On Thursday June 1, the South East Development Commission (SEDC) Bill presented for second reading was thrown out in the House of Representatives, following a controversial voice vote, which resulted in an abrupt end of plenary on the day. The SEDC bill went on to generate even more debate, when the Senate a week later passed it without much ado. In this interview with KEMI YESUFU, the brain behind the bill sponsored by the 43 -member House South-East Caucus, the member representing Mbaitolu/Ikeduru Federal Constituency, Henry Nwawuba, speaks on key issues surrounding the SEDC bill.
The first time the SEDC bill was listed for hearing, it had your name, the South East Caucus Chairman, Chukwuka Onyema and Uzoma Nkem Abonta as sponsors. It was dropped for the next legislative day and now bore the South-East Caucus as sponsor. But this didn’t get the bill passed for second reading. Is it that your caucus doesn’t have enough clout in the House?
The bill was my idea and I’ve been working on it with the Senator, Samuel Anyanwu, who represents my zone. He sponsored a version of the bill that scaled through in the Senate. I knew that here was a bill that can be of huge benefit to the South- East. So, on October 4-2016, I wrote to our caucus members to sign-up to support the bill, 26 people signed-up. Then on November 3, 2016, I wrote a reminder and three colleagues made input and returned the bill to me. We called a meeting of the Caucus where everybody agreed that we will co-sponsor the SEDC Bill. We informed the Speaker about this and we went back and forth with him, we had comments like, ‘oh this bill could be divisive’, ‘this bill is touching on a sensitive matter’. But somehow, we prevailed and we got a date for listing and to our dismay, the bill was listed with three sponsors. We felt that this bill carried the aspirations of an entire caucus…. and if you noticed that very much unlike the norm, the bill was re-slated for the next day with all members of the caucus as sponsors. Now to whether we carry enough clout to have gotten the bill passed? It’s a situation that is open to all sorts of interpretations. For me, as an Igbo man, a Nigerian, I would say that perhaps, there was already a mindset with regard to the bill before it came on the floor. I can tell you that it is difficult for five members to sponsor a bill and it will not pass, then compare that to 43 members of a caucus sponsoring a bill and it was rejected. More so, the bill was being presented by a principal officer, the Deputy Minority Leader (and South East Caucus Chairman), who also shares a very close friendship and brotherly bond with the Speaker. I would just put it down to people coming to the floor with the mindset that, ‘we are here to do a job and that this bill must not go through a second reading’ and the mindset was made manifest majorly from our northern brothers. But there also might have been a predetermined mindset on the bill by the presiding officer (Dogara) on that day.
When you talk about the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), supporting Dogara to become Speaker, then it comes down to South-South and South-East lawmakers. Would you say the rejection of the SEDC bill has damaged the relationship between your caucus and the Speaker?
I would say the relationship has turned sour. There is a feeling of disappointment and we are hurt. I have been on the floor and witnessed voice votes in which ‘nays’ would be louder and Mr. Speaker ruled, giving it to the ‘ayes’. Mr. Speaker always has the power of discretion. For me, there are several reasons Mr. Speaker should have ruled in our favor. First, judging by the circle that a bill must complete for it to be passed, allowing for second reading is just one step. The process of getting a bill takes time and within that time, Mr. Speaker could have engaged us or other stakeholders too and any reasonable concerns they raise would be addressed. I can tell you that a lot of people are hurt. Certainly, I am very hurt and disappointed. Things like respect and support should be reciproca;, there is no way I can be supporting and respecting you and when it comes to issues that matter to me, you don’t reciprocate.
Did you consult widely?
When people ask this question, I just told you that we’ve been working on the bill since September 2016. Of course we consulted, I was consulting with colleagues up until the last minute. I even spoke with people that I missed on the floor before the bill came up. We wrote letters, we did one on one engagements, this is something we do even for lesser sensitive bills.
For you, what made the SEDC bill scale through in the Senate, but it failed in the House?
