Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Pastor Usani Uguru Usani, in this interview with NICHOLAS KALU in Calabar, talks about how the Muhammadu Buhari administration is redefining the concept of development among other issues. Excerpts:
What is your assessment of the development of the region?
It is not a story to be told. It is what is to be seen and when you talk of development. What is your idea of development? There are certain things that are basic to life, which in the misconstruction of political mischief, people think is development, which is not. Making water available, giving roads to people, people going to school, providing health facilities are not development.
They become development when people have been cheated enough to define those things as favours from government and so far you can understand our focus is to lift people from a no-level to the pedestal of development, which is to say providing these things and going beyond to get people to have capacities and skills to make choices for themselves, which is why emphasis is on human development, while infrastructural and physical development are rudimentary baselines for human survival.
One, laying more than 30 per cent of budgetary provision to infrastructural development, which is a propelling foundation or platform, for other development issues to take place. Two, getting people involved, politics of inclusion. Today you hear we have a programme to get modular refineries, where communities would be shareholders.
So ,they can decide their fate by the proceeds of what returns to them. So, if want to talk about development, vis-à-vis the administration of this era, you will realise that we are redefining development in the true perspective that affects humanity, and not by the deception of what people see as flashpoints, which vanish later and that has been the reason we never ever sustained any reasonable foreign reserves.
We should also carry on what can sustain an economy for tomorrow. Are you not surprised to hear today that Nigeria’s yam is accredited for export? Are you not surprised that within two years, the LAKE Rice, which is a collaboration between Kebbi and Lagos states are providing millions of tons towards food security and self-sufficiency. Just few days back the Vice President had gone to commission fertiliser plants and today we have a minimum of 14 fertiliser plants within two years, revived.
And we are embarking on a programme of linkage activities between the produce, the producing subsector and the manufacturing in the Niger Delta by an initiative that puts together all the funding establishments such as the development banks, private investors, state governments and the initiative drivers to be able to ensure that we revive the agric sector in the region and moribund industries as far as they meet the terms of our templates.
The issue of abandoned projects in the region has been a recurring decimal. What is your plan towards this?
The policy of government is to make sure that projects are completed and that is why when you hear mass capital estimates in the budget for various ministries, you find out that most of the money goes to what they call ongoing projects because we do not want them to be abandoned.
Go to the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, Ministry of Water Resources, you find out that all these ministries are concentrating on projects that had been established long ago, but not completed yet. If we want to play politics with the development of our people, we will put on new things, so people will clap hands for us.
But all will be at the same stage of stagnation in future. But this we are doing because we are sincere. People may not appreciate because it is their level of understanding, but we know that in time to come, we will appreciate what foundations we are putting in place.
The Odukpani-Ikot Ekpene-Aba Road contract has been awarded, but so far it appears nothing is being done about it…
First, remember that before November 2016, people slept on that road for two, three days. While awarding the contract for the dualisation of the road, the government took immediate action by putting on a remedial repair, which today at least enables people to flow.
That tells you that our programmes, according to the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), define short term, medium term and long-term programmes. So, people would continue to enjoy progressive actions towards the final intended goods. That is one. Two, if you hear that a contract is signed, there are procedures in government for release of funds and so on.
We have not done anything to deceive anybody and we are working very hard because of lack of funds to get many of these things funded by various programmes or financial acquisitions from concessioning to credits and so on and so forth.
And these things are things that normally take negotiations for years, but we are able to fast track and get some within three months, six months and so on.
Would defaulting contractors be punished?
The intention is not to punish anybody because even if you put a man in prison, the project is not finished. The intention is to ensure that any money released to anybody receives value so that society can benefit.
What is situation on the extension of the East-West road to Calabar?
Remember we became Ministers in November 2015, so effectively we have been Ministers for about 18 months or so. And if this period is long enough not to appreciate the action of government in correcting the misdeeds from design to contractual agreements and so on, then you should ask yourself, what 11 years mean when the project was started in 2006. And I can tell you why the segment of Oron to Calabar is delaying is that from the design to the contractual terms, suggests that project would never ever have been finished. One the design fell short of every social, economic and physical expectations of a sustainable project. Even when the environmental impact assessment showed that the design was faulty, they went ahead. Now we are a stage where we have corrected it and the Federal Executive Council has given approval, and the consultants are going to deliver within the next two months, the real design by which we can then go ahead to do the proper negotiation for the contractual agreement. It may interest you to know that the contract that was negotiated in naira was signed in dollars, which means if that project had been taken off the basis of that contract agreement, in an unstable exchange regime, forever there would be no value to that contract, and we must correct it.
