Akparawa Ephraim Inyangeyen is the immediate past commissioner for works in Akwa Ibom State and currently Chief of Staff to Governor Udom Emmanuel.

In this media chat, the Onna born bares mind on what should be the major concerns of Akwa Ibom citizens in the remaining days of the current administration in the state, contending issues about the relocation of the Ibom deep seaport from Mbo LGA to Ibeno LGA, as well as impressions about the succession of the incumbent governor as 2023 approaches, among other issues. Excerpts…

In Akwa Ibom State we’ve had governance with the Peoples’ Democratic Party, your party, right from 1999. Give me an appraisal of how democracy has fared in Akwa Ibom State viz a viz the performance, not just of this admin but of the PDP as a party that has ruled from 1999.

I’ll tell you that we have done very well because we are not going to analyze Akwa Ibom State without comparing it to other states of the federation, starting from the time of His Excellency, Obong Victor Attah 1999 to 2007.

He laid the foundation of what Akwa Ibom State is today and don’t forget that when we separated, when Akwa Ibom State was created from Cross River Sate, there was nothing on ground, it was a village, the military came, did the best they could under their circumstances but the real foundation to what you’re seeing today, that is attracting the whole world was laid by Obong Victor Attah.

He did the architectural masterpiece of Akwa Ibom State and resources could not even allow him do most of the things he wanted to do, then came the next man and, believe you me, whether you agree or not , he did the very best he could between 2007 and 2015. Godswill Obot Akpabio followed on that master plan with a few adjustments. He created the roads and by 2015 he had made Uyo a capital city. Then His Excellency Governor Udom Emmanuel who came to build on what had been started and you can see that there is a structural slope, nothing that they started that has been abandoned.

In the three series of administration, you can’t name one project that this man started that has been abandoned. They could have been a slow down because of funding, everything that obong Attah started that Godswill couldn’t complete, which I think basically was the science park, Governor Udom came and keyed into that science park, if not for Covid-19, the Chinese who came would have completed it. And then most things that Akpabio started, Udom is tidying them up and starting afresh, but if you look at them side by side, you will know that you cannot build certain things except others have already done. Victor Attah came to lay the foundation, Akpabio began to put the structures, Udom came and is putting the finishing touches, and that is what it takes, that having built the usual structure, having built the roads , the electricity and things of that nature, what next? It was to take our state critically out of the civil service structure where every worker in the state was dependent on what comes from the government. Udom came with the industrialization drive, he is the one laying the foundation for the industrialization that is why it looks slow, yesterday we were in Eastern Obolo to look at the gas and the fertilizer plant, it could take the next 2 or 3 years to complete it, but it will be completed. Now, you look at the deep seaport, in the time of Godswill Obot Akpabio, they did their best, Udom has gotten the approval , now the construction may not be completed in his own time but it will be completed, so there is a slope.

Now, what we’ve seen in Akwa Ibom state from 1999 till date is that there’s been a flow in leadership, there’s been a flow in infrastructure, all the projects and all the systems has a level of continuity and believe me, I can join His Excellency Nyesom Wike, to say that PDP is the party in Nigeria that does projects from foundation laying to commissioning. Go round, they are doing extremely well. If you come to the south-south Nigeria, most of the commissioning of projects in Akwa Ibom State, Delta State, Rivers State, Edo state, it is not common in other places, so for PDP and Akwa Ibom State, we’ve done extremely well. Could it have been better? Yes, but then you also look at the funding, his Excellency Obong Attah fought for 13 percent, it was granted in the days of Godswill. I will put it this way, he was in a hurry to get a lot of things done, a lot done, a lot left undone, but at the end of it, Udom has continued in those things , look at Tropicana, a lot of money was put in, the mall is today working, I have authority of His Excellency to discuss with investors to take up the hotel because government is having so much in its hands, we are engaging a private investor who has  the resources to take up the hotel and complete it.

Now if you invest money in a sea and its stuck what you do is to take a reappraisal, look at what you did, could you have done it better? This we did and we discovered that if we were to do it the government way, more funds will have to be sunk in and don’t also forget the management, government is not well positioned to manage what should be managed by private sector. If you ask me as a person, I am very comfortable with the fact that every venture of government that is revenue driving, its business should be done in partnership with the private sector. They have the expertise, they have the skills and the management capacity. By the next one month, we will complete the transaction with the investor coming in to take the hotel, the only thing that will be left in that place will be the conference center and I can tell you that when we have succeeded with the hotel we will take the conference center. It will not be wise to take all of them at the same time and end up not completing them so we take the hotel first and we are sure that if the hotel comes now, we will have complete patronage, we can take the conference center later.

