Hon Dum Dekor representing Khana/Gokana Federal constituency, River State is the Chairman, House Committee on host communities, in this exclusive interview with the informavores! Correspondent Ogechi Okorie, he bore his mind on state of the Nation, including controversy trailing dispatch of the PMS subsidy removal palliative. adsbygoogle || []).push({}); adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The excerpt…

May I know you Sir?

My name is Hon Dum Dekor, a Federal Republic of Nigeria House of Representative Member representing the good people of Khana/Gokana Federal constituency, River State.

As the Chairman, House Committee on Host Communities, how have you been able to handle the various issues bedeviling the people of the Niger Delta region?

We have done a lot of engagements since the inception of the Committee and I know you are also aware that the Committee is quite new and it was midway into the 9th Assembly that the Committee was introduced and I will always be grateful to the former speaker of the House of Assembly as well as the Leadership of the House for being able to respond Legislatively to the yearnings and cries of the people of the oil bearing communities in Nigeria.

When the Committee was introduced of course you know we have to get in touch with the key players in the industry as well as the host communities. We have been able to put up some level of engagement and you can see the semblance of real peace coming to the Niger Delta. Again, we are also part of the PIB that was then within the Parliament and as a Bill. We made our contribution as a Committee and by the Grace of God, Mr. President accented to it and it became the PIA.

Operating the PIA has been a little bit difficult but from all indications, the petition is beginning to take off and I believe we are going to use the Committee to make sure there are no issues within the host communities and their relationship with the oil companies that are operating in various areas within the region. I understand the host communities development Trust is being set up while some has not been set up, but I can tell you that you will see lots of improvement as soon as we come back from recess. For instance, companies that have not been set up in conjunction with the communities and regulatory agencies that have not been able to put all the structures on ground till this moment, is part of the issues we will be dealing with; because there are penalties and we will stop at nothing to make sure that all of that is put in place in such a way and manner that the communities will not be shortchanged.

The PIA to a great extent, has put some kind of level playing ground where it is becoming very organized. The activities of the oil industry is getting more organised with the coming of the PIA and by the time it is fully implemented, I believe there will be sanity within the industry and the issues and controversies over what the Committee has done and what they have not been able to do and what the companies are doing and all that, will be a thing of the past.

Recently, a lot of members has been sacked by the National Assembly Election Tribunal and do you still believe the Judiciary is the last hope for the common man?

The Judiciary has always and will always be the last hope for the common man. One thing people should know is that when you are before a competent court of justice, you present your facts. The judges are also human being. They will look at the facts and if it is not in your favour, it is not enough for you to say that the Judiciary is not doing well. In most cases, when the Judiciary favours people, the will be full of praises for the Judiciary but when it doesn’t favour them, they start condemning the Judiciary. In my opinion, we should grow beyond that and understand that the law is very clear and when the law is applied, you must understand that it is the law that is speaking. Some of my colleagues in the National Assembly lost their case while some won their case, and if you are not satisfied you can still go back to court. I congratulate those that won their case and I also implore those that lost to always seek redress through the court.

There’s been spate of kidnapping and one chance robberies. What do you think should be done in order to arrest this menace?

The reasons while you see some of this menace strive is because everybody looks the other way. Living in an egalitarian society, we must live for one another. That somebody is kidnapped or has an issue of kidnapping or one chance robbery or people are stealing people’s properties or molesting people, people are only concerned when it is someone close to them; otherwise they are indifferent when it is someone they don’t know. So it is part of the responsibility of the citizens to be alive to their responsibilities by making sure that these issues are taken seriously and again, the security agencies should look out for these perpetrators. It was said that some of the cars used by the robbers have foreign plate numbers.

Security personnel should be on the lookout for such vehicles. I am also happy that the Hon minister of the FCT is one man that is equal to the task.

Continuing on that line Sir, I know that minister of FCT is someone you are very close to. There is a lot of expectations from the people in the FCT. Considering what he did as the Governor of River State, Do you think it will be replicated here in the FCT?

You can see that he has already started working. You can see that work has commenced on some roads. It takes a man with a vision, it takes a man that is prepared to tell the world that these things are possible. I am sure that you have heard about the Abuja light rail which is going to come on stream .It is not a joke. You will wonder where the money is coming from. The FCT Minister is the most prudent person I have ever seen and I am saying this with all sense of respect and I stand to be corrected. I have worked as a commissioner for works in River State under his Excellency, Hon Barrister Nyesom Wike and I know that he has the drive.

