Former governor of Imo State, Chief Achike Udenwa, has told the Federal Government to tackle the high level of insecurity in the country before going abroad shopping for foreign investors. He noted that no genuine foreign investor would bring his capital to an environment where the citizens are not secured.

In an interview with VINCENT KALU, Udenwa, aformer Minister of Commerce and Industry, warned that urgent measures should be taken to steady the ship of the nation state, noting that doing otherwise might spell doom for the nation.

What is your view on the state of the nation?

The state of the nation is not comfortable at all. It is very frightening, ranging from the economy to insecurity and general feeling within the Nigerian society that things are not going on fine. I’m so frightened. We haven’t had it so bad in a long time. I pray that we are able to take measures to steady the ship. Otherwise it might be catastrophic. I pray it doesn’t get to that.

Hundreds of students and other people have been kidnapped in Kaduna, Borno and other places recently. What’s your take on this level of insecurity?

It tells you that we are not in charge of the territory that we call Nigeria today, if people could come from outside and go as far as going to schools and kidnapping children en masse and the same in IDP camp. We used to hear of one or two people being kidnapped, but we are witnessing what Boko Haram did – the kidnap of over 200 school girls. It is repeating itself. It is frightening how bandits could sneak in to our schools and carry these children en mass. We keep asking how does this happen without anybody noticing them; no security agency in the area and they trek miles inside the bush and nobody notices them and the next thing is to ask for ransom. It is very frightening.

What is your impression of the government’s campaign for foreign investments?

Very frankly, no foreign investor would want to go to a place that is not stable; a place that is not secured. How will his own investments going to be secured if the citizens are not secured? How can he bring his capital? So, we are just not honest with ourselves. We should first make sure that we secure our territory before we start talking of foreign investors. No foreign investors would come. Anyone that is coming is not really a foreign investor but maybe a swindler or a gambler. No serious foreign investor can come when the whole the country is not secured.

The government recently released the Oronsaye Report, which has to do with cutting down the cost of government. What’s your impression of it?

I don’t know why past regimes have not implemented that Report, which is very necessary because we see a lot of duplications of government agencies, ministries and all that. Everybody creates a kingdom for himself at the expense of the government and that doesn’t improve efficiency in anywhere, and yet the cost is increasing.

There are too many things that are increasing the cost of governance in the country. We should look into them, and one of them is what Oronsaye Report highlighted. We should have the courage to implement them. We should remove people who created empires for themselves and wanting to sustain such organisations. No, there is no need of duplicating efforts.

Some have expressed fears that there might be plenty of job loss if the report is implemented…

We can redeploy, but let us find out how and then we can redeploy them. You can’t just because of losses you create all sorts of organisations where they are working in order to maintain the jobs. No. That should not be the idea. The idea is that the jobs are created out of necessity, and not because we want to give people jobs and then create unnecessary organisations. That should not be. I know at times, government creates jobs that may not be too necessary in order to get people usefully employed, but you cannot be doing that in a dwindling economy like ours. We are in a very terrible shape, so what we should be talking now is how do we cut down our public service? Are all the organisations necessary? The ones that are not necessary, you merge them. We are in a terrible economic situation; we are not in a good situation. If we were, you could create jobs for the sake of it whether they are necessary or not during economic boom, but not in the situation where we have found ourselves now.

There is this allegation of about N3 trillion budget padding by the leadership of the Senate, and the suspension of the whistleblower, Senator Ningi. What is your take on this?

If Senator Ningi has the courage to raise that alarm, the best the senate leadership would have done was to investigate, institute a public probe to get to the root of it. Is it true? We are talking of a budget padding of about N3 trillion in an economy that is dwindling, and the best you could do was to suspend the whistleblower without looking at what he has said. Are you sweeping such a serious allegation under the carpet?

What any responsible leadership could do is to investigate it, to make sure that such a thing didn’t happen and secondly, clear the image of the National Assembly. That is the reaction I expected to see from the senate leadership, but not to suspend Senator Ningi. Maybe, after you have investigated and you found out that he lied; that there was nothing like that, if you suspend Senator Ningi people would see with you, but not the way you did.

Are you trying to shut him up? He has made an allegation, and the reaction of the senate leadership is wrong. I have heard a lot of people comment, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was giving credence to what has been happening; that there has been budget padding. Where does that padding go to? Who benefits from it in an economy that is so bad? What is our GDP? We cannot even fund the budget. You can see that we are having deficit budget all the time for some years now. It is very frightening to me and I do hope that the senate will retrace its steps. What it has done is not the correct solution to the problem.