Let me ask, that size of the conference center, if the businesses around there are not in place and we complete the conference center, what will be the use? Business investment requires that you do some analysis because there should be returns on investments. It’s not just, oh we should have this, how do you maintain that? If we were the one managing Tropicana mall, probably now they would say, come and buy diesel, bulb is leaking, come and repair this and that, but now that a private sector person is running it with minimal government presence, that place is doing fine. That’s what we want to do with the hotel. Look at Le Meridien, 10 to 12 years after its creation, we needed to have a turn around to clean up. I am of the school of thought that if we do it like a government thing, it will be abused and so we brought in management expert and people misinterpreted it, but no government money is lost, no government money was taken in. we brought in experts who manage hotels and they started and 7 to 8 months after they took over, they took over in October and this is May- 7 months, I can tell you that they’ve done their Job.

A lot of people feel that Ibom Air is a private concern that the government is just fronting.

No. Ibom Air is 99.9 percent owned by Akwa Ibom state government but privately managed, you can take it to the bank. Quote me and confront me anytime. I cannot stay in my office as chief of staff and send a note with a CV to the MD to employ a particular person that could have been done for political reason even if the person is not qualified. You can’t work in Ibom Air until you are qualified and if you work in Ibom Air and you’re not doing well, the management sacks you without restrictions. Let me tell you, if I send a note to a company like Ibom Air to recruit my person and the person misbehaves you know they will be that restriction of how will chief of staff feel, how will this person feel, but if you misbehave in Ibom Air, I have once or twice reported a staff, a crew member, who didn’t do his job well, I called the MD and told him, this person is shutting down our business and believe you me, immediately after, the crew member was brought down. The station manager in Uyo sometime earlier was not doing well but today, that management is doing fine, doing what they know how to do well. They won a national award not long ago. Most business men use Ibom Air because of their time consciousness. The aircrafts are clean, and tomorrow we are receiving the latest series of 200 series of boeing with 140 seats, by tomorrow morning the two of them will fly into Uyo. I will tell you that the flow of that businesses would have been stalled if the business was not making progress and the international community would have been very uncomfortable. So I can give you the guarantee that the government owns Ibom Air and they ceded the management into private hands. Any business you leave in the hands of the government, the fear is that incompetent hands will come in through the back door to do the job they are not qualified to do and there is bound to be a lot of errors.

Talking about industrialization, Akwa Ibom State is named amongst the 12 states without a PPP, that is public private partnership structure, how will these investment work and bring the expected return on investment without a structure?

I don’t know what is meant by structure, I don’t know if there’s any state that has set up a particular structure but what I do understand is that any business Akwa Ibom state government has a stake, there is a memorandum of understanding. Something like, what percentage of this business is the share of Akwa Ibom State, can somebody now say that Ibom Air that is running there does not have a structure?

Sir, do you think the process of ceding this company to private management is…?

Not ceding, they are owned by Akwa Ibom state government.

But do you think the process would have been more transparent?

Transparent if you’re doing a partnership, you own the business, Ibom is owned by Akwa Ibom State, the government says we are not running it under the civil service structure, but then, is the md of Ibom Air not an Akwa Ibom son? He is an Akwa Ibomite but he is there because of his expertise, government now tells him, every other person that must work here must work here under the atmosphere of the private sector setting, the MD is an Akwa Ibom son, the chairman of that company is an Akwa Ibom son, all the members of the board are from here, except for a few experts that we brought in to add value so we are not doing partnership, it is 100 percent owned by us but we are saying that the management should have free hands to run the business on behalf of government.

Partnership is the one that you own a percentage, I own a percentage and we come into an agreement, it is not so in this case, it is 100 percent owned by the state. If you’re talking about flower mill and the syringe factory, those are private companies that Akwa Ibom state has a percentage by giving an operating environment to make them comfortable and the investment protected. And since the owners have a greater share, they are the one running the company with their expertise, we just buy shares into the company and allow them to run, providing them enabling environment. Let me point out something to you, we are living in a society that even if someone is not competent to do a job, they want him to do it to reflect some political leverage or structure and the losers of that error is the people. That the honest truth. It is like you bringing non-engineers to build a bridge because they must be representatives from every location, there must be local content. We have a bridge to build in Ikot Abasi and you say an Ikot Abasi son must build it and then you go and bring a non-engineer, do you know who will suffer? It is the people that will crash into the bridge. Every field has certain ingredients that if you’re an outsider, you cannot know, I will tell everybody that ibom deep seaport is coming to Akwa Ibom State, the governor has gotten approval,

But Sir, are we prepared? Do we know what the content of a port is? 

The government is preparing the future for Akwa Ibom State, but is the government doing enough to prepare people for this future?

