Ita Solomon Enang, a lawyer and activist, represents Akwa Ibom North in the Senate where he serves as the chairman of the powerful Business and Rules Committee. He has made history as the longest serving legislator from Akwa Ibom State, having served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1999 till 2011 before crossing over to the upper chamber of the legislature last June.
Deputy Editor Investigations, Ibanga Isine, and Akwa Ibom correspondent, Bernard Dada, recently caught up with Enang in his Uyo residence and he opened up on the fragile Nigerian economy and the controversial plan to abrogate fuel subsidy. He strongly advised against the removal of the subsidy on the grounds that it could precipitate unintended consequences. The lawmaker also slammed the National Economic Team, saying that they were bringing failed Western economic theories to stifle the nation’s growth. Read on.
You started as a grassroots lawyer and activist; challenging government policies which you thought were inimical to public good. What was your motivation in all these?
What the government was doing at that time was not good enough and of course, there are a lot of things the government is doing today too, that are not good enough. And I believe it was necessary for me to be in government so that we can bring some measure of change into the system.
I realised that if you keep staying outside government, it will be impossible to change a lot of things. I believe that if you have good ideas, it is necessary for you to be part of the system and implement those ideas instead of staying outside and quarrelling about the system.
Fortunately, I came into government early enough. I started as a councilor representing Ward 2 in Itu Local Government Council of Akwa Ibom State and that was from 1988 to 1989. I later contested the House of Assembly election and was elected a member of Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly from 1992-1993. I also contested and won election into the House of Representative from 1999 to 2011 and for good 12 years, I represented my people in the hallowed chambers of the federal legislature. Throughout that period, I fixed my mind on the need to bring positive changes to the country.
Today I am by the grace of God, a member of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I don’t believe I have done so much but I came into government to change the system and so I remain the only Nigerian as at today, who has contested nearly all the elective positions from the grassroots to the National Assembly. If you are talking about a person who works with the government and also challenges its policies and programmes considered inimical to public good, Ita Enang is a good example.
As a member of the National Assembly, do you subscribe to the executive arm of government wielding so much power, including the power to arrest a sitting legislator for carrying out his constitutional duties??
I will never subscribe to such act even though I was a victim. It was not good when I served as a member of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly between 1992-1993 and it can’t be good now. It was in protest against bad executive decisions that I was arrested. I had a bad experience in the cell although I was treated with dignity and respect by my co-detainees. But the government soft-pedaled on the matter when they got to know how serious and how united we were.
Of course the credit did not go to me alone but to the entire membership of the pioneer Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. The leadership and members of the assembly from 1992-1993 got the credit for the action because they acted in concert as agents of change and of course, I led the group.
It was within my constituency that the truck bearing the generator was impounded. I brought out my supporters to stop the movement of the generator. We had set up a barricade even before the truck bearing the generator arrived. I believed that I had the duty to protect the equipment of my state because it was specifically bought for the company to generate employment.
While the National Assembly is on the first-line charge, the state assemblies get their allocations from the state executive. Are you not concerned that democracy cannot be deepened with the state legislature tied to the apron strings of the executive??
Let me refer you to the constitutional amendment process. We had in the constitutional amendment proposed and passed the independence of the states houses of assembly, the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the National Assembly. We passed all that and forwarded to the state houses of assembly. The 36 state houses of assembly approved independence for the National Assembly and the Judiciary but did not approve for themselves; a great paradox. So I would not advocate it for them but anytime they want it they can bring it back and we will consider it.
But why would the state houses of assembly not pass the amendment to guarantee their independence under the constitution?
I will not be able to say why they didn’t because when they returned a nay and did not state reasons and I cannot infer reasons for them. I would have given you one if they had advanced any reason.? But they were not able to give reasons for their action and so we were not obliged to investigate.
As a senator with good knowledge of the socio-economic and political challenges of the country, what advice would you give to President Goodluck Jonathan?
