Northern governors did nothing to stop onshore/offshore abrogation law –Na’Abba

You seem not to be interested in elective political positions since you left office in 2003. Why? Well, you may recall that the circumstances that led me to leave the House of Representatives were thus:  in the election of 2003, former President Olusegun Obasanjo colluded with the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in […]

You seem not to be interested in elective political positions since you left office in 2003. Why?

Well, you may recall that the circumstances that led me to leave the House of Representatives were thus:  in the election of 2003, former President Olusegun Obasanjo colluded with the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano State and the police to deny me of my victory in the election.

You may also recall that the party was like Obasanjo’s private enterprise, as he was doing whatever he wanted with it.  That was why he kept changing the chairmen of the party at will, which, in a democratic setting, should not have happened. But because the executive was so powerful, and the party always kowtowed to it, there was a collusion between the party and Obasanjo to deny as many of us as possible, the opportunity to continue in the National Assembly. I was not the only target.

Most of the people who supported me and my activities as Speaker of the House of Representatives and a lot of senators were marked. That was why many members could not come back.  The reason was that the executive became scared of the legislature and thought that if people like me were allowed to come back, Obasanjo would not have had his way, because at that time, he was preparing for his tenure elongation project and he did not need us because we would definitely stop it.

After we left, he continued as president and the party continued to be in his pocket. There was no way someone like me could participate because he had the party. I belonged to the wing of the party that was not supporting him.

Up till now, that has been the problem. His influence on the party persists.  I tried to contest in the last election as a senator, but when the time came, and delegates were demanding so much money, I thought I should withdraw from the election, because I did not give money to delegates in my previous elections and I detested this practice where hundreds of thousands of naira were given to delegates to elect a person, even within the party. So I declined to contest.

Now that your opposition to Obasanjo has affected your ambition negatively, would you say you regretted attempting to impeach him?

I don’t regret anything. Success in life cannot be measured in terms of how many times a person is elected into office, or how much money one has. I believe that success in life has to do with the struggle that one engages in continually against tyranny and oppression.  In recent years in this country, when someone is not in authority, or hasn’t got money, he is not fancied by the people.

But I believe that one should do something for the poor folks to keep remembering him.  I had a very good childhood. I went through trials and tribulations, just like any other persons that God wants to grant an opportunity to lead people. Because of those trials and tribulation, I was toughened and that was why I was able to hold the House of Representatives together and, I thank God for that. So there’s nothing in life that will fascinate me, no amount of wealth. Life has its ups and downs, so people must believe in that. I am contented and will always participate in struggles to emancipate the poor from the situation they are in.

The problem of non-implementation of budget has been there, even during your time, and has continued till now. Why do you think the problem has persisted?

I think it has to do with executive culture, coupled with the inner intention of successive presidents. When I was Speaker of the House of Representatives, the budget and the supplementary budget for the year 2000 were passed very late because, one, it was our first experience, and secondly, the committees had to work thoroughly in order for them to tie the budget together. In 2000, the budget was passed in June and President Obasanjo cited that as reasons for him not to fully implement the budget.

But in 2001, since he cited that, even though we did not appreciate the excuse he gave because money was coming in and the percentage of performance was so low, when the budget came, we passed it within two weeks. It was very early at his request but he still did not implement it. The implementation was very poor. So this has to do either with culture of the executive or arrogance.

But is it an impeachable offense?

Not implementing the budget is, of course, is an impeachable offense because it is violating the law. Unless there are cogent reasons, may be, due to poor inflow of money. Good reasons can be adduced if they are true. But if it is because of arrogance that the executive refuses to implement the budget, it is impeachable.

So much has been said about the passage of the onshore/offshore bill.  The North is now receiving insignificant revenue from the central purse. How did that bill become a law?

Well, after the Supreme Court passed the judgment on the abrogation of the dichotomy in the principle of revenue allocation to the states, the president sent a bill to the National Assembly, around November 2002, for the abrogation of the dichotomy.

You will recall that at that time, the National Assembly had undergone the process of impeaching the president. He did not have to bring that bill, but because he wanted to break the ranks of the National Assembly, he brought it with the awareness that there had been agitation for abrogation from the littoral states, particularly Akwa Ibom, whose revenue comes from the offshore oil.

Our reaction was one of shock, because for a very long time, the thinking, including that of Obasanjo was that having an Act like that had the potential of creating a situation where you have extremely poor and super-rich states. And that would not augur well for the country.

For us in the House of Representatives, all the caucuses were united against Obasanjo’s presidency at that time with the exception of the South-West caucus of the House. All the other caucuses were in support of the impeachment of Obasanjo.

The intention of bringing a bill like that at that time was that if the National Assembly went ahead to abrogate it, that would lead to the creation of extremely poor and super-rich states. And if the National Assembly refused, particularly in my House of Representatives, the South-South members would opt out of the impeachment because their states were affected.

You know, in the National Assembly we were all friendly to one another. We did everything together. When there was an issue concerning a zone, you didn’t become hostile. What you did was to play politics, because the essence of democracy is tolerance, consideration, acceptance without which you cannot be said to be operating a democracy.

Bearing that in mind, we then felt that we should not be antagonistic to the bill, but rather find ways of treating or dealing with the matter. In that regard there had to be a demonstration of wisdom and, therefore, what we came up with was to do whatever we could to kill the bill without antagonizing members from the coastal states.

And you can kill bills in two ways: when a bill comes to the House and no party is interested in it, you can kill it by not allowing it to pass the second reading. That was how we killed the political violence bill when it was brought to the House by Obasanjo in 2002. If that bill had been passed into law, the result would be that in any election, the police have the right to arrest anybody and remand the person in custody till they decide otherwise.

