Deputy Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and former Abia State governor, Theodore Orji, who represents Abia Central Senatorial District, speaks on Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) congresses, the party’s national convention and menace of Fulani herdsmen, among other issues. Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, presents the excerpts.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ward, local government and state congresses
As a good party man, I participated in the congresses at the ward, local government and state levels, and my impression is that this concept we adopt in rebuilding the PDP is working. You can see that ours was without rancour. I believe that should be the spirit that should, at least, guide PDP, now that we want to rebuild the party. We have learnt from our previous mistakes. You cannot bring a candidate and insist it must be this candidate. No. You don’t do it nowadays because this is democracy. Even if you have a candidate in mind, you have to bring a candidate who is generally accepted, a candidate that will perform, who the people will vote for. That is what democracy is all about.
Grazing routes for Fulani herdsmen
My position on this is guided by the position of my people, where I come from. I’m a Nigerian, I agree, but I come from the South East. And if you go around the South East, you will know that there is no person who supports this issue of allowing cattle to come and graze freely because they destroy the farms.
We are basically farmers and we guard our farms jealously plus the land, because land is very precious to us. We don’t have expanse of land; so whichever that is yours, you guard it jealously. So it is very painful when you see cattle coming to graze freely on your limited, scarce farmland. And these herdsmen come with impunity, carrying guns, threatening to kill you if you disturb them. That shouldn’t be tolerated in this country. Cattle rearing is a private business.
These cattle are owned by wealthy people. They are not owned by these people that follow the cattle and take them to graze. These wealthy men who own these cows should go and buy land and develop ranches where these cattle will stay and feed and people will go there and buy the cattle for their use.
Or if the government wants to come into it, then government should look towards the arid areas and import grasses to feed the cattle. It’s done in Israel. There are some deserts that are now fertile in Israel. Let them make those places fertile and grow grasses, so that these animals can go there and graze. Let them not come to other areas that are peaceful, in terms of grazing, because we also graze in this part of the country.
You know we rear sheep and goat and we know how to deal with such. You don’t allow them to enter the farm; you keep them in your house, and in the morning you take them to an open bush, not the farm, tie them to trees and allow them to feed. In the evening, you come and take them back. That one doesn’t cause any harm to any person.
But, now, to allow your animal to go into another person’s farm to destroy property and your own will be safe is unacceptable. Nobody will accept that. So my own suggestion is that private people should go and establish ranches.
Grazing Bill before the Senate?
There is no bill like that in the Senate. The senators were highly embarrassed when our numbers appeared in an online media outfit. So they picked our numbers from there and started bombarding us with insults. The rumour was so much that Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe had to raise the issue in one of our plenary sessions, which helped to douse the situation. Politicians are used to blackmail, but the truth usually surfaces.
Expectations on 2016 budget
What we expect is that the budget should be religiously implemented, and it’s the executive that will implement the budget, not the Senate. On our own part, we will intensify our oversight functions to help the executive ensure the budget is religiously implemented, to benefit the generality of Nigerians, especially the poor people.
Expectations of Nigerians on agriculture
Of course everybody is now aware that agriculture is the sector that hardly disappoints if well handled. The other day I was watching a programme where somebody mentioned an amount that is in the reserve of a country outside Africa and 80 per cent of that amount came from agriculture. If such a thing can happen in other countries, why can’t it happen in Nigeria, where God has given us fertile land, the human resources and intellect to cultivate the land? So we expect a revolution to start in agriculture from this budget. We should be in a position to feed ourselves without depending on imported food, and the budget has taken care of some of those areas that can make this possible.
Taking Abia Liberation Farm initiative to the centre
Of course, when I was Abia state governor, I made an impact on agriculture. Throughout my period as governor, I produced the best cocoa farmer in Nigeria. Each time we went for agricultural exhibition, Chief David Onyeweaku would come first in the production of cocoa. And I brought this concept of establishing farms in senatorial zones. We called them Liberation Farms. We would go to one senatorial zone and the community would give us large hectares of land and people from that locality and zone would be employed to establish a farm that would be in tandem with what that senatorial zone produced. We also got experts and trained manpower for those farms and they started working. I established one in Abia South, one in Abia Central and another in Abia North. They cultivate different crops: palm oil, cash crops, rubber plantation, cocoa, cassava, rubber and vegetables etc. So it’s an idea that could be sold to the federal government.
Essence of Food Security Bill in the Senate
Of course the importance of agriculture has made people to shift attention to that and you have to make laws that will at least make food production a priority. So the Food Security Bill that I sponsored will ensure that food reaches every person. It will remove hunger. There are people who are hungry in this country. There are people who cannot afford two good meals in a day – the poor in the rural areas. So the bill is aimed at making sure that they get what they can eat. It will be for the benefit of every person, both the rich and the poor.
Successful open heart surgery at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Teaching Hospital, Ile Ife
It is interesting, but that is not the first time. I know that they had had open heart surgery in Lagos. That will show you that we have Nigerians who are ready to do very well in the medical sector. If you go to the United States (U.S.), United Kingdom (UK), most of the doctors working in those big teaching hospitals are Nigerians. They are using their talents to develop other countries and we want them to come back and help out. But those doctors who are here need just the push, the facilities, the incentives and you will see that they will excel. That one in OAU is a typical example. Give them the little incentive, give them the equipment and make the environment very conducive for them, you will see that they will perform. As it is done in OAU, so also will it be done in Nsukka, Ibadan, Maiduguri, Kano or Sokoto where you have teaching hospitals. So we are happy with that because there are lot of ailments nowadays. I know that Nigerians have tried to venture into areas of alternative medicine. So if they have the conducive environment, the incentive, the facilities, they will excel.
When I was governor of Abia, I established a specialist hospital in Umuahia with the best diagnostic centres that extended to Aba. The hospital has the most modern diagnostic equipment like Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a dialysis centre with five new dialysis machines, an eye centre with equipment comparable to the ones in John Hopkins Hospital, a heart centre with the appropriate equipment and a children’s centre. We need things like these.
As a government, we built 712 health centres on the whole to encourage healthcare delivery.
