Kenny Okolugbo was a Commissioner in Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC) from 2012 to 2015 under the government of Emmanuel Uduaghan as Governor. He is currently the Consultant on Communication and Strategy, Office of the President of the Senate, National Assembly. In this interview with CHUKWU DAVID, he speaks on national issues, including the ongoing Constitution Review, quest for States creation, defections and emergence of African Democratic Congress (ADC), among others

Hon, let’s talk about the ongoing Review of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended). Successive sessions of the National Assembly, have gone into this exercise without making appreciable progress in giving Nigerians a resultoriented working document. What is your take on this virtually unfruitful seasonal ritual?

Well, you know, the Constitution, we can trace it from the time of when we talk of the Richards Constitution, the Clifford Constitution, the McPherson’s Constitution, the Littleton Constitution, and more recently, the 1963 Republican Constitution that abolished the monarchical rule. And even after independence in 1960, we still had the monarchical rule.

And it was only in 1963 that it was abolished by the Republican Constitution. Now, we took it to the 1979 Constitution that established federalism, because that was the first civilian regime. It has always been the military. And we experimented that up to the 1989 Constitution that never saw the light of the day until we now got to 1999, which is a constitution we’re still operating.

Now, you know, that the Constitution says, ‘we the people.’ Successive governments have said, look, this was a constitution that was foisted on us by the military. It wasn’t our Constitution, so to say. And when they say, we the people, they don’t agree, because there are so many areas in the Constitution that need tinkering.

And the 10th Assembly, I must say, has gone into areas that before now have not been gone into by the other assemblies. We’re talking about, first, they’ve been able to sign electricity to go into the Concurrent List from the Exclusive List.

And we’re looking at so many areas like security now that they’re tinkering with either having to empower vigilantes to come in form of community policing, or we’re having state police because of the nature of what we have had and the peculiar situation we have had in terms of kidnapping, farmers-headers crisis, and the unrest we have had in many states, which we have said that it is only the localities or the locals that can actually tell what is happening in the area and can take charge of that.

Then we’re also having a situation where we are saying that, ‘let’s look at the South-East, for example.’ The South-East, we say, have been shortchanged. And we all have accepted it was basically canvassed by the mostly Northern members of the 10th Assembly, who said, look, let us balance the South-East.

Every other geopolitical zone has six states. In fact, the NorthWest has seven states. And they have agreed in principle that the imbalance will have to be corrected immediately, which was why two weeks was given to the National Joint Committee on Constitution Review to take a decision and agree on one state in the Southeast that will be presented before the National Assembly and public hearing. And before talking about going into a referendum and being passed by at least 24 states of the Houses of Assembly out of the 36 states. And, you know, creating states brings government nearer to the people.

Local governments bring government nearer to the people. We have talked about viability. Viability is very key, but the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made it possible that states will not go cap in hand again to pay salary because of the removal of subsidy. More money has come into the states. We have had that look. We need to see what is happening in the states.

Now, they’ve also gone into the area of independence of the local governments because the Supreme Court has given them financial autonomy, but can you see that independence as long as the state electoral commission still carry out elections? The chairman will go cap in hand, asking the governors what to do with the funds that they are getting.

But the minute we have an independent commission, just like INEC carrying out elections for the local governments, then the ephod strings that are tied between the local governments and their governors will have been broken. Tell me what states that is APC, PDP, Labour, APGA, or NNPP that elections have held and were not won by the party in power. So, the situation we have at hand is such that we must be realistic.

The Constitution needs to be tinkered with. The Constitution needs to be amended. And then we can tell ourselves that we as a country have decided to move forward. And so, what the 10th Assembly is doing is a realistic approach. And what happened in Lagos, you can agree, was no tea parties. Three days of intensive negotiations, agreements, lobbying, and the consultants you must give it to them. They put together the positions of the House of Reps and the Senate to come up with a working document that will still be fine-tuned until it is presented before the bicameral House.

How confident are you that this initiative to give one state to the South-East, to correct the imbalance will come out true at the end of the day, because the politics that has always been the problem in Nigeria is that, when it gets to state assemblies, the northern states may conspire and vote against it?

