Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State is also the chairman of the influential Governors' Forum. In this interview with KELVIN EBIRI in Port Harcourt, he takes stock of the democratic journey so far and promises that it is on course.People say you seem to have lost the vigour you exhibited when you assumed office in 2007, is it because of your chairmanship of the Governors' Forum'IT'S not true if you say I have slowed down. The difference is that they (people) no longer see me on the streets as they were seeing me before, that is what they can say. But to say I have slowed down, no. What you should even say is why are we awarding more contracts. I can count for you new projects that we have awarded. I have been shouting at the people in charge of the Rivers State University of Science and Technology, they are at the due process level because we need to start that university. I want to ensure that the first phase is completed during my regime and the first phase is to cost a total of N150billion; that cannot mean slow down.The people are no longer seeing their governor. I don't need to be on ground to have things done. The thing my presence does to governance is, look at Monorail, they are working, but they are slow. If it was my first tenure when I was on ground, I will be there ten times a day and shouting; that is why I say you must nearly be a mad man to govern Nigeria. Because, if you sit in your office dealing with papers and all that, those people will be doing whatever they like. But if they know the governor is coming, shouting, quarrelling, threatening to cancel contracts, then everybody will be busy, trying to do one thing or the other. I can tell you that I tried it recently on the Port Harcourt 'Owerri road. Setraco pleaded with me four days ago and that is why I stopped going there. They said, 'sir, stop coming; you are putting us under pressure. If you make us work under the rain the road will fail in less than two years.' An engineer also called and I slowed down. I told them I want result. Finish one side of this road so that people can use it to Owerri until after the rain, you complete the other side. They pleaded that, 'sir, we are not using sharp sand, we are using laterite. If you continue to push us under this pressure, we may work under the rain but the foundation will be wet and if the foundation is wet, no matter what you put on top, it will fail. One to two years after we have hand over to you, somebody will have to come and fix the road. So sir, don't put us under pressure anymore.'My reason for putting them under pressure is that I borrowed money to pay them. I am not waiting for government money any more because it delays. So, I borrowed money to pay, when government money comes, I pay back. That money is not given to me free of charge. If I wait for the federal government to give me money, I will not pay interest because it's my money. Because I am borrowing, I am paying an interest and because of this I want the projects delivered on time. It is not as if we don't have money, but when I need the money, it is not available. How much will the federal government pay you in a month, N15, 18, 19 billion' You deploy N8billon for salaries and then the rest to contractors. The bill I signed for Setraco yesterday is N4billion. I borrowed the money from GTB and if GTB gives you money they must take interest on it. So, if I borrow N4bilion, I expect results. And I tell them Nigerians don't want to know you are being delayed by weather. They want to drive on good roads. We borrowed N30billion from GTB for power and we have assured the country that in one year, end of this year, they should see physical power in Rivers State.Are governors pressing for constitutional power to generate and distribute electricity'We are waiting for constitutional amendment. In the first week of June, when the Governors' Forum will meet, we will take a decision on different national issues as it affects constitutional amendment. One of these is that distribution should be put in the concurrent list.What is your assessment of your government in the first year of your second term'If you check, you will see that commissioners are waiting for me outside. We have declared a rather subtle education emergency, because we discovered that we are building schools, which everybody is proud of. Schools that had 2,600 children were now reduced to 393 students at 30 per class. Now, we have transferred the remaining students to other schools and some of them are not going to school because of transportation. So we now want to remodel what we are doing; instead of 14 classrooms, we want to look for land in Port Harcourt to now build two stories buildings where we can have 28 classrooms, so that we don't move people away from their natural academic habitat to another place; because, if you do that, you will suffer what we are suffering now. Having over three hundred and something thousand students in a place where you need two hundred and forty four thousand students.We didn't know until I requested that the chairman of UPEC should come and brief us on what progress we have made in education. We discovered that we are not making any progress. Instead of making progress, the situation was deteriorating. It is not enough that you have buildings. You must have human beings and you must have the teachers.In terms of teachers, we are beginning to progress because we have advertised to hire ten thousand teachers for primary and secondary education. I have also just approved that they should hire academic staff in the Rivers State University of Science and Technology.When it comes to what we have been able to achieve in this one year in terms of education infrastructure, we have built and very soon we will begin to commission 250 primary schools. We have gotten nearly 500 but we have not furnished them. People say too many structures and they are not being used, why because of furnishing. I called the commissioner to say how much it will cost to furnish about 250 primary schools and she said N16billion. I am sure we have deployed close to N16 billion and we have gotten close to achieving the 250 primary schools. So, they are working day and night.While that is going on, I discovered that instead of making progress, we are causing ignorance, people were withdrawing from the