I will advise Mr. President to be courageous. He should invent local home-grown economic policies. Mr. President should rely less on Harvard-trained economists. My advice to him is to study from the history of international economics and learn from the current economic travails of Western countries.
What those countries did in the past is responsible for the collapse of their economy. My advice to the President is that he should not listen to and import economic theories of the likes of Okonjo-Iweala.
Let the President know that what the likes of Okonjo-Iweala learnt and applied at the World Bank is what Britain, the United States and Germany applied and it has collapsed their economy.
All the theories of privatisation, commercialisation and private-driven economy making so much money for the government at the expenses of the people may have worked or said to have worked but it has blighted the economy of those countries.
Today Obama is being held on the jugular because the economy of the United States has almost collapsed. Today the British Prime Minister, David Cameroon is in trouble because the economy of his country is going down. All those economic theories of development and commercialisation which World Bank and the International Momentary Fund sold to those countries and which Asian countries rejected have ruined the economy of the Western world. China, Japan and many other Asian countries are the world’s leading economies today.
So let President Jonathan go back to Otuoke, his own local school of economics and manage the economy of this country. Let nobody threaten him or bring foreign theories for him to remove fuel subsidy.
The kind of crises that will come over the removal of fuel subsidy and the concomitant problems including the collapse of the naira,? unemployment and negative national image are not what any president can withstand. It will be unspeakable for a president from the South to consider removal of fuel subsidy because that will be the worst thing to happen in this country.? Let him beat a retreat. He should not listen to those big volumes of papers and unrealistic postulations from the West.
I advise the president to avoid imported theses which have been imported into the country to collapse our economy. Nigeria’s economy should be home-grown. We should find out what the problems are and fix them accordingly. For example, today many state governments are looking for a way of paying the minimum wage to their workers and everybody is trying to collapse the naira such that it will be N200 per dollar.
The justification is that we want to make enough money so that when we sell oil and exchange it for dollar, enough money will be made to pay salary. But this is not good. It is not well thought-out. It is just intended for a platonic solution. It is just to deceive all of us so let the president retrace his steps and keep these people away.?
If they are insisting on the withdrawal of subsidy, let them tell Nigerians which of the countries that produces oil and does not subsidise the cost of fuel for their citizens and I will tell you about countries where refineries are working, where there are robust infrastructure and where employment opportunities are provided for their people.
But here, all these are lacking. We don’t even have the capacity to refine fuel for our local consumption, we cannot produce enough food for the people, and our public transportation system is not working.
For instance, our rail system does not support a situation where people would not be bound to buy their own cars. Countries that do not subsidise fuel for their citizens have robust infrastructure, manufacture automobiles, produce enough food for the people and provide stable power.?
Nigeria is not one of such countries and so we cannot pretend that our people can bear the brunt of bad government policies for too long. So I insist that President Jonathan should go back to his school in Otuoke and leave the Harvard and Oxford graduates with all their imported economic theories.
He should ask the imported economists to tell Nigerian where their own theory has worked or where their own practice has worked. If such theories have failed in the West, why have they come home to implement failed programmes? Most of those in the economic team are my friends.? I tried to support them in the past but their prognostications did not work.?
They are now coming the second time but what they are bringing to the President is poisonous for our economy. They want Mr. President to fail. Let all those who are members of the economic team tell us that they have gone into our villages to see the level of poverty among the people.? Let them show what they contributed during the campaign which brought the President to Aso Rock.
I tell you, this set of people contributed nothing and they did not come for campaigns and therefore do not know the level of poverty in the country and so they cannot work for the people.?
The President should reflect on what he saw when he campaigned throughout the length and breadth of this country. He should conceive an economic policy to address the problems he saw in the villages and cities of this country otherwise he will go down as the worst President of Nigeria. People may criticize me for saying all these even as a member of the Peoples Democratic Party but I cannot close my eyes to what could lead the country astray.
Do you envisage the Senate giving a nod for the withdrawal of subsidy when the matter finally comes to the National Assembly?
