Former Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), represented his Cross River Central Senatorial District between 2003 and 2015. Currently, back to his law practice, he speaks on his life outside the National Assembly (NASS), among other issues. Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, presents excerpts of the interaction.
How has it been outside the National Assembly?
First of all, I had a life before the Senate. This year, I will be 39 years in the bar. I was in the Senate for 12 years which means that I had other years to account for. I spent those years actively in court. I was into litigation; I was a courtroom lawyer. I had a life before the Senate. I knew, ab initio, that in life whatever has a beginning has an end. I knew there would be life after the Senate. Fortunately for me, I had an alternative address. If I am not in politics, I am in law. So, I am back to law practice for now, but still actively involved in politics.
You appear to have started early in politics. Why was it so?
If you put it another way, I started very early in life. From my part of the world, I was probably the first to graduate at or before 21, to be a lawyer at 22. By 23, I was done with it all. It is God’s grace because despite the civil war which we experienced, I never lost one day of schooling. Because I had the unique privilege from my part of the world – perhaps among the first, if not the first, who had an educated father and educated mother who was a teacher at the time, I was exposed to school environment early because I started following my mother to school even before I was eligible.
In those days, eligibility was measured by your ability to put your hand over your head. How they came by that method, I don’t know; but you know that if you are not six years old, at least, you won’t be able to do that.
Even before I started school, I was already familiar with the school environment. By the time I started, I was already familiar with what was being taught. So, for me, life started early. By the time I was 16, I was a regular contributor to the Nigerian Chronicle which was the big newspaper then in my part of the world. So, everything has come early for me.
Now, about politics, I grew up in a political environment because as a child growing up, my mother was the chairman of Ikom County Council – then they were called county councils; now we call them local government areas. She was the first woman in the Eastern Region to be a chairperson of a county council. So I grew up in that environment where politics was being discussed, where politicians were mingling and all of that. So, you can effectively say that I was born into politics more or less. I took the political side from my mother and the legal side from my father.
What have been the regrets all this while?
Regrets? I won’t call them regrets; I will rather say disappointments. But whether they turn out to be disappointments eventually, it is a matter of time. I will give you one. As a child growing up, I had hoped to be a Catholic priest; but I never became one. I was a science student more or less. I wanted to read medicine initially. It is a very funny story how I ended up reading law instead of medicine. We had gone to Uyo for the entrance to University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) – a group of young men; four of us. Our friend’s father was then the Principal of the Advanced Teachers College in Uyo. It is now the University of Uyo. He took us out. Gulder beer had just come out and the four of us drank this new beer called Gulder. When we got to the exam hall, we were all sleeping and four of us failed. From that day, I have not tasted Gulder and I don’t offer people Gulder.
In my final year of the A’ Levels class, I was persuaded to read the arts. Guess who persuaded me; Dr. Ogbonaya Onu (now Science and Technology Minister), who himself was an outstanding science student. He was our Dormitory Prefect and was listening to an argument between my friend (Ambassador Mark Egbe, who just retired as an Ambassador) and I.
In that school environment, siesta time was supposed to be a period of absolute quietude. But Onu got interested in the argument and so didn’t punish us. At the end of the argument, he admonished us; but told me, ‘I think you are pursuing a wrong ambition, I think you should read law and be like your father’. The rest is history. I changed my courses about three, four months to the exam to History, English Literature and Economics.
I eventually ended up reading law which again was an accident. But when I read law, I read law to teach law. I wanted to read law up to Ph.D level and become a professor of law. Again, I am not that professor of law.
When I went into politics, I went into politics to be the governor of my state. Again, that never happened. So you can summarise my life by saying, I never became what I desired to be, or I never became what I set out to be. I became everything that I didn’t set out to be.
You were a commissioner at 27. How did you cope with the challenges of the office?
Actually, I was exposed to public office as soon as I came back from National Youth Service at the age of 23. If you look at the wall there, (pointing at a picture in his office) you will see me on the second row. I am the third person from the left. That was when President Shehu Shagari appointed me to the board of Cross River Basin and Rural Development Authority. I was 23 going to 24. At the same time, the late Dr. Clement Isong, who was the then governor of old Cross River, also appointed me as the first old student to become the chairman of the board of governors of Government Secondary School, Ikom. I will explain that in due course because I actually passed through two secondary schools. I was 23 going to 24. So, I had always virtually all my life been in positions of responsibility.
That was why I didn’t have a youth as such because when you are 23 and you have been given a federal responsibility, you will have to act according to the demands of the office. So, I never had a youth and that is why I am not the party type because I never had time to attend parties. In any case, I am not even that disposed for a simple reason that if I am in a party environment with loud music, where people are dancing and drinking; even if I drink water, I will have a hang-over for two days. So it is in my own interest to spare myself the hang-over.