I’m confident because I’m pushing for Anioma State. I was a Commissioner in DESOPADEC, like I said, and when I was a Commissioner, I come from the Ndokwa region, Ndokwa West, Ndokwa East. And this area is one that is blessed with so much natural resources.

In fact, we have the largest gas reserve in Africa. And that gas is such that we have the independent power plants being powered by AGIP that was built by DEWOO. And we supply gas from there to Obosi, 480 megawatts. But incidentally, it’s not stepped down.

These are the marginalizations we are talking about. Now, we are told that electricity has also been unbundled. It has been taken from the exclusive list and taken to the concurrent list. And so, I also suffered marginalization because in my board then as a Commissioner, I had powers. I was a member of the tender’s board. I could award; I could pay.

In terms of after supervision, I could recommend for payment. And so, you know, that’s almost are the passive functions of a governor. And so, we’re not interfering. But you see, the problem I had was that the Itsekiri community had 29%; the Ijaw community had 27%, the Urhobo community had 21%.

While Itsekiri had one commissioner, the Ijaw had one commissioner, the Urhobo had three commissioners; the Isoko had 14% with one commissioner. And I from Ndokwa, there were two of us, 9%. And I had only just 4%. So, my problem was, what would I do in board meetings? Why sit down in board meetings and I’m hearing billions being appropriated to my colleague? Of course, my perks of office were being given. My governor didn’t slack in taking care of any of us.

He didn’t segregate. We had our Landcruisers, we had our Hilux, we had official emoluments, which were basically done so that they will not also be attracted to stealing. But I was talking about, what would I give to my people? I had nothing to go home with.

I had to go cap in hand to Aniocha, Oshimili, Ika; those are areas that were not oil producing and could not domicile projects in their place, to now come and domicile projects in my place. That is for members who have allocated projects based on constituency.

And that was the secret of my success. And so, I asked myself, if I am moved now to Anioma, I’d be a king because we are oil producing.

We are no more going to be in the minority. We are self-sustaining. We are great agrarians. We farm; we have farm produce. We have so much to export. And I dare say, we are allowed to control our resources, we can even be a state in the Ndokwa region.

And this Ndokwa region consists of the nine local governments of Anioma. And even if you say we’ll go to our brother state, Ani, which is in the Southeast, it’s a win-win situation for us because we will remain the drivers of 13% derivation.

So, what do you expect? For example, my forefathers, I was privileged to have been the one that edited the book my father wrote, the history of the Ndokwa and Ndi OShimili of Delta State. He was part of his thesis. Incidentally, I wasn’t born when he wrote that thesis. But I published that history. And I know that our ancestors are from Igbo, Edo, and in some cases, Igala.

But we are basically socially, culturally affiliated with the Igbos. So, why Igbos are like a stigma is because of the civil war? My name is EkeneChukwu Nonazu Okolugbo. Is there anything different from the same names across the Niger? So, we cannot deny the fact that we have our Igbo heritage. So, I see it as myopic for my people that are coming out to say, oh, we cannot be with the Anioma people.

It’s better I’m in a place outside where I am treated like a slave, or like a minority that is under development, rather than find myself where I can be treated as a king. I just used myself as a case study. I come as a typical example. When I was the editor of the book, secondly, I served as a commissioner, so you can’t take that away from me.

The over 90 projects I was able to do was basically because I went cap in hand, and not because those funds were funds of Ndokwa. I took funds that were allocated for constituency projects for those who were not from the oil producing area to domicile in my area. And so, the issue of state creation, you cannot, it’s going to be a win-win situation.

Again, let me also tell you that it’s mostly northerners in the National Assembly that are the drivers of the fact that the Southeast needs additional state. It might sound like a tall party now, but the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government will have a brighter name in history if they’re able to create this one state.

Then after then, we can think of states for the other zones. But within this short period, which is the one year, six months we have, I think it’s only feasible for us to create this one state that has been agreed in principle to go to the Southeast.

