From Kemi Yesufu, Abuja
Austin Chukwukere is the Deputy Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Finance. In this interview, he speaks on why the bill for the devolution of power to states was rejected by the National Assembly. The lawmaker who also chairs the Committee on Ecology, equally spoke on two years of the of the House and the chances of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the governorship elections in Imo State, come, 2019.
Members of the National Assembly have spent half of their four year term, how would you assess the performance of the 8th Assembly?
I think we have performed creditably well, especially if you analyse our time in the context of the prevailing economic situation. But I would prefer to speak for myself or maybe you can use my experience as one of the 360 members of the House to judge. I, like many others have tried our outmost best to bring to fore, some of the challenges our people face. For my people in Ideato North/Ideato South Federal Constituency of Imo State, we have been dealing with the issue of soil erosion for years. And as you may know, a long period of uncontrolled erosion has led to our struggling with bad roads. Indeed, we have suffered years of a dearth of federal intervention. What I have done, since we came in, is to talk about these issues, trying to follow up federal ministries and agencies, saddled with the responsibility of intervening in erosion control and road rehabilitation. I know the people like to see projects on the ground almost as soon as legislators come into office. But you know that anything that has to do with government takes time. I therefore have tried to keep my people informed of every step and I believe that soon, we will begin to see things happen. Going back to our performance as a House, you could say one of the highpoints was the day we considered the bills presented to amend the constitution. You saw for yourselves how the House spoke on issues through how members voted. Yes, there were amendments people wanted to scale through and majority of members voted in favour of them. But in some cases, we didn’t get the number of votes for the bills to scale through as stated in the constitution.
A number of groups, the Ohaneze Ndigbo inclusive have expressed their displeasure over the rejection of the bill for devolution of power. What’s your reaction?
We have considered and passed the bills at the level of the National Assembly, the next step is to send the document to the state houses of assembly. They will have to vote because, two-third majority of the states have to pass all the bills, that we have passed and then they will be transmitted to the president for assent. We are hoping that by the reactions, we are getting, majority of the states will come through on this. I should think states should give us their full support, because majority of the amendments are issues that have to do with the survival and future of our country. We are talking about bills like, the Not Too Young Bill and financial autonomy for the Local Government. We are hoping that by September/October we would have gotten responses from the states and that’s why we ensured that we completed work on the amendment process before we went on holidays.
On the issues of bills that people expected the National Assembly to pass, such as the devolution of power to states, it’s not like we didn’t lobby our colleagues. It’s one thing to agree to vote for an amendment, it’s another thing to vote for the amendment. Really it’s difficult to follow through how colleagues voted, when their votes are cast by secret ballot. So people voted according to their minds. You saw that sometimes the Speaker would wonder aloud, why some amendments didn’t scale through. On the issue of state creation and boundary adjustment, you would see that majority voted in favour of the amendment. The problem was that, some members didn’t fully understand that the amendment was not about creating states. It was about stating who votes during state creation. But like I have said before, people shouldn’t see some of the failed amendments as a total rejection by the National Assembly. These bills got majority backing, but the votes didn’t reach the threshold as required by the constitution.
Why do you think areas like your constituency hardly receive help from states, despite their getting ecological funds?
Of recent most states have been asking that they should be given their ecological fund plan from the national ecological fund pool. What it means is that, either they have not been receiving it all along or that the funds haven’t been given them with clear distinction as to what it is for. When states come for Federal Account Allocation Committee (meeting), they get their allocations and they probably don’t get details of what these monies are meant for. So, most states may have been taking part of their ecological fund without knowing that it is meant for ecological projects and they end up using them for other sectors, leaving the ecological problem to worsen by the day. But I believe that going forward, money meant for the states to deal with ecological problems will be rightly described.
Already, observers are speculating on Imo 2019. Do you see the All Progressives Congress (APC) producing Governor Rochas Okorocha’s successor?
I always tell people that on election matters, only God decides what happens. Most times, people speculate and they carry out projections, yet, some of them don’t even live to see how well they did with their projections. Because of this, I always like to be cautious, when it comes to talking about elections that are still years ahead. Our lives are not in our hands, it is God that decides on what He does with our lives. But, I would say that the (APC), will be rewarded for all the work it has done. I see the people of Imo returning the APC back to the government House, because they have never had it so good. I don’t see what a party like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which governed the state for years has to show. You cannot compare what the PDP did for 16 years, to what APC has achieved in two terms. And to whom much is given, much is expected. The APC, which has given Imo people so much would expect them to reciprocate the gesture by returning it to power in 2019.