Recently, we buried the governor who appointed me commissioner at 27 – Navy Captain Edet Akpan Archibong. He had never met me, never heard of me. I realised that I had run into him once in a lift in Switzerland. I had an uncle who was a diplomat. Archibong was in the Navy and they were in Switzerland for a programme. He was staying with a friend in the same building my uncle was. That was the only contact I had with him. Apart from greeting, we didn’t speak. We didn’t have any relationship.
I recall, we were appointed in January 1984 but were sworn in early February. In-between, he had to meet his commissioners. So he walked into the Executive Council hall and we were all standing. Of course, he knew most of them. He was shaking their hands and I was standing between the Commissioner for Health and the gentleman who became Commissioner for Trade and Investment. So he shook the lady and skipped me and was going to shake the other guy. But I grabbed his hands and said ‘why are you not shaking my hand?’ He looked at me and said ‘don’t tell me you are one of my commissioners’. And I said ‘I am unfortunately, one’ and he said ‘oh my God I have appointed a baby’. The next day, the headline in Daily Times was ‘Baby Commissioner’.
How did I cope? We had a group of very young professionals in Calabar then. We are all very big men today; journalists, lawyers and we were all bachelors. I had this bungalow with large space in front. So, every evening, we would assemble there over barbecue and would be debating the future of Cross River. We asked hypothetical questions: If you were made this, what would be your programme? If you were this, what would you do? I recall one of the last conversations we had before the appointment.
I was asked: If you were Commissioner for Works, what would you do? We debated my ideas. That became my programme when I ended up Commissioner for Works a few weeks after the conversation.
So, we already had a plan and all of the members of that group became very prominent people in the society. They held high political public offices and just executed what we were discussing. We grew up in an environment where young people had dreams, where young people were ambitious.
I remember when I was a lawyer, I was quite active in Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). We had a group that was made up of professors, senior civil servants, lawyers. We sat down every Thursday evening just to read poems. Then we had another group that met once a week just to listen to Congo music. We had another group that met once a week just to play scrabble. That was the environment that defined my youth. So, I was an old man long before I became old.
Is that why people always accuse you of being elitist?
I don’t know what they mean by being elitist. If you know me, you will not describe the person who receives that kind of traffic as elitist. But if you say that I don’t drink in public or I don’t go dancing, you will be right because I have already explained to you why I don’t attend parties. I mean, it is like if I have a funeral to attend, I find it more comfortable attending the church service and being at the interment rather than being at the wake.
How would you compare your time of being a commissioner at 27 and now that the constitution has pegged the age for House of Representatives at 30, Senate and governorship 35 years, etc?
If you recall when Dr. Idi Hong was nominated as minister, I made my comment during his confirmation. I spoke against those provisions in the constitution. I clearly spoke against them because if you follow the history of this country, a lot of the personages who defined our recent history were people who were very young. If you take the people that fought the civil war for instance, most of the big names – Theophilus Danjuma, Mohammed Suwa and Murtala Mohammed – were in their 20s at the time they fought the civil war.
If you even talk of governance, how old was Michael Okpara, Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe? Then if you take my state for instance, Cross River, our first governor, U.J. Esuene, was 32 the time he became governor; Paul Omu, who took over from him, was 36; Babatunde Elegbede, who took over from Omu, was 37; Dan Archibong was 42; Inim Princewill was 39; Clement Ebri was 39; Donald Duke was 37. In the history of Cross River, Benedict Ayade (current governor) is actually the oldest governor we have had.
I agree that the constitutional provisions that make it impossible for people to express their endowments are not in the best interest of the country. In Britain, they had a Prime Minister who was 23 or something. Today you have a member of the House of Commons who is under 18. So people have different gifts. The environment should allow them express those gifts freely without any limitations. Maybe for judges, there might be need for a certain minimum; but for any other thing, I think people should be allowed to express their gifts.
You had a scholarship scheme while in the Senate. Is it still going on?
The scholarship scheme didn’t start with my coming to the Senate. It actually started in 1980 when I was appointed chairman of the board of governors of Government Secondary School, Ikom. We were paid a sitting allowance which in today’s environment is meagre, but was plenty in those days. I think it was N30 per sitting. It was big money in those days and I didn’t have need for it. I discussed with the principal and we agreed to create a fund from where the school fees of bright and intelligent students would be paid. So the scholarship has been on since 1980. It became public knowledge when I became more visible. I have said it again and again that the scheme is not a political scheme, it is not tied to my politics; it is tied to my obligation and to my debt to a society that has been very generous to me.
In economics, we were taught that money is what money does and by accumulating it you are making money for another person. Each time I have huge bank balances, I lost the money. I lost a lot of money when banks went down in the 1990s. You worked that hard to accumulate only to lose. So, why don’t you just use it and give some other person mileage in his or her life?