River State didn’t get more money than previous administrations but because he is prudent, he applied the monies available to him and made sure that internally generated revenues has to go up and I think that is what is going to happen in the FCT too and at the end of the day, everyone will know that Hon Barrister Nyesom Wike has come to the Nation’s capital, knowing his antecedents. There is no doubt he will do Nigeria and Nigerians proud by repositioning the infrastructure and a whole lot of other things  in the FCT.

Sir let’s talk about your Legislative agenda and your plans for your constituency?

The tenth Assembly has a Legislative agenda and its Legislative agenda is mine as well and by the time it is rolled out properly you will see it. I cannot have an individual Legislative agenda when the entire House is coming together to put up an agenda which is to serve Nigerians.

As for my plans for my constituency, I have not changed and I will not change. First and foremost is to give them the best representation and to improve on the way I represented them before, being more effective in my representation. I will also make sure that there is no gap on the issues of lawmaking and also improve on my oversight functions and by the Grace of God, I will lobby  and make sure that I attract more projects and programs that will touch on the lives of the very ordinary people of Khana/ Gokana Federal Constituency. The people of my constituency gave me their shoulder to stand on and I will not let them down.

There is this allegation that lawmakers were given a hundred million each for palliative. Can you confirm that?

Whoever that said that is not in tune with the current realities in Nigeria. In the first place, how do you give such funds to law makers, and through which medium if it is alleged they should prove it? If we have that kind of money, my constituency will be feeling the impact immediately. In my local government as I speak to you the palliative that we brought to the state including the ones brought by Hon Barrister Nyesom Wike as well as the ones provided by the local government council Chairman is there and we will make it gets across to everybody.

Aright! Thank you sir.

Thank you and welcome.

The fuel subsidy removal is the most serious issue that greeted the President Bola Tinubu led FG Administration with mixed reactions from every quarter within and outside the country. In this interview with Professor Hakeem Fawehinmi, Professor of Clinical Anatomy and Medical Anthropology, and the current Vice Chancellor of Nigeria British University Asa, Abia State, by Informavores National Assembly Correspondent, Ogechi Okorie, the issue of Fuel Subsidy removal, State Police, Education among others were discussed. js"> adsbygoogle || []).push({});

The excerpt:

Following the removal of fuel subsidy by the president and the Mixed reactions that follow, what is your thought on the issue of fuel subsidy removal?

In my opinion, it is a courageous step. I command the President for doing that. I have never really been an ardent supporter of the President but any President that removes subsidy now is time and infact removal of fuel subsidy is long overdue because a lot of people think that it is poverty alleviation policy but I can tell you that it is still the rich that benefits from it more than the poor. it is the rich who drives Air conditioned vehicles. It is another way of tasking the rich for the poor. if the Government is responsive and responsive and again, the merging of the exchange rate is a step in the right direction. Let the market forces determine the price of the dollar or pound in the foreign exchange market and not artificial means of using Government money and our foreign exchange reserves in the name of supporting manufacturers to bring down prices .So for to me, it is good. Ordinarily a President who come at such a time and with not knowing the possible outcome of the Presidential petition tribunal will want to play to the gallery and come up with policies that looks like welfarist policies in a bid to hoodwink the masses but the President is going ahead taking courageous steps which I see some elements of sincerity of purpose

Not too long ago, Nigeria has an alarming number of out-of-school children. What must the Government do to make sure that the number is reduced?

The Government must improve on the security situation in the country especially in the North East. You don’t expect Families who has been displaced because of insurgency to be talking about Education or putting Education of their children in the front burner when they are
Iiving as refugees in other places

Talking about Education, the President recently signed the student loan bill and a lot of stringet conditions were attached to it. it would have been a welcome development but with the conditions attached to it, are there doubts on its workability?

I don’t support it because anything that has to do with a large no of people in public policy in Nigeria hardly works . For instance, National Housing fund, National Health Insurance Scheme, Pension Scheme did not end well and even the tradermonie that was introduced to help businesses did not end well because many people are not really willing to pay back the money. How can you call some young people and give them 500,000(five hundred thousand naira) every year and you expect them to pay back when they get a job and how will you know they have been employed? it is not likely to work and with the mammoth crowd of young people we have here in Nigeria, how can you push that kind of policy through and which bank will be able to certify 10% of them and to worsen the situation, some people don’t have address because they live in the rural areas. How will you be able to trace this people? I advocate for a moderate increase in tuition whether we like it or not. I sympathise with Vice Chancellor of Public institutions because the tuition they are operating with or with we call school charges, has been operational for nearly 20 years. 20 years ago the salaries of their employee has tripled more than 4 to 5 times and you expect people to use charges of 20 years ago to run a municipal community?