schools we had posted them to, different from where they originally registered, maybe because parents could not afford the cost of transportation. Today we will join a bus going round the city looking for land. We won't see land but we will buy people's houses.What is your take on review of revenue sharing formal'We have made our position public, that the states need more revenue. There is nobody that is a Nigerian first and foremost. You come from a state before you say I am a Nigerian. If you say I am a Nigerian, people will ask you, which part of Nigeria do you come from' Therefore, the federal government has no particular citizen it caters for. It is at the state level that these citizens are catered for. So when you do roads, it is at the state level. Look at Port Harcourt-Owerri road, who owns it' Federal government and we are doing it for N36billion. We have paid over N20 billion. Federal Government has not refunded one kobo. The road opposite the Port Harcourt airport is a federal government road and its cost is N16 billion. You can see the quality of work on Ada George Road. The interchange at Eleme junction is a federal government facility, but we did it. We are even doing an interchange at the airport junction and we intend to expand the airport road. All these are federal roads.You may not worry about the flyover at G.U. Ake Road, but under it is a federal government road. What about Obiri-Ikwerre, that is a federal government road. All these are federal roads and we are paying for them. That is why, if you say people say I am slowing down, Obiri-Ikwerre was completed in my first tenure. The Rumuokuta-Choba road is nearing completion. Where it is now is at the sub-base; when they finish the sub-base, they will overlay it. The contractor is not equipped to be able to do that road. Don't forget it was awarded when I was just some few months old as governor, so the experience of knowing which contractor was good or not did not come into play. The initial plan was to cancel it and I discovered that if we cancel the contract, we would lose quite a lot. They are struggling to complete it. My target is that they should at least make it motorable during this raining season. We have recommended, I cannot remember now, say 35 percent for federal government and forty something for the states. I am mindful of the fact that I am the chairman of Governors Forum, so I won't be able to speak on the issue of fiscal federalism. But if you ask, my personal opinion is that for us to run a proper federal structure, we need fiscal federalism. We need state police.What is the position of governors on state police'Governors have not agreed on state police at all. We are sharply divided on the issue of state police. I am among those who believe that we need state police. You cannot be a general without soldiers. You cannot say this man is the chief security officer of a state and he has no troops. That is the argument I make and they say Rivers State is rich. I say, get your police according to your capacity, because as Rivers State is rich, that is the same way our crime rate is higher than those states where you don't have high economic activities.So if you allow me state police, I can assure my people that we will protect them because we can equip our police. Security is about intelligence. If I know where the armed robber is, I won't let him operate because I will go to where he is and stop him from operating with the kind of equipment we have here, even the federal government knows. We hand them over to federal agencies, but the funds we use here are state funds. You can see some Israelis running around, they are our security agents and advisers. We just placed order for two helicopters carrying surveillance camera that will be flying twenty-four hours in the whole of the state. It is not easy to maintain. I won't feel the pain if I know I have a state police that I can hand over that to. I want to be able to know that if they kidnap you tomorrow morning, I can release you the next day. There are equipment that will tell me where you are if you are kidnapped. But I cannot buy because security is in the hands of the federal government.Now, those who are opposed to it have two arguments. One is that the governor may be reasonable this time and may not use it against his opponents. How will you know that the next governor will not use it against you when you leave office' We say well, reduce their jurisdiction to crime and intelligence. Let the federal police take on the rest issues. But nothing says the federal police cannot be used against anybody. Evidence abound where the police at the federal level have been used against opponents of the party. Under the last government, I thought they were accusing an agency of the federal government of being used to fight the opponents of the President. The country must move forward. Countries like Kenya have local government police. But here, we are afraid.Every time they refer you to 1963, they had state police in 1963 and what they used it for and other things. I was a Speaker of the House, you don't pass laws for the moment, and you pass laws for the future, for the generations. If you say currently the governors are not behaving well, it does not mean that forever; Nigerian governors will not behave well. But you know Nigeria we will continue to argue. One day we will see the reason why we should have state police.What informed the idea of regional integration, like the BRACED you have here in South-south'The South-South started it and they are misunderstanding what we set out for. When we went for regional integration, we did not go as a basis to formulate a political bloc. It was just that our economy can be integrated and let those who have comparative advantage in a particular area be supported to grow. That way you grow the economy. We are looking at agriculture, industrialisation, and power. We are currently discussing power with NDDC. If you have that, you create employment and reduce crime. We weren't doing so that one day, we will form a region and then Liyel (Imkoke) will be governor or chairman or whatever and then somebody else will be his deputy. No. I am sure most governors will not want to give up their position. It was basically to ensure that we had an integrated economy that you can rely on and create employment