Declare state of emergency on Electricity and Agriculture -Hon Ikwechegh tells Tinubu

Well, before we go into the main issues that brought us here, what is your background?

Well, I was born many years ago by Chief and Lolo Mascots, Ikwechegh And they passed away when I was 11, and then, of course, I became, from being a boy to a man, started taking care of myself. I had six other siblings, we were seven in number. And I attended Constitutional Christian Primary School and finished my primary education from there.

The whole portal training institution after I had done three years in a school called Secret Heart College, Izuqu in Aba, or popularly known as Sahaco. I gained admission into the University of Calabar, studied Business Administration, graduated from University of Calabar and went fully into business. In 2005, I became Deputy Chairman of one of the local government Area councils that made up my constituency called Aba North local government Area of Abia state.

After two years I ran for election to serve as chairman, local government Council. I became Executive chairman of Aba North Local Government Council. Served in that capacity until it expired on the 10th of January, 2010. And then I served as a special advisor to the governor, the then governor of Abia state, Senator Theodore Orji for about four months, and then resigned from politics and went into the private sector.

In the private sector, I got into full business, had a conglomerate of companies called Gross Group of companies comprising the following: Grossfield Construction, Grossfield Energy, Grossfield Marine and then Grossfield Merchants.

So, we’ve been doing very well in business but what compelled me to want to get back into politics is the 2010-20 event of EndSARS that I witnessed when young men that came to protest were ambushed by the Nigerian military and that sort of hurt me.

And then I began to appeal to young Nigerians that revolution, as it is well known, or called, or referred to, is not the most effective way of removing a government from power. There’s a saying that “the power of the people is far greater than the people in power.”

I began to advocate that young men and women should go and register with political parties. Register with political parties or choose a political party that their ideology is aligned with yours.
Register and then exercise your franchise by voting the candidate of your choice and of course for one to advocate for such I had to quickly or expressly register with a political party that I felt that its ideology was in alignment with mine.

I began to intensely or vigorously pursue the office of National Assembly member because I felt that, you know, the laws that will help to define how we live here,
starts from here and for one to really be of use or bring value to the society, you need to start from the areas where the laws are made.

So, that was how I ran and won and today, I m here under the platform of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA). It’s a political party that at certain time,
I felt its ideologies aligned with mine. Then again, the Labour Party back then had not ossified itself. We would have joined the Labour Party when this was ongoing. This was in 2020 so I joined the All Progressive Grand Alliance in 2021. So, the Labour Party became quite strong in 2022, just a few months after.

Nigerians have embarked on a nation-wide protest. What is your take on this?

The truth is this, there’s so much hunger in the land. I don’t think Nigerian’s have had it this bad except for maybe when the citizens were pushed into a civil war.

During the period, people could barely buy food to eat. It may be slightly difficult for the political class, especially people that have been successful for a long time, to truly understand the plight of the people as of today.

There are certain things that go on and when the poor, the poorest of the poor get to hear them, it breaks their hearts and that is why people are very proudly interested in this protest. You can’t be telling people to tighten their belts when
governors, presidents, ministers are still busy driving bulletproof vehicles, Lexus 600 SUVs. You see one governor riding on 30 cars. You see one minister riding on 15 cars. You see the President riding on 50 cars and then you expect them to tighten their belt. Just like I said earlier, that if government is truly interested in having people’s belts tightened, government should live by example.
They should set that example. And the President can say, okay, I’m moving around with four cars, five cars. Bullet proof, cause he’s the president. I mean, it’s something that he deserves to do. But moving around with 50 cars?