I say again that people had a mindset about the bill in the House. And if you look back, you will see that the Senate has managed over the years to show that its members have deeper stake in Nigeria. The Senate is made up of former governors, former ministers, people who have held other sensitive positions and therefore have interest in parts of the country, other than theirs. This is unlike the House, especially the 8th House, where you have a lot of first timers, fresh faces on the national scene. For the SEDC bill, we have heard some concerns that it’s an IPOB bill, that it’s a Biafra bill and all that. Or that the timing is wrong, that it came just when Biafra agitators successfully held a sit-at-home in the region. But in the Senate, they looked at matters differently. I was in the Senate when the bill was passed and the entire Senate supported it with only about three people shouting, ‘nay’.
With the Senate passing the bill and your caucus saying, it will re-present the bill in the House, it’s confusing what your next step will be.
We have options and we are consulting at the leadership level even as we are hearing that some of those who fought the bill have gotten a bit more information, that they are calmer and a bit more tolerant to receiving the bill. So we have to look at the constitution and our rule book to be sure we comply with the rules in choosing whatever routes we take. But if all fails, we will wait for the Senate and work towards getting concurrence in the House.
People have also asked if a region really needs a development commission bill, when there are governors who should be developing their states…
There are two things to this argument. First is that governors have been receiving allocations and when you look at what they have done in comparison to what they have received, there is little on ground. But this situation isn’t peculiar to the South-East. We agree that there is clearly a breakdown of governance at the center (state and federal level) and that’s why people are now saying, that they have to help themselves. Primarily, a development commission springs up as the case of self help or in reaction to certain challenges. In the case of the NDDC, it was set up to address things like oil spills, environmental degradation and building local capacity. For the North East Development Commission (NEDC), it was to address the destruction by the insurgents, for the South-East, I am saying, I know that at the end of the war, Gen. Gowon made a statement on the 3Rs and one of the three Rs is re-integration. But this hasn’t taken place. Some people say, there is hardly any place you won’t find the Igbo man and I say, the fact that I leave my town to open a shop in your town doesn’t mean that the government had re-integrated me. What we are saying is that, the South-East suffered damage during the war and the region was not rebuilt. The Niger Bridge is arguably the first Private, Public Partnership in the country and we are saying that if it could work then, it can work now. Yes, some people have asked why does it have to be that when key infrastructure in the South-East are to be built, we talk about bringing in concessionaries? Even at that, why hasn’t this kind of important project really taken off? It’s situations like these that make it difficult for us as lawmakers to change the mindset of agitators. There are so many young people in the South-East dissatisfied with government’s developmental efforts. So we felt that, give the region a developmental commission and they will see that what is good enough for the geese is good for the gander. We felt that the commission will give disenchanted youths a sense of belonging in this journey called Nigeria. The simple thing we are trying to achieve is to reduce the agitation in the region with a legislation that will show that we are all together. I don’t support the agitation. I believe that Ndigbo’s strength lies in our traders, manufacturers-the fact that we are innovative and entrepreneurial people, whose best option is to remain in the large Nigerian market.
Some view the SEDC bill as a gimmick because they don’t see five governors allowing any agency take 15 percent from their monthly statutory allocation. Do you agree?
The SEDC is a concept. Ours as legislators is to bring legislative solutions to problems. There is no perfect idea or concept. The 15 percent from the monthly statutory allocation of member states is just one aspect of the source of funding for the commission. We have talked about getting funding, from three percent of the annual budget of oil and gas companies operating in member states. Again, some people have said this could lead to double taxation because of states in the South-East that are already part of the NDDC. But we also talked about Diaspora funding, we can get funding from bonds. We can even get funding from gifts, like people giving certain amount to the commission in their will. Has any governor, some of whom we engaged abi initio, come to tell their people that nobody should take our money for SEDC? These people should stop taking panadol for the headache of governors. Maybe, if the bill had scaled second reading in the House and went into public hearing, the governors would’ve sent their commissioners of finance to make inputs. The SEDC is a good solution and you know that other members are already agitating for a development commission for their zones…
But the push for zonal development commissions by other lawmakers is an issue some people based their rejection of SEDC on?
Like I said earlier, the failure of government at the center is the challenge and the vacuum in governance must be filled. When I was growing up, many developmental projects in my community were done through self help, though there was a state government. Now, we cannot stop other members from agitating. There should be equality. If you look at the NEDC and the SEDC bills, in letter and in spirit, they are almost the same thing. So, we shouldn’t allow for double standards.