Hon. Goodluck Opiah is the member representing Ohaji/Egbema/Oguta/Oru West federal constituency of Imo State, in the House of Representatives. In this interview with DAILY POST, he expressed disappointment over the rejection of the bill proposing establishment of South-East Development Commission. Excerpts.
How will you describe the rejection of the bill proposing establishment of Southeast Development Commission on the floor of the House last week?
The inability to pull that bill through to establish Southeast Development Commission means that Nigeria is not fair to us, not fair to the Southeast and the Igbo generally.
Nigeria is not truly integrating the Igbo into the mainstream of things. The bill itself is quite harmless and it has nothing to do with the federal government of Nigeria apart from those states from Southeast. The bill was beggarly as it were, because the Southeast and some South South states deserve some special attention. The east went into civil war with Nigeria from 1967 to 1970 and at the end of civil war, the then General Yakubu Gowon pronounced three ‘Rs’, that is rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation to be embarked upon in the war ravaged Southeast.
He clearly said the war ended with no winner, no vanquished. Its clear that nothing has taken place concerning those promises including reconciliation. No integration and of course, no reconstruction of Southeast which was nearly destroyed by the federal government of Nigeria and nobody is talking about rebuilding the place. Nobody is talking about reconstructing and reintegrating any where. As I speak, even the soldiers who fought on Biafra side were not recognized and the police who defended Biafra cause too.
The bill essentially was aimed at finding a resource base in rebuilding the Southeast and of course, it was beggarly in a manner that it looks at sources of funds coming from federation account of states of the South east, and from oil companies operating in the South east. The bill never suggested collecting money from any other states, not even the neighbouring states like Rivers.
I am really surprised and shocked. Meanwhile, here in this House of Representatives, we passed into law recently, a bill for the development of Northeast, called Northeast Development Commission which is like a self-inflicted injury, but we did not look at that and those of us from other zones still went ahead to cooperate with them.
Why is the bill – Southeast Development Commission coming up 47 years after the war? It looks as if it was competing with Northeast Development Commission and Niger Delta Development Commission without concrete reasons for its existence.
Well, my people said, whenever a man woke up, that is his own morning. This is the morning of all of us from the Southeast. In the present House, many of the representatives from the Southeast were not there 47 years ago that you are talking about. The reasoning, the opportunity and circumstances of the environment have continued to change. Now the opportunity has presented itself like you said that there is Niger Delta Development Commission, which is different. Niger Delta Development Commission is a natural one. There, we have natural resources where we draw monies to take care of other parts of the country. In their own case, it is just a little percentage that is coming from the federal government and the oil companies operating in that environment contributes some percentages. That is a different ball game compared to the Southeast Development Commission that we are talking about.
But I agree with you that if we can establish a commission to take care of Northeast, which chose to destroy itself, can you tell me reasons a Commission should not be set up to take care of Southeast which was destroyed by the Federal government of Nigeria? Southeast was destroyed and reduced to rubble and those who survived the war came out to meet economic war. Monies belonging to anybody from Southeast were reduced to 20 pounds as at then. It therefore means if you have 20 billion pounds, it will be reduced to 20 pound sterling then. It made the people to be completely zero economic wise. It didn’t stop there. Gowon declared abandoned property policy and they all lost their properties to the federal government in Port Harcourt and Lagos where they worked hard to build.
I think this nation is not fair to us and the entire Southeast and at best, the bill would have been allowed to scale through second reading.
We heard on good authority that the Southeast Development Commission bill was for political gains for some of you in the upper and legislative chambers and not necessarily that it is expedient. How true is it?
What kind of political gains or undertone? It is not a PDP or APC affair. In the Southeast, we have PDP and we have APC. For God’s sake another dimension necessitating this bill is that in the Southeast, erosion is threatening seriously. There is gully erosion everywhere and people are at risk of natural disaster and people from the affected areas as it were, decided to take steps to address those challenges cannot be interpreted to mean political reasons. We have these gully erosion threatening everybody whether you are APGA, APC or PDP and these cannot be said to be a political issue. How? Politics is far away from this.
The bill is about the welfare and wellbeing of the people of Southeast. By extension it should include parts of Rivers, Cross Rivers, Delta and Akwa Ibom states who suffered the effect of civil war, though today we have a commission that is taking care of them. We agreed that they are endowed with crude oil and other natural resources, of course, some parts of Southeast are also endowed with crude oil and minerals resources too. For example Imo and Abia are part of NNDC and we are not complaining, but no matter how anybody interprets it, this bill is a necessity as well as it is harmless. It will cost Nigeria nothing, it will cost the National Assembly nothing and so it should be allowed to sail through.
We recall that during the Northeast Development Commission bill, there was collaboration of lawmakers from that zone with those of other geographical zones. It appears there were no proper consultations this time around for that of the Southeast.
What you call consultation is the fair mindedness of those of us from the South. We rose in unison to say that the devastation of what is happening in the North east deserved special attention; that they require adequate attention, but the reverse is the case whenever issue comes up from any part of the Southeast. That is not one Nigeria we expect to belong and this does not show unity and onessness. Barely a month ago, I sponsored a motion for oil companies to establish offices in states they operate, including Imo and Abia, but it was turned down. Oil is being prospected in Lagos, oil is found in Anambra, Kogi and Enugu now. Efforts to get oil in Bauchi is ongoing and that of Lake Chad in Borno State and it can be anywhere, but our brothers in the North objected to relocating oil firm’s offices from Abuja to Southeast, and South South. Our fair mindedness in identifying with Northerners across religious and tribal lines was not being reciprocated at all.
For me, it is not about consultation, there was adequate consultation. For me, there was a gang up, there was a calculated design to ambush this bill by our colleagues from the North. They said if this is from the Southeast, we should not have it and these things go on and on. Today, Southeast is the only geopolitical zone with five states. The rest have six states and of course with Northwest seven states. Can anybody explain that? The number of local government areas from Southeast is far less than what we have elsewhere and where do you place them. South easterners are not anywhere in the civil service, they are not in the Army, Navy, Police, and Airforce and in the whole of Service Chiefs, you cannot find an Igbo man there, so you can see that there is a pattern and a calculated attempt to say these people don’t belong to Nigeria.
How will you describe the Speaker’s handling of the bill that was eventually thrown away? Are you comfortable with his action over the bill?
I don’t want to talk about the Speaker. The speaker is a presiding officer and I don’t want to blame him for what happened. I blame the House.
Why did the bill come up as the last item even as important as it is?
This bill came up on Wednesday, but the Chief mover who is the deputy minority leader of the House from Southeast was not available and so it was stepped down. So it was re-listed for Thursday which was the following day and you know that in our order paper, no time is attached to any motion or bill. You can list an item on the last agenda and then the other ones might not hold eventually. You cannot convince anybody from Southeast that there is connivance between the Speaker with anybody. They will not even believe you.
So what is the way forward on the bill now?
The way forward is that I appeal to Honourable members to rethink. We must go back to drawing board and readjust our positions and allow this bill to go through second reading.
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