I mean this is just a few of course. And then we cut down on a lot of different things. Do we actually need the number of people that are being paid in government? Let me explain this. From a technocratic or entrepreneurial standpoint, when an entity, a business entity begins to fail, what it does is it cuts down on costs. What is the federal government doing to cut cost of governance? There is perverseness of profigality, total avoidance of frugality in the day-to-day running of government. What is the government doing to cut governance, cost of governance? That has to be done. While preparing the budget, do you bring consultants to take time to scrutinise the content of
what is inserted in the budget? When it gets to us here, you give us one month to scrutinize this budget. How do we scrutinize the budget within one month? And then everybody is rushing. By right, in September, as soon as we are resuming the session, the budget should be on our table.

Okay, the president should present the 2025 budget so that we can take between September and December to scrutinize the budget and then approve it. If there are things that we feel that shouldn’t be there in the budget, then we quickly do it. The legislative arm of government should remain independent.

The judicial arm of government should remain independent. The executive arm of government should remain independent.

Analysts have narrowed the major issues raised by protesters at the nationwide protest on hunger, high cost of food items in the market. What is your advice to the Federal government on how to get out of these problems?

When our people are starving, when there is insecurity, when people in the north cannot go to their farms and farm their agricultural produce, when there’s no electricity. In a country of almost 300 million people, there is no electricity. How do we manufacture? We should declare a state of emergency on electricity and agriculture.

That is what I believe we should be doing. Declare a state of emergency on these things. Bring in all kinds of consultants from different parts of the world. Let them come here and the president will say, I’m mandating you within six months to give Nigeria light.

I’m mandating you within 6 to 9 months to recruit and make agriculture attractive again. Let everybody move back to the farms. Who are the people coming in to kill farmers? Thus scaring people from getting into their farms to do their farming business. Where are they? Let us find who these people are and get rid of them. So that people can farm. Nigeria has fertile grounds. Our soil is fertile. We can produce in industrial scale.

All the raw materials that are used in making different things we can produce okay so when we produce these things we can export them and earn foreign exchange. we can if we have constant electricity we can power our small factories and small small industries can exist in every room in Nigeria.

We are known for our dexterity, artisanry, work of our hands. That is what we are known for. Nigeria has a city in Aba that can be considered or compared to China. I remember in the 80s, late 70s, when I was quite young, when my parents are taking me to school, people will be calling, I will always hear that Aba is the Japan of Africa. This was even before China became a thing. They used to compare our products from Aba to that of Taiwan. So, what are we talking about? Today if you go to Aba because of the bad government, you see a lot of people riding Okada, KK, Napep wheelbarrow pushers. These are young graduates who are supposed to be producing different things. So my dear brother,
It is imperative that government sits up. My people say when a situation gets to its extreme, extreme measures are taken to address such situations. The reason why the people are clamoring for change and also considering hitting the streets is because they feel that they haven’t seen on the part of the government that body language that expresses concern.

These are little, little things that we ought to do for the country to move forward. A popular senator once said, if you tell the truth, you die. If you tell a lie, you die. It’s better I tell the truth and die so that I know that I spoke the truth.

Nigeria cannot possibly be poor. Nigeria is a powerful country. I don’t know if there are elements from outside Nigeria that is selling this very nefarious, malevolent and ominous narrative. Because Nigeria is a rich country, it’s not a poor country. But who are the people that man our waters? Who are the ones that are allowing those vessels to sail into our shores and lift our oil and move back to wherever it is that they came from unaccounted for. Who are the people that are managing our mining industry? The gold in Zamfara as I hear can literally empower this country. Why are we not harnessing what we have? Oil theft, a platitude that people you throw around all the time. Why should this be so? If we harness our oil, harness our natural resources, the other day we went to Enugu and you know the governor of Enugu state is a bright young man. We are so blessed to have a governor who is from Enugu just like Abia, Alex Otti in Abia who is a very very intelligent man.

I didn’t know the government of Enugu was so bright. And I asked him, I said, your Excellency, are you aware that before the invention of oil, in 1950, was it 58, when oil was founded in Nigeria? I said, do you remember that it was coal that you exported from here that empowered the South East, not even Enugu alone, but the South East and the nation?