As a Senator representing Akwa Ibom North-East Senatorial District, I have already taken a position. Don’t forget I am one of the longest serving legislators in the country. I have seen it all from Gen. Sani Abacha era to that of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and others that followed. I have been following what has been presented to President Jonathan and I can say they are trash and are intended to collapse his administration.
Would you support future appropriations for turn-around maintenance of our refineries in the face of appalling level of production?
We should not only embark on turn-around maintenance of refineries but we should encourage local production. We should encourage local refining of crude oil so that Nigeria can grow.
The country cannot grow at rate of the funds being appropriated by the National Assembly for turn-around maintenance of unproductive refineries, subsidies and others. If such funds are used to build new refineries and make our manufacturing companies work, then we can think of removing subsidy.
But again, much of what goes into subsidy is the cost of exporting crude and importing refined product. If Nigeria produces crude and refines it locally, there would be no subsidy.? That is why I advise Mr. President not to listen to people who are out to deceive him and throw the nation into chaos.
You have been in the National Assembly for more than 12 years, what do you consider the most challenges?
My greatest challenge has been poor budget implementation. I am worried about the refusal of those in the executive to implement the national budget and they have the means of blackmailing the legislature.
Since you have identified this as a problem, what can be done to ensure compliance?
The President should be fully in charge and should make sure that each minister briefs him on the progress of his or her ministry within two weeks. The ritual of the Federal Executive Council meeting to listen to memos from a few ministers should stop.
Ministers should be able to give progress report of their ministries every month. Right now, the Federal Executive Council only considers memos from ministers who are ready to table same. The Council does not bother about Ministers who have nothing to show to it. I suggest that the president should device a means of monitoring and evaluating what each minister does.
Unless the president creates a mechanism for monitoring budget implementation by ministers, we will continue to record low performance. Such monitoring should be carried out on monthly basis. The ministers must show the number of projects they carry out, the number of jobs they create and what his ministry has done to impact on the economy. Nigerians are not interested in ministries saving money at the expense of development and job creation.
What have we not done right and how did we come to this sorry state as a country?
We left a particular generation behind. We took things for granted. We did not plan for education and there was no plan to provide jobs for those we educated? There was no plan for a sustained manufacturing industry and so when students came out of schools,? they did not see any manufacturing outfit to put into practice what they studied. You taught a child how to make combustibles and how to make bombs.
I was the Secretary of the Students Union Parliament at the University of Calabar during the “Uya Must Go,” riot.?? Prof Okon Uya, who was later sent to Argentina, was our Deputy Vice Chancellor at that time.?
I played a prominent role during the one and a half day riot. After the first day of the crisis, the police were brought in. The police stayed a few meters from the campus and so when they were shooting tear gas some of our science students especially Chemistry, Biology and Physics went to the laboratory and manufactured propellers and mounted explosives on them.
So when the police shoot at us almost 800 meters away, we responded by shooting the propeller-mounted bombs and they landed at the police vehicles and set them ablaze.? So the idea of making local bomb is not from Boko Haram, it has been there. Students are being taught these things in the universities.
Before I left the university in 1984, another incident happened in 1982 and we seized the Cross River Radio transmitter and use it to transmit live from my room. So these ideas are there.
We teach our children all these things, and when they are out of school there is no place to practise them. Some days ago, I learnt that fertilizer has more use than just applying on our farms. The point am making is that we refused to plan for a particular generation and that generation is now reacting in a negative way.
I want to say that this nation is at the most dangerous period of its existence. The war in Libya and the crises in the Middle East could send more arms to this country if necessary steps are not taken to mob-up arms through the use of international diplomacy and collaboration with neighboring countries.
Again the refugee problem associated with warring nations could spread into Nigeria and many Nigerians living in these countries need to be re-settled so that they don’t become trainee suicide bombers and mercenaries.?
I’m advising the President not to take action that could lead to the type of crises in the Middle East by removing subsidy on fuel because street actions sometimes cannot be controlled. Let the President know that most of the riots like the one in Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, started just by little protestation.