The people that the government is preparing the future for should also be ready for the future that we are preparing for them. If I come to tell you I won’t give you money but I will train you, will you be ready to go through some pains for the training for the future that will be secured? I have spent 24 years in the custom and I can tell you that I have knowledge of how the ports operate because I was not just a custom officer, I was an insider. So if I say I am going to organise a training but may not have the resources to pay the trainees every day to come for the training, will people be willing to tie their belly for a season and get the training to prepare for the port? Except you are determined to be a part of that future, it’s not going to work. Let me tell you a sad story, many of our people are not willing to give their time to do what is important to secure the future, I have the understanding that in the absence of work, God has nothing to bless, the bible says God will bless the work of our hands. But where there is no work, what is God going to bless? Now if you decide to go to the church and do fasting which I am not against, I participate in them but you don’t have a work to present before God to bless, then you are the error, not God.

The deep seaport is coming in, if you ask Ubong Ekefre- the former transition chairman of Mkpat Enin, I went to Eket senatorial District, I saw the potentials, that time we had not gotten approval for the deep sea port, but I was an insider to the efforts of the government that it was eventually going to be given, I now went to start talking to our people that in our locality there we have lots of potentials that were not harnessing, Senator Helen Esuene was in attendance, we did that program for 3 days but to my amazement, they said it was for my senate ambition, so I asked Ubong Ekefre to shut it down. But who are the losers? Our core communities, because I have content that I would have placed before them and we begin to analyze and begin to do those trainings. Sometimes what I know that is in me can change your future, because there is nothing as powerful as knowledge. If I download what I have for the seaport, believe you me, the story will be different. His Excellency had directed a few of us who are into clearing in Lagos to begin to prepare the documentation of that seaport, we’ve done it but you see we are running a system where every time you want people to gather to be trained, they will expect envelopes at the end of the meeting.

Cuts in) because it is from government and a culture that has been developed overtime.

But must government continue that way? Must we continue in what is wrong? This is what is the restriction that if I have stuffs to deliver and I consider the cost to me even when it is going to be for the benefit of the people, you know what I do, I shut down and I stay on my own so that I don’t call a meeting and I am not able to fund and then it becomes a problem. So if you ask me, I think the best thing is for the people to prepare themselves for the future and there is no greatness without a price. Now let me tell you, everybody in this room must have been a graduate of one university or the other, the way a guy who wants a first class will prepare from first year is different from a guy who just wants to graduate. Greatness has a price and if you want it you must pay for it, the guy who just wants to graduate goes to every party and does minimal jobs and they dash him a 2.2 or if he is unlucky a third class, and then goes and do a post graduate diploma, but the other will be called a book worm who lives in the library and that is because he wants to make a first class.

Are you in a position to talk about the relocation of the seaport from Mbo? Is there really a relocation?

There is no relocation, if you want me to prove to you, I can that there is no relocation. There is no possibility in real terms that the deep seaport would have been in the swamp of Onne, if you build the sea port there, it won’t even be a deep seaport, it will be an ordinary seaport, it is called a deep seaport because of the depth, so if you monitor the tide at Ibeno, you will see the difference, that deep water- blue is different from the estuary water of Onne, but what government has done is, let the seaport be where the depth can allow the vessels to pass without dredging deep, but the state government has gone over to do Ibom industrial city that covers the whole after Ibom deep seaport to the end of Mbo. That entire swamp will be taken over so that the industrial city will be built there, so what is the debate about? The deep seaport is not just that place that a ship will pass, you know the ship comes to sea side that is anchored, that is what they are calling the sea port, it is wrong, that is called the anchorage for a port that does the discharge.

In Apapa, we call it the seaside. If you remove the content of the ship from the sea side, customs don’t work at the seaside, these contents, containers most times are transferred to terminals, so the terminals and where the deep sea port will be are completely different from what the discharge point of the vessel will be. If the vessels pass here and they remove the content of the sea and drop it here, you cannot do customs clearance or processes because of those mighty cranes that are moving there. It is called restricted area, and that is what they are calling the deep seaport and it is wrong. The seaport is the entire operational area that will be covered by this process of port operations so that simple location where the ship will come to pass is at Ibeno, that is where we have the 14 meter depth. If you take it to any other location, you cannot even call it a deep seaport, you will not even have a seaport because you will have to be dredging from time to time.

