MIKE AHAMBA, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and Imo State delegate at the National Conference, tells Assistant Editor (North), CHUKS EHIRIM, some of the activities at the committee stage, contentious issues of resource control, and agreement of the conferees for additional state for the South East zone which he considers a great achievement
The Confab is said to have been given six weeks extension. How true is this?
Mike Ahamba
To the best of my knowledge, there is no extension. None has been announced in my committee, which is the committee on politics and governance. We are not aware of any such announcement. The only thing is that, because of the enormity of the work, people were expressing the view that the time given for committee work might not be enough, and that may require extension.
So, we are trying to exhaust the time first, before asking for extension of time to continue the work because, definitely, if at the time the period expires, we still have some work to be done, definitely, nobody can say we should go home and cancel everything we had done already.
But do you really think that two weeks was enough for the committee work to be thoroughly done?
I said it on the floor, that it is not enough. During the plenary, I made it clear that it was not enough. I made it clear that two weeks will not be enough for committee work because committee is the heart of why we are here. And as you can see from what is happening at the committee stage, people are being very thorough in analysis. For the first time, we are setting up issues that people had been reluctant to touch.
We are now facing them, and there is no need hurrying over them and leaving some knots untied because, if we do that, you will find out eventually that it is a mistake.
If we come to that point, definitely we will ask for extension. It might be given or ought not to be given. Nobody is enjoying staying here; it is punishing my clients. As serious national assignment, the earlier we finish with it, the better.
Let us take your own committee for instance, what would you say had been achieved so far?
We identified areas that may require constitutional amendment. We looked into devolution of powers as it affects our work. My committee was such that covers something touching on other committees because we were on politics and government. That way, you find out that you had to cover everything including restructuring. You had to talk about devolution of powers, you had to talk about the immunity clause, you had to talk about corruption. Everything discussed in other places, happened to, one way or the other, re-emerge in our committee.
Devolution of power and restructuring are two very burning issues that seem to have divided the confab. I do not know what it was at the committee level; but from the way people speak, it is like these things are taken from the perspective of North versus South. The North doesn’t seem to be comfortable with devolution of power and restructuring, while the South has been craving for them. Do you think that at the end of the day, you would get consensus on them?
I think your conclusion that deliberations is on North/South divide is not correct. I know that the South West is bent on regional devolution. I don’t agree with it. I am pursuing that of strengthening the structures we have in a three tier federation, instead of changing the structures as they are now. And I am not alone in that thinking. There are many other Southerners who think so; who don’t want to give up the present state structures as they are.
Don’t forget that some of these states were created to meet some minority or group concerns, and they are not prepared to give them up. So it will be over-simplifying the thing by saying it has created a North/South divide. The fact now in this conference is that some opinions go beyond the North/South divide. People are now looking at issues the way they understand them, the way they see them and the way they want them to be carried out, irrespective of where they come from.
I know that there are certain issues that affect group interests, like the group that talked about derivation. You know how they now agreed on it.
That is the resource control issue that you are talking about.
Yes, the resource control issue. I stand for 50 per cent. Some say 100 per cent, and others don’t want it at all.
Northern delegates have a position paper wherein they are canvassing five per cent; they want it reduced from 13 to five per cent. What do you make out of that?
That was what they submitted, but there is the other committee that made a decision on it. You heard Bashir Dalhatu saying that there will be a compromise. Definitely that compromise cannot become five per cent.
Would it be 50 per cent?
I don’t know. I am not in that committee. I can’t announce their decision for them. We have not decided on it. My sub-committee was to deal with it, but we did not agree. And we are bringing it to the main committee. It is after we had resolved there that the chairman of the committee will tell you what we decided. I cannot do it piecemeal. But I am telling you now that the delegates are divided. There are some Southerners who just want 100 per cent derivation. Some people say five per cent. All these things are positions that will lead to negotiations.
When I spoke of this North/South divide, with regard to power devolution, I was actually referring to the positions people hold as regards how strong or weak the centre should be. While majority of your fellow delegates from the South favour a weaker centre, some from the North don’t want the centre, as it is now, tampered with. How do you see the development?
Neither side has identified what it means by weakness or strength. Now, when you look at the constitution, there is no single power exercised by the president that has no counter-balance somewhere. These are checks and balances. It is not a powerful situation. It is only in Nigeria that we have institutional failure. That is what we see as the problem. The institutions have refused to do their jobs, particularly the legislatures. They are not performing. All they know is call this man for enquiry; call that man for enquiry. They are not doing their real job of checking and balancing. So this is the position.
When you look at the situation that we have, like you are talking about now, you find that the power of the president is not listed in the Exclusive Legislative List. But people are looking at it as such. That is legislation. It can only remain what has been legislated. So if the law of the land has said, this is what ought to be done and the president does it, it does not make the president too powerful. If, on the other hand, you now say he shouldn’t legislate on this or that, if he does it, he acts ultra vires.