When the bill came, I realized it would be dead on arrival, as there was no way I could facilitate the passage of such a bill. But because Obasanjo was desperate to contest in 2003, as he was very unpopular then, he felt he could use the instrument of the state. That was why he presented the bill.

When we refused to present it to the House, he sent members of the National Working Committee of the party to me to prevail on me and the House to pass the bill. But I thought the party’s action was irresponsible because the party’s name was Peoples Democratic Party, and here was the chairman of the party trying to persuade me to go and facilitate the passage of a bill that had the potential of destroying democracy. So when the pressure was too much, I organized my colleagues to take it to the House and kill it. So it was taken to the House, presented to the House, and was killed.

That happened because in the House, nobody was interested in the matter. With regards to onshore/offshore, we had a large section of the House interested in the bill, so the way to kill such a bill was to allow it to get out of the House without being assented to by the president, and that was what happened.

We passed the bill in such a way that there was no way the president could sign it when it was passed. Members from the South South were happy because they felt they got what they wanted, but we knew what we did to make it unconstitutional.

What did you do?

What we did was to extend the water mark that determined the area the oil come from with about 12 nautical miles. The only recourse the House had to placate the South-South members and at the same time not to allow the bill to become law was to extend the water mark to the international waters. So the president would not sign it, because it would be unconstitutional for him to do so.

And he did not assent to it. Therefore, there was no Act in 2002 until the 15th February 2004. There was no law on the abrogation of on shore/offshore dichotomy. The Act was signed by the president as passed by the House on 16th February, 2004. In March 2003, he returned the bill to us, vide his letter of 10th March 2003, the reference was President/134 and the bill was ignored by the House. So up to the time we left, it was not passed.

What are the changes made to the bill you presented and what was passed?

He realized that what we passed was unconstitutional, so it was the original bill that he sent to us that he returned with a letter expressing the unconstitutionality of what the House did. But we did it deliberately because what we wanted to achieve was for him not to assent to it. And he did not assent to it. He sent it back in March and we ignored it. We had about three clear months to pass it, but we refused, because we did not want to do it.

What is the difference between the one Obasanjo presented and the one passed in 2004?

The difference is that there was an agreement with regards to the water mark. That was the only difference.

This time it did not extend to the international waters?

No, no. He couldn’t have assented to that. From this, you can see there was no law on abrogation of dichotomy until 2004. The Senate passed it on 20th January 2004.

You will find out that the senate passed it within 20-days of the presentation of the bill and the House of Representatives passed it within 29 days of the representation of the bill. So if we couldn’t pass it when we had three clear months, it meant we didn’t want to do it, and we did not do it. Some mischief-makers, were, however, saying that some South-South governors gave me money to facilitate the passage of the bill for reasons best known to them.

Were there efforts by the northern governors to mobilise the northern lawmakers on the bill?

Nobody called me. In fact, I was the one who wrote letters to all the governors of the northern states because a public hearing was held in which this matter was tabled before the people. I don’t think there was public hearing was 2004. The essence of the public hearing was for people to come forward and give their views on the matter. That is the convention for people to know that such a law is coming.

But no governor came, the only persons who came were the commissioners for finance of Bauchi and Kano States. Even Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who is now claiming that he called members from Kano State to speak with them but they sold out, is lying. At that time, he had no rapport with any member of the House form Kano, except one member called M. A. Yufuf Bungure.

He was the only person relating with the governor. So the governor wouldn’t have called anybody. Maybe he was alluding to the time he went and talked to the members to support third term of Obasanjo, otherwise, there was no time the governor called anybody.

Looking back, did you anticipate that the kind of disparity between what the littoral states were collecting would be this much compared to that of other states?

Yes and that was the reason we thought we should try our best not to allow the bill become law. This thing was not about northern states alone because all the other states of the federation were affected. I saw that some states would become super-rich and others extremely poor.

What can be done now to remedy the situation?

What I thought was that if anybody is interested in revisiting the issue, he should draft a new bill which would abrogate this abrogation and send it to the National Assembly. If the governor of Kano State and his allies want this bill to be revisited, the best he can do, since he claims to have command over the members of the House from the state, is to redraft a bill which would abrogate this abrogation and send it to the National Assembly, and also lobby for its passage. It’s as easy as that.

Then, he should also go and talk to the president after the National Assembly had done its work to plead with him to assent to it. I think that is the right thing to do instead of shouting on the pages of newspapers. If you keep shouting, who will do the work for you? At the end it may be successful or not. That is the only way, not accusing people of doing what is harmful to some states.

I also wish to state that along with the effort to abrogate the abrogation, the governors should look inward because all the states in the north have abundant resources. And they should empower their people to pursue endeavours that have the potential of creating wealth. So I believe the missing link is empowering the people which the governors must do.

The governors say they don’t have the resources to harness these mineral resources…

I don’t think Chad had any capital, but it is now an oil producing country. The same thing with Niger Republic. The states could apply what Chad and Niger did. Where there’s oil, oil companies will come. So I don’t think it’s a problem.

Recently, you asked Jonathan to forget about contesting for a second term, but you campaigned for him in 2011. Why the change in position?

Well, he’s not running for a second term; he’s running for a third term and I will never support any situation whereby somebody would try to manipulate the constitution. He has been president twice, so he shouldn’t go for a third term.

That we supported him earlier does not mean we should close our eyes. The party should not even attempt to field him in 2015, because it would be unconstitutional as far as I am concerned.

Moreover with the possible exception of Bayelsa State, no state is interested in his coming back as president because of the way he is misgoverning the polity.