opportunities.You look at industrialisation, agriculture, power, seaports and all those transportation infrastructure, security, how to cooperate and collaborate, that was the basis.But you ask me, if you think regional integration isn't necessary, what can be more appropriate' A true federal structure.But some Nigerians are clamouring for a return to regionalism'I am not one of those. How do you create regions' Who governs it' It will go back to the same problem that is besetting Nigeria. Now, if you say create a South-South region, lets assume. Is it Rivers State that will be part of the region or Ikwerre' People will come to say it is our turn to govern. So you say, Ikwerre man will govern this year. Next time it will be the Efik man or is it a Rivers' man that will govern this year' And then you will have the internal crisis of who to govern. It requires the kind of integration that makes people to see themselves as Nigerians, not as an Ikwerre man.One way to make people see themselves as Nigerians is that Nigeria must first be prepared to die for you. I went to Jigawa State and I said, no wonder we have Boko Haram, because you see Nigerians who have no reason to live because the level of poverty is very high and you see that man he is not educated. Take the past twenty years, if those they are calling agents of Boko Haram are people who were born in the last twenty years, imagine that in the last twenty years they could not see electricity, they were not put in any primary or secondary school, there was no water for them to drink, their parents lived in rural areas, even if their parents lived in towns, they would have lived in pigeon holes, they could not pay the rent and they have suffered all that for twenty years they had lived. And if you therefore approach such a man with N25, 000 to bomb Amaechi, he knows that if he didn't take the money, he will know that he still will have no reason to live, so he will take N25, 000 and bomb Amaechi, because he is virtually a living dead.So the first thing Nigeria has to do is to make sure that it is in such a way that people will be willing to die for Nigeria. The way for people to be willing to die for Nigeria is for Nigeria to provide the necessary social and economic infrastructure that gives you life. When you don't have life, why are you living'Should government dialogue with the Boko Haram sect members'I am not the federal government. I have no view on that. Yes, I am the chairman of the Governors' Forum; I will only speak when the governors have taken a position on Boko Haram. I don't know how best they can tackle the issue of Boko Haram, but I know that at the root of Boko Haram and the crisis we had in Rivers State then, is the issue of poverty. We need to deal with poverty, education. People will always ask me this is the statement every politician makes, poverty, poverty! What do you define as poverty and how do you find solution to poverty'Infrastructural development will create some level of employment. So, focus on infrastructural development. Power is key. I will continue to give my primary example. If there is power in a state or in a country and the man who has a barbing saloon is cutting peoples' hair, and has bought a small generator (a pass my neighbour), if there was constant power, the money he used to buy the generator, he will have used it to establish a branch, that branch will employ barbers, so you would have created employment. And there are so many of such micro economic activities that would engage people in various employment opportunities.Once you have electricity, you face the issue of infrastructure development that will create employment; then you deal with social security. There must be social security in place. What will make a man wake up in the morning and go to work and source for livelihood' Then you deal with the issue of fiscal policy. What do I mean by that, it mean train policemen, hire policemen. We are under- policed. Our police are ill equipped. So you need to deal with hiring of policemen, training of policemen, their welfare because here is a man who stands out on the road facing criminals who have guns and who knows who is a criminal. He could be shot. Some policemen have been killed, so they must know what they are dying for. If you do that I think insecurity will reduce. But if you don't deal with social security, you can turn every Nigerian into a policeman, it will still not sort out the issue of security. If you ask me what did you do to reduce crime in Rivers State, it was simple. We were building 160 health centres. If you employ 50 persons per health centre, multiple it by 160, and that was virtually in every local government area. We are building 750 primary schools with a minimum of 10 to 15 per local government area. So we engaged workers. We are building roads where up to 500 workers were engaged and they were in all the rural areas, not just in Port Harcourt. We are building 24 secondary schools; seven of them will be completed in September. In those secondary schools you have hostels, two persons per room. Anytime you go there, there are activities. In fact, when we were building the stadium opposite the airport, people came from my village to work at the airport.There was one day I was inspecting the stadium and somebody just jumped from nowhere, my security men held him down on the ground and he was shouting in my language that he is here for employment and they had refused to employ him and that I should help him as his brother. I said they should release him. I said why don't you people want to employ my brother (laughs) and that was when it caught my attention that he wasn't the only one; there were a lot of our people that were working there. He was engaged that day. Imagine how far my village is to the airport. He will ride on his bike and come to work at the airport. So, you can imagine that those things will create employment.Take Risonpalm. We said government wouldn't put money in it. We have leased it for 35 years to Socit d'Investissement pour l'Agriculture Tropicale (SIAT) a Belgium company.Now just for clearing the bush alone, my villagers are engaged in that place. So when you create that socio-economic environment, those who ordinarily would have gotten into crime would be forced to go into the alternative to crime, which is employment. When we