, there is a 253 megawatts power plant. This plant is there. What’s happening? Leadership. There are issues here and there. Just go there, turn the key, the power plant is there. But like I said, the current Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Douye Diri has decided to buy a turbine so that it can power Bayelsa independently and that is because of the policy of the Federal Government to unbuddle the power sector.
Recall that before, the national grid was not within reach of Bayelsa State at that time we relied on turbine. But immediately Bayelsa was migrated to the grid, everything collapsed. But now the policy of unbundling the power sector is the reason why Bayelsa State now can independently go and buy their own turbine for the purpose of providing power.
If I were Mr President, with the unbundling of the power sector, I would just focus on Abuja to power Abuja, if you as a governor cannot power your state then sleep in darkness. States should collaborate. If you don’t have power, you should be able to call your sister state and negotiate to buy power. Or a neighboring state that does not have gas, but has the resources, can set up plants and then collaborate to pipe the gas to them. And then they will share this power the same way Lagos State invested in Kebi in rice farming. The Lake Rice is Lagos and Kebbi. Lagos didn’t have rice environment. So they went to Kebi State, invested their money. They built the rice mill in Lagos. Today they have created a lot of jobs for people in Kebi.
Under this administration, states have been been given the authority to produce their own power and serious states are taking advantage of it. But some of these governors are not disciplined. Serious ones are beginning to see power as a challenge in their states. And they are doing what is necessary to provide power in their states using the infrastructure they have.
Like insaid, the Bayelsa Government, we are seeing some progress in terms of independent power. We had independent power before, so the people already had enjoyed the constant power until we were migrated to the national grid. And then everything went south. But now with the policy that the federal government has put in place, the state government has invested, we hope that the plant will be functional on their December deadline.
Every state must begin to realize that power is the foundation for every growth. Every economic growth has power as its main foundation and so if you don’t even want to stay in darkness, it should be a problem.
What do you want the president to do differently going forward?
Well, I think that for now, politics has engulfed the country. I just hope that we can put it more on the back seat and allow for true governance to take the better part of next year. I think that going forward, the President should ensure that the local governments are truly independent. The president for the purpose of electoral reforms must ensure that we breathe some sanity into that process because truly our electoral process is now nothing to write home about. So if we can deal with the electoral process and ensure some transparency in it and the independence of the INEC, I think that will solve most of the problems.
Our problem is leadership selection process. When you have all kinds of characters getting into leadership because they can buy their way, it becomes a difficult place to propose policies that will be truly implemented because most of these policies are policies that will not allow for pilfering. Our biggest problem is the corruption and pilfering going on in public places. Government everywhere in the world is run like a business. You provide services and people pay for those services. Here we are running it as a charity, people dip their hands into the resources with impunity. Look at what they are doing as a constituency project. People are just going to buy materials and just go and distribute it. There is no machinery to check whether those materials given to those people are actually meeting their desired purpose.
Some people, as they are carrying those materials, they are going to sell them, they are going to the market, they are supplying them to shops. It has to stop. That’s like giving fish to people. You are not teaching them how to fish and it’s federal government money, federal government institutions that are made to buy these things and distribute them .So I think that the leadership selection process, the electoral reforms are the areas that the president should now focus on.