As a way of tackling the insecurity, Tinubu is mooting the idea of a State Police. What is your position on this?

Even while we were all governors, the current president and some of us at a time had always advocated State Police and I’m sure that he is going to implement it. Both state police and restructuring; we have always advocated a true federalism. I belong to that group that believes that Nigeria should practise true federalism.

You are an apostle of restructuring. What is it and how can it be carried out?

We should go back to the pre- civil war of four regions. Then, it is for us to now determine in the light of the present circumstances whether we are going to have those four regions? Are we going to have the six geo-political zones or the 36 states as the federating units? It is for us to determine what the federating units are. But, we must go back to real federal structure. That is the only thing that can rescue Nigeria, the sooner we do it the better. If we delay more and the situation gets worse that what it is now, I’m sorry that Nigeria may drift into a crisis that we cannot retrieve it again.

I’m advising Mr. President to take all steps to go back and start from the 2014 Constitutional Conference. The report is there, I was a member of that confab, and I knew what we discussed. That report would have brought out Nigeria from the wilderness. Let him bring out the report, if possible, set up a small implementation committee, who would give the way forward to implement that report or if there is the need to brush it, he can still set up a small committee to look at certain aspects in the light of what has happened between that time and now. Is there anything that needs to be brushed up? Is there anything that needs an improvement? Is there anything that needs an adjustment, and we get a report and implement. It is the only way you can save this country.

We can no longer continue with what we are practising now – a very strong Federal Government and a very weak state. It will never work. It is no federalism. One thing I’m happy about is that when we were governors, Mr. President today, who is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and some of us were apostles of true federalism, so now that he is in charge, he should demonstrate it. He should demonstrate it and remove Nigeria from the present predicament that we found ourselves in. That is the only way and we better do it as quickly as possible before this situation deteriorates further and get to a point where Nigeria will collapse.

The House of Representatives has set up a constitution amendment committee. What are your expectations?

All along we have seen the National Assembly set up constitution review committees and at the end nothing comes out of it. You know how many of them we have seen in the past. Did anything come out of it? No.

If you look at the National Confab report of 2014, you will see that there are three stages or phases of implementation. First phase is the one that administratively, the federal government can implement without any legal hindrance. The second one requires laws to be passed by the National Assembly and third one requires constitutional amendment which will involve again the National Assembly and the state assemblies. Mr. President should look at these three stages and immediately go into them and there is no need of talking about constitutional review or not. It is when we look at this report and want to start its implementation that we would see exactly what role the National Assembly would play and let them play it. This is something that concerns all of us; we have to save this country for the benefit of all of us. If we delay further and this country deteriorates we may have nothing to salvage.

Some people are advocating a return to parliamentary system of government. What is your thought on this?

One hopeless thing with us is there is nothing wrong with most of the systems we have ever followed in the past. What is wrong is in implementing or practising those systems. The bicameral system we are practising now was aimed at checks and balances, but it has not worked because we are not doing what we are supposed to be practising. We went for the American system, has it not been working for America? But it has not worked with us because we are not serious in implementing what we are supposed to do.

I support it not just because I believe that the one coming would be better than the one we have now. I really support that we should go back to the parliamentary system which would be one parliament and eliminate the duplication we are having now at the National Assembly that is not working; it is not improving anything. We should go back to the parliamentary system; we would save a lot of cost, and maybe save ourselves the problems of budget padding. The problem with Nigeria is with us the Nigerians. I support those who are advocating going back to the parliamentary system provided that we are determined to make it work, not making it fail.

Four military officers and 12 soldiers were allegedly killed by militants in Delta State last week, and the military has been razing houses in the community. What is your opinion on this?

It is very regrettable that the community should kill our soldiers. We are yet to hear the details of what really happened, but whatever it is; it is very condemnable that our soldiers would go to keep peace somewhere only to be killed. It is very condemnable.

On the other hands, two wrongs don’t make a right. I don’t really believe that the best reaction was to raze the community if it really happened. That would not be the correct reaction. Probably, we are getting to what happened in Odi. I don’t think that is the best reaction. The two actions are quite condemnable; there is none that I support. I don’t support the killing of the soldiers for whatever reasons at all. I don’t also support going to raze the community if it is true. That is not the correct solution. (Saturday Sun)

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