That is why I am saying that we need some patience, to see how we see this thing to the end. And remember, sorry to say this, what I have discovered is that many people who are here talking constitution have never opened their constitutions before and they are not reading them.
Could it be because many of them are not lawyers?
Majority are not lawyers. They have not read some of these laws and you find out that when they see the argument of others, they go back to it and adjust their positions. I haven’t seen any problem here. What happens at the end, we believe, we will get somewhere. But just note that the way we began is not what it is now.
You are from the South East.
Yes.
When you people took off for this confab, there must have been some key issues you said you were coming here to agitate for. Do you think the South East will get what they want from this confab?
At least, l have not seen anybody who says that South East should not get an extra state. That is a major breakthrough. If we go from here with consensus that a new state should be specifically created for the South East, to bring it at par with the other zones, I think that is a major breakthrough. So it is now for you to tell me which other positions you want to know about. And you can never know exactly how far until the end comes.
But we understand that some people from the North are kicking against additional state for South East.
There are 492 people. I have some Northerners who think it is a good decision. So it depends on who you are listening to. There is no way you can come out of this place with 100 per cent agreement on any issue. It is very difficult.
For instance, I held a very strong position against the removal of the immunity clause. But when we came as a committee and everybody, except me, voted against it, I pulled back from my own position because I am a democrat; not that I love it, but because I know it is going to create a greater problem. So if you heard me saying that immunity should not be removed, you cannot say the South East has said that it should not be removed. So no matter what views individuals are holding, you can never really say what the views are until you come to the final plenary, because some people are bound to change their minds following arguments.
Do we then take it that at the end of this exercise, the South East will get an additional state?
I strongly believe that there will be, but I am not the majority.
What other core demands are you people from the South East making here?
We think that the issue of revenue allocation should be properly addressed. Some people also believe that there should be regionalisation in the name of zoning. Some of us don’t agree.
Why?
I believe that if you now ask people to go back to their regional bases, in our own case we cannot go back. The West can go back, but we cannot go back because out of our own Eastern region, we now have another zone on the Southern part.
But the argument had been that it is going to be based on geo-political zones and not on regions. Is it not so?
Better call it region. The geo-political zones are what they want now to call regions. But no matter what you call it, remember that if you do that, it means Owerri is moving back to Enugu; Abakaliki will be moving back to Enugu. You know how easy it is going to be convincing people that it is done in their best interest. I believe that if you look at the configuration of our federation account and share it the way the constitution says it should be shared, nobody will be worrying about any of these things. Nigeria is operating in breach. If we can get people to operate in accordance with the laws as they exist, even right now, we will have minimal problems. I don’t believe that we should go back to regional structure.
It is also said that certain people may be raising the issue of abandoned property, especially as it affects the Igbo. If it comes up here, what will be your position?
My position will be that this is not the forum. You see, you bring things in a place that you can discuss them. You don’t talk about abandonment of property under the constitution. That is not why we are here.
Is it constitutional to declare people’s property abandoned?
There are judgments on it in the law reports. They have been adjudicated upon and judgments have been given, up to the Supreme Court. We cannot stay here and change some of those things. So we should be mindful not to bring things to a forum that is not competent to handle them. If you bring up that issue now, then there will be a split in the Southern solidarity because you will be fighting Rivers and Bayelsa states, directly.
You recently joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Those who knew your principled stance against PDP in the past find it difficult to believe that you could defect to that same party. What really happened?
When you talk of defection, I defected from All Progressives Congress (APC), not the CPC. I left CPC and withdrew from politics. I came back to politics and entered (the defunct) ACN. All of us formed APC. Now, APC started manifesting tendencies that are worse than anything I had seen in any party.
What are these tendencies?
They are such tendencies as undemocratic attitude, too much reliance on governors because they bring money, refusal to look at crisis when they are emerging, inability to agree on how to run the party. Imagine a party that was formed in July last year, not having an executive till now, two months away from one year. Don’t you see something wrong? So this is the point. I looked at it, and I said, look, there are now two parties remaining, properly so called. One is APC, the other one is PDP. The APC looks like a boat that is programmed to sink. I cannot carry my numerous supporters and keep them there because they are following me. I had to pull them out and go to the alternative, which is the PDP.
Do you think that the same problems you are complaining about in APC don’t exist in the PDP?
They might exist in some cases, but one appears to be more serious. For instance, you say the party should be hand over to a governor in a state. When it is handed over, it is a different situation. Now we formed a new party; nobody had been nominated governor before. Now you try to give those who have been governor before advantage, not knowing whether the people want them to continue or not. So there is difference there. In Imo State, you hand over the party to Rochas Okorocha, who, we know, cannot win in 2015.
Why won’t he win?
He has messed up the place. Don’t mind all these paid adverts. Of course they are reducing now because he doesn’t have much money any longer. You cannot keep a governor who pays N2.2 billion to a contractor who has not done any work and you think it is alright? It is not possible.