The port in Calabar suffered that as a case where there had to be transshipment from bigger vessels that stays in the high waters in the Atlantic Ocean and they use small vessels to bring in the containers, it’s not lucrative that’s why the port is not functioning. But is the Mbo area part of this port operation? Absolutely yes! The headquarters of Ibom deep seaport, the customs command structure and Immigration is in Mbo area, so instruction will flow from there, the only debate they are having is the seaside where the vessel will pass, that’s all, and that does not constitute board operations. You and I will never have access to that site except there’s an emergency because it’s a restricted area because you have this massive cranes that if the hydraulic of that crane fails, they won’t even find anything called you, because that container dropping on you will crush you and you will be part of the ground permanently, that is what they are calling the seaport and that’s wrong. The deep seaport is the entire area of port operations. So the entire of Ibeno axis to the end of Mbo is part of this deep seaport, but the whole story of the relocation which I don’t even believe there is such a word is the seaside where the ship will pass, if they don’t take it from where the depth is 14 meters plus at Ibeno, then we are not having a deep seaport. We will have a port that we will be dredging for the remaining part of our lives and that port will fail.

That puts ease to the pains of, even though my concerns seem to be what government is doing to communicate this especially to the troubled people of Ibaka who feel that the port had been renamed and that something has been taken away from them.

What is the concept of Ibaka? Ibaka is a location. All the things that we are doing is in Akwa Ibom State, the deep seaport is not just for the people of Ibaka, we have Ibom Air, we have Ibom deep seaport, most of the things we are doing is Ibom meaning it’s for the entirety of Akwa Ibom State. So the name shouldn’t be the issue, the issue should be the people of Mbo, are they doing enough to be partakers of this deep seaport or we are fighting about location, I can come from Onna, there is no sea directly to where I come from in Ikot Edi along east-west road but I strategize and I gather my resources ready to grab the opportunities. And yes, I’m seriously documenting that once they show up there, I will part of those that will provide logistics. Now that is what should concern us, nobody in Ibaka or in Ibeno will tell me not to bring in trailers to supply materials or to take out containers from the deep seaport. The question is, do I have the capacity, can I convince the clientele, my boys use to go to Onne to do clearing, nobody ever told him in Onne, oh kayode, you’re from Oyo state and the owner of this company is from Akwa Ibom State, you cannot do business in Onne, I do lots of business in Onne, the question shouldn’t  even be about the name, the question should be, how ready are we to take this thing by storm and become beneficiaries of this thing that God has given to us.

Do you see  the state of insecurities in most  parts of the countries as seen in recent times as threatening, do you think it’s a threat our democracy?

Well, I think I will be pretending if I say I am not conscious of the crisis all over the country, in the days of His Excellency, President Jonathan, when the problem started it was confined to the north-east, Borno, a little in Adamawa, that axis and then there were contending them there. By the time they made attempt to enter Abuja, they were fought back. Now the name has changed from Boko Haram, they call them bandits, some of them herdsmen. It is a major issue that no Nigerian can pretend about and that is what has made the sub nationality to rise up. There is insecurity in every part of Nigeria but we are lucky in Akwa Ibom State that the few cases of burning police posts and killing few policemen have been carefully handled by government. But believe you me there is agitation everywhere in the country that we are losing it where the president will say that anybody found with AK47 gun should be shot and that order has not been carried. This perhaps forced the governor of Benue state to tell his people to resort to self-help, he is advising them to carry dane guns, it is affecting everybody.

We cannot talk about democracy without talking about politics, I will take you to politics and ultimately the question of 2023 comes up, talk to me about how the Akwa Ibom State governor whom you serve as a chief of staff would want to arrange his succession plan.

Well, I think the governor has said a lot on this but I think the question is that we as human beings are completely are impatient. I remember in the days of His Excellency Godswill Obot Akpabio in 2013, when some of us had to come to be part of what is going on today. His Excellency Governor Udom has said something very clearly and I see that you could have listened to him, he says that he has no plans for a third term, meaning that he is not looking for anybody to come and do his bidding after he is gone and then the governor goes on to say, I’m waiting for God to speak to me because he believes that God brought him, don’t be offended but let me tell you what I believe, once has He spoken, twice have I heard that power belongs to God and He gives it to whomever He will. The governor has said clearly that he is waiting for God to give him directions on who will take over from him and since it is God who reigns in the affairs of men, I think we should allow him if it is the will of God, whoever God brings, you and I or nobody in this state will be able to stand against it, but if it is not, that’s when we will be able to stand up. In the interim we should give the governor the benefit of doubt to see who God will direct him to and if it is God, everybody will have an understanding, everybody will key in easily but now we are doubting him and then we are saying there is no time but Godswill brought him in August 2013 and it’s not even yet August, we still have some months. So I think the governor should be believed and given time. It is never too late because if God is involved, God can never come late. For me, he has said two critical things, he has no plan to have a puppet where he will rule from wherever he is outside government house, a good step because that is usually the fear of people.