Let’s now look at the issue of defection. Many people in the opposition parties are flocking into the ruling APC, and some Nigerians are apprehensive that the country may degenerate to a one-party state. I understand that you were a staunch member of the PDP, but you’ve also migrated like others to the APC. Are you not concerned that Nigerians are running politics without ideology?

You’re talking about the leaning to the left and the leaning to the right. Well, the PDP was supposed to be towards the center, but I’ll tell you that ideologically, I spoke for the presidential campaign council, apart from the fact that I served as a Commissioner under the PDP.

I would not wish away the fact that the PDP gave me a platform, and I’ll be grateful for that platform they gave me. But I dare say that for the eight years Muhammadu Buhari was here, I never wanted to touch the APC. I never wanted to have anything to do with the APC. You can go back to my history. I was one of the biggest critics of Buhari and his economic policies. But why are we all flocking to the APC? It’s because of the policies of Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

And that is the absolute truth. My principal, Senator Godswill Akpabio, was one person that influenced me into joining the APC. But more importantly, apart from influencing me to join the APC, is the policies I have seen in Bola Ahmed Tinubu. You must not take it away from me that I was one person that was critiquing on facts. The fact stands. A man that was able enough to risk his second tenure and removed full subsidy, where no military government could even dare go into, even though they were ruling by decrees. A man that saw the Naira crashing to an extent to which price of rice was 100,000. In fact, the economy was almost going to the level of Venezuela.

He was not moved. He held on to the fact that, look, I needed to allow the variances of the market forces determine the value of the currency. I wasn’t going to peg the currency artificially and allow round-tripping. A man that decided to fight corruption headlong, more than even the anti-corruption czar, his predecessor, Buhari, to the extent that today we have 753 houses being recovered. We have the EFCC recovering over N500 billion, N50 billion of seed money given to NELFUND .

That is the student loan body, credit consumer scheme, N50 billion given to them, seed money from the EFCC. In fact, the EFCC has almost turned into an IGR. Or is it a tax bill that he has been able to put together? Because I keep telling people, don’t go paying something without paying tax. People say, I can’t pay tax because I can’t see what’s happening; I don’t see what’s happening. I don’t have the roads; I don’t have the infrastructure I don’t have water. I don’t have this. Yes, he’s agreed. But Buhari did not take that risk. Now, he has said, please, all of you come together.

We have a common tax board. We have the ombudsman where we will not have people paying double taxation. We can resolve the issue of taxes. Companies are now paying 25% instead of 30% company tax. If you’re earning 70,000 and below, you don’t have to pay tax. Military is exempted. Yes, I can go on more tax drive. And Oyedele has put the benchmark. We might be able to get as much as N40 trillion. You see, we are not any money in mind in our agriculture because of the unrest. We must call this, pay this, pay. We haven’t got any rights in the issue of security.

It’s not here to grow. But you can see a clear light at the end of the tunnel. So why would they not flock to the EFCC? He has taken those bold steps as a first-term President. Very few people can take the bold step he has taken because he’s seen that, look, successive governments have eaten into the future of our children and children’s children.

And so that is why somebody like me who was a staunch member, who had PDP in his blood and DNA can say today I’m in the APC. And you see, I left the PDP in 2022, but I didn’t join the APC. On the 6th of June was when I left the PDP in 2022. Most people think I just left now. No, I didn’t make it bold. I didn’t join the APC. I only joined the APC after I started working with Senator Godswill Akpabio. That’s when I joined the APC.

Don’t you think that Nigerians will be worse for it if we have a very weak opposition?

No, I don’t think we’re going to have a weak opposition. What I think the opposition should do is put their acts together. I’m a student of Political Science. I’ve always believed in opposition. Opposition will put the government at its toes.

I must be realistic. But when you have an Atiku Abubakar who still say, ‘look, I want to run,’ you have the Peter Obis, saying, ‘I want to run,’you have the Rotimi Amaechis, saying, ‘I want to run,’ they’re going to dissipate their energy. And you have PDP saying, look, we don’t want a coalition.

I saw the situation that we had in PDP, especially when we say not to allow the South-South to decide to become… I was supporting Obi in the PDP. But once they decided to throw the tickets open, I knew that there was going to be crisis.