How far have your administration impacted on the lives of the people of Akwa Ibom State since you assumed office?

I can not summarise how I have touched the lives of the people with the duration of this interview. I can't even enumerate these for just the first year, but by the time I complete four years I want to sincerely hope that I would have surpassed the promises I made in my inauguration speech to the people which I titled, 'Primed to Serve'. I am adequately primed to serve.

What are the constraints you are facing in the governance of the state?

I would honestly say a lot of it is due to the fact that you have to depend on the federal government and some of its ministries for certain facilities that would make it possible for you to give. I would give you a simple example. I have been abroad for a few times and I have put together quite a number of people who are quite ready with the money and the technical capability to come here and get 12,000 barrels a day, to produce diesel and kerosene, things we need so very much in these parts and indeed the entire country.

They are people who are ready to come and do a full-fledged refinery in the country and produce between 120,000 to 150,000 barrels a day. There are people that are ready to come here and do a little gas plant, and for long we have been ready with a company that can build us our own independent power plant so that as I promised Akwa Ibom people, I can deliver 24 hours constant power. But I have no licence from the federal government. And I offered to buy this oil at the world market prices even if it is 35 dollars per barrel, I offered to buy. So why I can't get it I don't know.

I'm told there isn't a policy yet on private ownership of refineries. What does that really mean? I told Mr. President the last time, tell me the philosophy and what conditions you want us to agree to. One, you will not produce below capacity, two, you are not going to lose any money because every time we extract crude oil you won't lose because we will sell it at subsidised prices. So that is where we are, unless and until you get that license I cannot do anything. NEPA; I pointed out to Mr. President when he came to Akwa Ibom recently that all the NEPA poles in the state are 99.9 per cent locally installed. The transformers, electric poles, the lights, everything done locally by people who want to have electricity through electrification programmes and all other kinds of programmes. Now I want to build an independent power plant, all they are telling me is that NEPA has no policy on how I can use what they call their distribution line to distribute the power to Akwa Ibom. You can see what I am talking about and if I were the President that is determined to see this country progress and I will just shut my eyes and do something. Maybe a self-project, an environmental impact assessment in the community, just let it go on.

What is this policy?

We wasted four years to bring out a policy and then we say we did nothing. So these are some of the major constraints. At some point, it may be the National Assembly, the federal government, or whoever but I have really tried to make sure I do something.

How long would you have to wait for the federal government before going ahead?

Everything is in the Federal Government's hands. All I have to do is to keep pleading and asking that they should please give me these licences. I don't know what else to do because you can't just come financing it knowing that it is subject to a licence. So unless they see the licence they can't give me the money.

How far have you gone on the projects in the state?

On what particular project?

Is it the investors coming for all kids of projects?

We have visitors coming to look at the ceramic factory. That one does not need any licence and is going on therefore. We have a memorandum of understanding and we expect that the investors should be around soon. And also we have the battery factory. We have not yet signed the memorandum of understanding of that one but we feel certain that we will reach an agreement soon. Those are the resuscitation of existing industries. But on the industries, people are coming and worrying us and there's even a letter from the American Exim Bank that seeks our offering them guarantee on the investments, which is what will make it possible for them to do business here and we are just waiting. With the power plant, it was a question of waiting because there is no power line that can transmit anything higher than 100 megawatts.

So we wait and we talk and the President personally authorised the construction of 330 KV lines from Ikot Abasi to Eket-Diakpa and it's going to be contractor-financed and the contractor says he has got the money. On the other new industry, the gas thing, they made their submission. It will depend on our negotiation, which I think is odd. If this country can feel and accept the fact that this project can help all of us and the gas essentially belongs to us even through it is flared and exploited and produced by some multinational companies, we can say that they should sell the gas to people who want to utilise it. But they (FG) say no, the people can't negotiate the contract with you who has the gas. I think it's wrong and we went ahead to negotiate the gas contract successfully. And still we have not got the licence.

Do you think you can get your counterparts in the zone to come together and tackle the electricity problem?

It's not just that.

The question is, has the government the right and the ability to generate and effectively distribute power?

The complication in the Lagos issue (Enron Project) is that they wanted to sell the power to NEPA which will now turn round and sell it to the people. I'm saying I don't even want that. I just want to generate the 50 megawatts that we consume in Akwa Ibom and distribute it to Akwa Ibom people. Leave me alone to decide at which price I sell it to Akwa Ibom people even if I have to subsidize it.

What is the difficulty?