It is unlikely to work because you will maintain security on campus, ensure there is adequate water supply, light and other municipal services, clean environment and all. I don’t see it working but a moderate increase in school fees for instance, private universities could be charging upwards of 1.5million to 2million, it won’t be too much to ask public universities to charge 10% of that. There is no where in the world where Education is for paupers, in as much as brilliant children from poor homes want to go to school, if there is no scholarship, people,families should be able to put together 100,000(hundred thousand)for a year.

We have a lot of people in middle class and even in the lower class paying for private, primary and secondary school and beyond that for their children and come to think of it, University education does not come even if you consider the services that is being rendered and the qualifications of the teachers and when you consider how long it took them to get their Degree, Masters, PhD and do so much research to become professors.

The process of the loan scheme is just not workable. How do you get students to fill forms and get their parents to also fill tax clearance forms as well, maybe get guarantors and all. How many of them will bank get to administer their accounts and how do you get the money back maybe after 10 and 20 years when the people who gave them the loan are no longer there in the bank to retrieve the loan? Look at what happens to corporate institutions taking loans from bank it takes a lot to recover those loans and that is why we have Amcon and Amcon is being stifled by corruption. So in this situation you give a young person 500,000 Naira and you think it will be easy to get the money back. It is true they do it in UK and some Western countries. They have a way of making sure that the money is payed back and it is a criminal offence when you don’tpay  back the loan but here ,because you don’t have the record you will not know when the person has gotten a job.

Coming to Insecurity, with the rate of crime and many people advocating for State police, What is your take on this?

You cannot stay in Abuja and police 774 local Government Areas in this country. I have put a paper about my proposal on the issue of state police. I understand why the Government at the center is dragging their feet. Some Governors will be using them at will but at the same time, it can be curbed in the sense that every state police will still have its command at the center. There will be a police council that will be responsible for their professional activities like promotion and things like that but the police belongs to the state and since the Governor is the Chief Security officer of the state, every other ranked person will be an indigenes of the state and the officers will not have to be indigenes.

And when there is a countrol over how police is used by the Chief Security Officer of the State,there won’t be much need for all the various paramilitaries in the country. So at the end of the day, I seriously advocate for state police.

Infact, I even advocated a situation where the AIGs are in charge of 2 states and Commissioners of police 1 state and then the Area commands, should be under the authority an Assistant Commissioner of Police.So in every State, with 3 to 4 Area commands should be manned by a Chief Superintendent of Police because there are local Government Areas so an Area commander should Man it and in so doing, it brings police closer to the grassroot. The DPO stay where they are and the Deputy Commissioners of police will work with the Commissioners of police and once it goes beyond the state, you can now juggle people that are not from that state as AIGs so that if because the Commissioner of police of a state wants to be used by the Governor, the police Council will not allow that to happen.

Finally Prof, let’s talk about your University?

The Nigerian British University is a very beautiful brand, it isa  world class 21st century conventional University. We have been licensed by NUC since last year and it was formally inaugurated this year. The Nigerian British University is bringing a blended British/Nigerian educational system where you can come and spend 2 years with us and spend 1 year in one of our affiliate University abroad and you can gain their Degree or ours and it is properly intertionalised to the extent that we expect people to come from outside the country to be our student and for those who cannot afford the 2 plus1, you stay there for the 4/5years (depending on the course)and graduate with a well rounded education which improves your employability and entrepreneurship skills because we are bringing a lot of mentoring and when you look at our recreational and extra curricular activities,you see that we are trying to build a global citizen and again, our security architecture is very good.

The University is opposite 144 battalion and our internal security architecture is also top notch. All our student will be on campus and I will advocate for any parent/parents who wants a top notch University who offer the very best to come to Nigerian/British

What courses does Nigerian/University offer?

We are a conventional University and we are not faith based. For a start we have faculty of computing and information technology, faculty of law, faculty of management and social sciences and our business school is going to start running post graduate programmes in the business school with our international affiliations.

We are affiliated with some Universities in the UK where they can start the program and do 6 months of their PhD research in those Universities outside the country if they chose to and we are planning to start Medicine and Engineering in the near future hopefully by the next academic section

Thank you Prof for your time.

Thank you for having me.

The Chief Whip of the House of Representatives, Hon Tahir Monguno, Member representing Marte/Monguno/Nganzai federal constituency Borno State has reiterated the need to bolster up the security architecture with mercenaries in order to bring the issues of banditry, insurgency and terrorism to nought. adsbygoogle || []).push({}); adsbygoogle || []).push({});

In a chat with Informavores’ Ogechi Okorie, Hon Tahir Monguno talked about the just concluded APC convention, concerns for security, his constituency projects among other things.