created that, we asked the police what their problem is. They said they were underpaid, had no equipment and no political will. I said I have the political will. I will pay. So we got an Israeli company to start training some of our policemen. We created a training centre at Tai, our own training centre. We got approval from the federal government. We installed equipment, got Israelis to come here and train our police on how to shoot. Those days, you use to hear that militants used to kill police and army. When they saw that the firing power of the police was high, what happened' They were the ones who rejoiced when the federal government introduced amnesty, asking me to go to Abuja to proclaim that there is no more fight and I went and told Mr. President to tell them to obey the law. Since then, haven't you had peace' But before that happened, all of you were aware that Ateke (Tom) used to come out like a governor. Militants will be chasing him as if they were protecting a governor. People will be running away from the road. Ateke, who didn't go to primary school, will make law in Okrika and everybody will obey. He was giving out land like the governor used to allocate land and sitting down passing judgement. Because of the fact that people committed crime with impunity and nothing happened to them; but when we said if you commit crime, we would catch you, we will prosecute you before the law, are we not having peace now'But that is not to say it is the same with Boko Haram. See, Boko Haram is laced with religion, but at the root of that religious belief is poverty and ignorance.The PDP national chairman, Bamanga Tukur blames unrest in the North on injustice; do you agree'I have not said that injustice has nothing to do with it, but he needs to define what is injustice. When you talk about poverty, for me it is a general term, which includes injustice. My long essay during my first degree in the University was on violence and there are different types of violence; economic violence and social violence. If you visit a man with social violence, what he releases back to you is physical violence. That is injustice, depending on what Bamanga Tukur means by injustice. He has to define what it is. Is it injustice by the way the court conveys its decisions or judgment.There is no part of Nigeria that is not marginalised. The proper way to define it is that the elites have visited injustice on the majority of Nigerians. And the elites constitute less than five percent of Nigerians. So the rest 95 percent are victims of injustice and they are fighting back. I have said it. I will always continue to quote Professor Charles Soludo, who said the poor are not sleeping, so also are the rich not sleeping because the poor are not sleeping.How do you pay the funds borrowed by your regime'We have gone to the capital market. We have prepared all documents. We have visited the place but we have not collected the money. How do you intend to pay' We have money to pay.The ones we have collected from banks we are paying back. Most times, we tell them we want to pay back all the money we borrowed last, they say no, the agreement is for three years and that it will affect their balance book. I am ready to pay tomorrow. We borrowed a total of N120billion; we have paid down to N60 something billion; are you not surprised'Why are governors opposed to sovereign wealth fund'Governors are not opposed to the sovereign wealth fund the way people see it. We are only saying it is illegal. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that keeps you alive after God, because you all claim you want rule of law, strictly says that when all the money is brought, it should be put there for us to share. So until that constitution is amended, the federal government cannot touch the money. That is what we are saying. Obey the rule of law. Nobody is saying don't save. You can save in your different states. We are saving in Rivers state, a billion Naira every month.One time, the commissioner for Finance told me we are owing that account about N8 or 10 billion and I said that is against the law, we should start paying immediately. Even if it means to borrow to fund it, better fund it now because the law says you must keep aside one billion Naira every month. Sometimes we take two to three billion. I think we are about to wipe out our debt to that account and if we do, we will be getting up to N40 something billion savings for the state.What is your take on the controversy between PDP and General Buhari over 2015'I am not focused on 2015. I am focused on, as you ask now, delivery on these projects, which I will handover to somebody.I am not interested in what is going on. I am not focused on it and I don't know what they are saying. I don't even know that Buhari said anything. Believe me, I am not lying. I have not read one comment either by Buhari or by the party. I just saw it on television and I was wondering what is it about Buhari'Where are you going after 2015, to the Senate'I don't want to go. Why are you people interested in transition' You want me out' 2015 is three years away. Why not take one year after another.Why should governors retain their immunity'Tell me one country where there is no immunity.Somebody said the moment you remove immunity there will be disorder. There are occasions we have seen governors drive against traffic because they are hurrying to meet up a meeting. A citizen will take that governor to court for breaking law and he will be convicted for breaking traffic rule. Do you want to have a governor who will be convicted, the answer is no. You cannot afford to have a governor who is an ex-convict, so when everybody is shouting immunity, they must look at the fact that it allows governors to govern. In fact, there are people you will refuse contract to, they will take you to court for other reasons because you just refused to give them contract. The governors will not have capacity to govern if you remove immunity. There are people who will come and meet you and say give me contract and when you say no, they become you enemies and begin to petition you to EFCC. The moment there is no immunity, they will not go to EFCC; they will go on their own and take you to court. When you give them contract, then they will withdraw their case.
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