So teaming up with anybody is not necessary. But I will say that at the last South-south governors meeting, it was proposed and accepted that we could work out regional power plant but there again we have to think beyond distribution to transmission lines which I don't know how we can tackle, and we still don't know the federal government's policy on distribution. I don't see how a simple thing like that could hold this country to ransom because whoever does not recognise the fact that the greatest backwardness could be caused by the lack of power must be totally blind.

There is a controversy over the chairmanship of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). What exactly is the situation, was there prior agreement on the issue or what exactly is wrong?

I will speak specifically on the issue of the chairman. We understand and felt that it was the case that every state that is producing oil would have a commissioner and that indeed is the case. But what has turned out not to be the case is the one among them to chair their meetings. That person would be the chairman for that one year. But we found out later that the NDDC bill provided for the appointment of a chairman outside the body of commissioners. That's where the problem lies and it is obvious that it can't work especially when you have accepted the fact that the chairmanship would rotate on a yearly basis to the various oil producing states. But now you have a body of commissioners making policies and you bring a chairman from outside. In the first year there will be no problem because there would be a clean slate. But by the time you get to the second year and you tell that chairman, please, go away and you go to another state to look for somebody that did not expect this appointment and therefore might not have been following the activities of the board and tell him to be chairman for one year, I think it will just tear the board apart.

So there is an amendment now before the National Assembly based on the position of the governors that the chairman should be appointed from the commissioners to chair the meeting for one year so that there will be continuity in the thinking within the governing board of NDDC. That is one issue, beyond that, I want to thank Mr. President for giving due regard to the fact that these people represent states and their nominations should come from the respective state governments. The governors had a lot of inputs as to who should be a commissioner for their state. But when it came to the Managing and Executive Director positions, which are full time positions, we were not consulted. We know they were going to come from the states but we wanted to make certain recommendations.

Don't you think the absence of your fellow governors at the just concluded conference on the Niger Delta can impact negatively on the positions taken?

Unanimity always has a stronger influence; there's no doubt about that. The absence of the other governors except the Bayelsa governor who sent a representative cannot impact negatively on our position. Niger Delta will move forward with those who want us to move forward with it. It's as simple and as clear as that. The resolutions that were taken at the conference were taken by the bigger Delta people. What pleased me was that even while the governors were not there, some of them actually indicated that they were coming, others said they were sending representatives, but they did not send any apologies which I think is rather unfortunate. But I know that there are reasons. Yesterday (Friday), two busloads of the members of the House of Assembly from Delta State were here, some came from Edo. Those lawmakers showed enough concern to be here. The absence of the governors cannot possibly invalidate the decisions taken by the Niger Delta. The decision, those resolutions were carefully considered by the people of the Niger Delta and in my opinion they remain valid.

There had been several meetings of the South-south governors like this before, and there are other resolutions taken. Would there not be confusions with so many resolutions?

We have been having several meetings. One for the South-south governors was supposed to be on monthly basis but was shifted to every 6 weeks. Those were usually attended by members of the National Assembly and I have attended all the meetings. This shows how much I value the coming together of the South-south. However, this last conference made it possible to expose our circumstances better to the international community. It made it possible for us to have inputs from political office holders of the South-south zone both from the Executive and National Assembly.

We had people like Senator Dafinone presenting a paper. We had opinions from outside, many people from outside the country presented papers. That can only enrich the deliberation. UNESCO, UNDP and oil companies came and that enriched what we have been doing at the level of South-south governors' meetings. My closing remarks at the ceremony was on the need to build on the singular effort of late Ken Saro-Wiwa in getting the Ogoni issue so ventilated that everybody knew of the unfortunate circumstances of the Ogoni people. What was unfortunate was that there was a tendency to equate the entire problems of the Niger Delta to that of the Ogoni people. But now everybody knows that there is more to the Niger Delta than the problems of Ogoni though the problems are very similar.

On the control of the resources of the Niger Delta and the perceived opposition of the Federal Government, how would you proceed?

One must proceed in a circumspectual manner when it comes to this sort of thing. There are no hard and fast rules about how you can control your resources. Let me give you a simple indication if there is a greater participation that would make people feel a little better. A lot of the oil companies here have cap wells. They are big. If you produce anything perhaps less than 100,000 barrels per day, they, oil companies are not interested because they feel it is not worth their while due to the efforts they will put into it.

But should Nigerians lose from such wells?

We are saying, give us those wells, let us start from there we will operate those wells. More than anything else, the problem of the restiveness is anchored on the perception of total exploitation. If you allow even that little bit of participation by the local communities, you would see a complete change of attitude. I am absolutely convinced about that. They don't have to drill a 100,000 barrels per day to see that they are controlling their fate, resources. If you give them that marginal thing, believe me you will see a complete difference in the way they regard whoever is drilling his own 200,200 barrels in that area. They will be content with their 10,000 barrels a day. The feeling is that you are taking charge of your resources.