The excerpts:

Honourable, some people were of the opinion that people were coerced into agreeing on a consensus in the just concluded APC convention. What is your take on that?

Being part and parcel of the process, and being one of the leaders of the party, I can assure you that nobody was coerced into accepting any consensus arrangement. In the first place, the positions were zoned into various geographical political zones and the geo political zones were asked to go and meet and then come up with names that they have agreed for each office that was allocated to them. it was based on this, (for example, the North Eastern part of the country, were given the position of deputy Chairman North. So all the leaders from the North Eastern part of the country met under the leadership of the Senate president and then decided to allocate to the various sets all the offices that were allocated to the North East zone e g We gave Adamawa State the position of Vice Chairman North East while Borno was given the deputy National Chairman North and then in Borno, haven been given that position of deputy National Chairman North, we agreed to give Senator Abubakar Kyari to occupy that position while Adamawa that was given the position of Vice Chairman North East, sat down and agreed on a particular candidate so that is how all the consensus candidates emerged.

Nobody was coerced and nobody was forced to withdraw his contest for a particular position. Everything was done under their freewill and under their own volition. Nobody was forced to withdraw.

So it is purely a consensus arrangement having zoned the offices to various geo political zones and then the geo political zones met and micro zoned these offices to various states. That is how the leadership emerged.

Honourable, with the rate of insecurity and the general situation of the country right now, what do you think are the chances of APC come 2023 election?

The chances APC winning at all level, whether the state Houses of Assembly, the Governorship, the National Assembly and most importantly, the presidency, I assure you that APC will continue to maintain its winning streak against the backdrop of the various developmental programs that APC has embarked upon and also the various programs like N-Power,  SUBEB, MARKETMONI, TRADERMONI etc and all the programs that directly impart on the lives of people and based on these programs, I am convinced that APC is still going to form a Federal government and retains its majority in the National Assembly.

It is obvious we have serious challenges especially with regards to security but again, government is not lying on it’s oars. We are doing everything possible to address the situation just like government dealt with Boko Haram insurgency in the North East to the extent that it has drastically reduced.

I believe government will continue doing everything possible to make sure that the problems we are having in the North Central and North West will also be tackled head-on in the way and manner that it tackled Boko Haram insurgency was tackled in the North East.

Honourable, it seems Nigeria is on a time bomb. Not too long ago, a train was attacked in Kaduna and is in this vein that Governor El-Rufai suggested the use of mercenaries to fight terrorists, Because it seems, every effort made by the federal government has not yielded any result. 

Do you think hiring of mercenaries will solve the problem of terrorist activities in Nigeria.?

Before now, I advocated for recruitment of mercenaries to assist in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency and during the time of Goodluck Jonathan, mercenaries were deployed in the fight against insurgency in the North East and I have consistently supported the idea of recruiting mercenaries. At this juncture the Nigerian military are overstretched. Ordinarily all these functions that are being done by the military, are supposed to be done by the police.

Their duty is to defend the territorial integrity of this country, but now that they are fighting insurgency in the North East, North West, North central and practically everywhere, and i am of the opinion that we should seriously consider the idea of recruiting mercenaries to aide in the fight against banditry, insurgency and all forms of criminality.

Honourable, i am aware this is your record 5^th time in the House of Representatives, what have endeared you to your people in order for you to achieve this feat?

I will simply say it is the grace of God because power is from God. He gives to whom ever he wishes. Secondly you should be closer to your people and should always identify with their problems. You should be responsive and responsible to their yearnings and aspirations and try as much as possible, to resonate with that. That is the secret. Try the much you can to bring dividends of democracy to them, identify with them, empathise with them.

Honourable, Informavores gathered that you did a massive Constituency outreach some months ago in your constituency in Borno State. Can you put through some of the projects you executed?

I had series of trainings and empowerment programs and this was initiated against the backdrop of the fact that my constituency is one of the constituencies that was ravaged by the Boko Haram insurgency and also our governor was determined to return our people back to their respective constituencies and the gallantry display by the military of liberating these places from the strong hold of Boko Haram and as a result of this, our people have started going back to their respective communities and as a result, there is need to empowerment so that by the time they go back to their communities, they will pick back the pieces of their lives.

So I embarked upon this empowerment programs to help them get back on their feet. I also did a training on various aspects of Agriculture, Aquaculture etc.

A lot of infrastructure were destroyed as a result of activities of insurgents and I am constructing a big water works worth(560,000 000) five hundred and sixty million naira each in 2 local governments to provide water to the inhabitants of the 2 local governments particularly, the local government headquarters.

I also constructed clinics, schools etc just to bring about normalcy back to the lives of the people.