And he said yes, that currently they are working on that, a lot of approvals were given to people to mine coal, today, they’ve reviewed all those approvals, and now that they have investors that are ready to throw in $200 billion, that he expects in a couple of years to be generating trillions of dollars. This is one state.

I said, if you’re generating this type of money, what do you need the local allocation that comes to you? Maybe 10 million, 9 million every month. What do you need it for? He said he doesn’t need it. So the governor is very interested in doing everything within his power to ensure that Enugu state grows. And the governor of Abia state is doing the same, harnessing whatever revenue that we have to generate enough resources to be able to grow the.economy. Can’t we grow the economy of the nation? You see, we have to tell ourselves the truth. Nigeria is a great nation, but we just need that political will to truly serve. I believe the president means well, but I don’t know. I think, I don’t know what it is, but I just think he needs to pay a little more attention. I understand he has spoken very valiantly and very vividly and very volumely about delegating responsibilities to subordinates. He said it in Chatham House. But let him also look inward to make sure that those delegations are being done very efficiently. Because let me cite an example the issue of the woman in humanitarian affairs and the plenty, plenty billions that was alleged to have been stolen by this said minister. The president meant well. He brought up funds that is supposed to be allocated to Nigerians, destitute, people that are struggling. And one woman, for some reasons, whose vision is totally at variance with that of the President spent the funds recklessly.

Because if a man understands that his people are suffering, his people are dying, people are dying because of one thousand naira, and then he says, this so-and-so amount of money, distribute it to Nigerians, and one woman is using the money to go and buy gold and buy houses in London, that means there is a problem with the subordinates of his Excellency. And which I believe was what Senator Ndume was alluding to. Okay?

See, Ndume said very clearly that there are elements in the government and he was suspended.

Do you understand where I’m coming, from? Are we now saying that people shouldn’t speak? There shouldn’t be freedom of speech? Then again, that’s the party’s internal struggle. So, I would like to say, and I want to be quoted very clearly, that Nigeria is a great nation, but we can’t be doing the same thing.

I expect a different result. Then again, it’s easy to sit by the corner and accuse the government, repudiate the government, repudiate the president, impugn their credibility than actually doing their job. So, I do not want to be amongst those that will repudiate the President’s policies or repudiate the president’s administration.

I would not want to be the one that will impugn the credibility of those that are working with His Excellency. But I would like to be the one that will speak the truth, so that the president possibly, maybe some of the people within his circle might not be telling him the truth. So, I want you to quote me very clearly and make sure that every single word that I have said here appears on your newspaper, so that it will be said that somebody spoke the truth and said that it’s possible for this country to be powerful. But we have to handle oil theft. We have to harness properly our mining sector. We have to harness human capital. And then the source that tends to select people that hold positions of government, it has to be looked into both appointments and election. You don’t elect or appoint somebody because the person is your brother or your friend. You appoint somebody who’s brilliant, okay? You can’t be appointing somebody to come and man, let’s say Ministry of Education, and you go and get a captain. It has to be somebody who has been in the field of education and has done well in the field of education, has excelled in the field of education. An academician, right? Is that the way they would say it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. An academic. Somebody who has excelled in that field of profession. Somebody who can be very effective, assert his ideas as someone who has done well in that field.

So, I as someone who truly wants this country to grow, I want us to always understand that we have all come here for the people. I have been brought in here to speak for my people and that is why during the time that they presented the Samoa agreement, I was emotional. I said why are we here talking about LGBT human rights? something that I know that Nigeria clearly does not violate. Nigeria respects human rights. Nigeria does not violate human rights. Yes, we have our problems here and there, you know, in a few remote villages, but our police try to be polite. Our military tries to be polite, walk with the citizens. I mean, nobody here is violating any human rights. So when you’re talking about human rights, you’re talking about LGBT and all the rest of them. Why are we here talking about LGBT when our people are hungry?