Look at another thing. NNPC is completely abstract, and if you wish, very distant, what is NNPC?

All I see from here is Mobil, Shell, Chevron, but on the other hand, here is a federal government parastatal, what is so hard about federal government telling Akwa Ibom where Mobil is working exclusively in its backyard.

Federal Government now owns 60 per cent, take over 20 per cent. Do you know what difference that will make to Akwa Ibom people?

To feel that this company that they saw as alien actually belongs, in large portion to them. People get frightened. I don't know whether they have a different concept of resources control, maybe they think if we take these resources, we are going to secede or something like that. Nobody is talking about any war. As a matter of fact what we are saying is we need peace and justice and equity and this feeling that we are taking charge of what rightly belongs to Akwa Ibom. And this feeling was what we are expecting in the beginning, not a different feeling that things are being imposed on you. And if you remove that feeling through resources control, the Federal Government will lose no revenue. That is what must be understood. If it is agreed today that the 13 per cent remains and that the Federal Government gets 87 per cent of the resources, it will still be the same thing.

Why is it easier for you to get it from some alien companies than from a company owned by Akwa Ibom State?

So what is the fear about resource control?

How have you been spending the 13 per cent Derivation Fund?

I have not got 13 per cent. Nobody has got 13 per cent even though that is what we were promised. What we have is 7.8 per cent and therefore I am not spending anything close to what I had hoped to spend on improving the lot of the people of Akwa Ibom. And I don't want to believe that this will continue for long, but with what I have, I have improved their health situation and their educational system. I have tremendously improved infrastructural provisions and now I am facing agriculture.

In what manner are you going to disburse the funds in other to give the oil communities a sense of belonging?

At the state level, we are still waiting for the law from the House of Assembly. It has been slow but I believe it will come out gradually. We proposed that a certain percentage of what we get should be spent on the local governments. A certain sub-percentage should go to the actual local government area where the oil comes from. In any case, the local governments know what to do. They will define specific projects they want to do. So a bulk sum of money comes in. A certain percentage is set aside and the state has exclusive right to decide what to do with it. The other percentage is for these local government areas and within that, a certain percentage is to be spent on the basis of the problems of the local governments. The balance will be for the areas directly involved in oil operations.

What specific plans does the state have to alleviate the poverty of the people?

We are not too comfortable with the Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP). We have something here and I want to believe that when you lay your cards on the table and tell the people what you want to do and plan carefully and effectively, the people will understand. Every step I take I try to let them see that nobody is stealing money or hiding anything and whatever comes to the state is for the benefit everybody and, as much as humanly possible, is spread evenly across the state. Empowerment comes in the sense of our Life Enhancement programme, in which we teach skills, and guarantee loans for artisan and fishermen; we voted N500 million for that. Then we pick some young graduates, trains them, give them land for agriculture. For that we voted another N50m. So we have been able to enhance their lives rather than alleviating or reducing poverty. By next year we will move a step further by making merchants of our people.

The Federal Government once threatened to go to count over the Onshore/Offshore dichotomy; is that the best option?

If the Federal government wants to reintroduce Offshore/Onshore dichotomy, it should not pass it on to the court because the court is not set up to make laws. Courts are set up to interpret laws. If they want an existing offshore/Onshore laws and you want the court to interpret, we ask just what is offshore? I could understand somebody going to court to seek an interpretation. But what will the court do in this case, with a law that does not exist. If the Federal Government wants to introduce the offshore /Onshore idea, let it say so and take the bill to the National Assembly. It should not hide behind illegalities, by not paying us our full dues. I am so passionate about this because I was at the constitutional conference when this matter almost broke the country.

What is the reaction of Akwa Ibom to the federal government's intervention in the boundary disputes between it and Cross River State.

We believe the Vice President was deliberately misinformed on the issues. When the coordinates are checked and they are well known, we then will determine the boundary between Akwa Ibom and Cross River and in the end we will know. Everybody has accepted that it is not by trying to enforce the content of the Vice Presidents statement that they will acquire the land. It is really better through dialogue. Akwa Ibom people are determined to resist any encroachment on their land.

Why does the state need a new Science and Technology University?

We now need a science foundation for our children to get into the scheme of things. The imperatives for a science and technology university are even stronger today. We need to know what goes on in the oil industry, the operational methods. I will even go further to say we will train and export because we need our people in every area.