From Uchenna Inya, Abakaliki
Nkemkanma Kama represents Ohaozara/Onicha/Ivo Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives. He spoke on some issues including his romance with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), policies of the Federal Government, defection of some politicians to the APC and why he remains in the Labour Party (LP) among other issues.
You are one year in the National Assembly; what will you say are your achievements?
I don’t even know where to start. The most important thing is that I have to thank God that I have been there for a year. What have we achieved so far? Honestly, I wouldn’t say that much have been achieved but we know that a whole lot will be achieved going forward. We have done the ones within our control; I know we’ve done boreholes within the communities that make up Ohaozara/Onicha/Ivo Federal Constituency. We had a healthcare programme that affected 16,500 people, our Christmas palliative was out of town because we did a lot for the communities across board; we had stipend for indigent people, we tried to help, school fees, medicals apart from the one I mentioned earlier which was the general one. There are a whole lot of them that we did individually, we have given farm inputs to 400 women. So, we have done much, it’s just that our expectations for our people have not been met but by God’s grace, a whole lot will be done as we are going forward. Like I have always said, very soon, Ohaozara/Onicha/ Ivo Federal Constituency will be a construction site based on the HIPE agenda that we are working with; Health, Infrastructure, Poverty Alleviation and Education. In all these things, we are trying to make sure that our people are happy even as scholarship is going on. So, we have done a whole lot for our people and we will continue to do our best.
You came from a party that is like an orphan in the state, how are you coping?
Honestly, I am not an orphan, I have somebody that I call native intelligence. I call him native intelligence because he has done extremely well and that’s my governor, His Excellency, Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru who doesn’t discriminate; he backs me in everything I do. He never treated me differently as somebody from another party which never existed. In the whole of Ebonyi State, the governor has brought everybody together and nobody is talking about party. So, please, we don’t discuss parties, the governor has broken that jinx. He sees me as Kama, he just wants me to perform. So, I am not a political orphan, I have father, I have powers. Everybody is in tune with what is going on in the state; there is no division, there is no discrimination, there is no crisis. The governor made it so and we are all happy for it.
Your romance with APC and the present administration in the state is overwhelming. Are you trying to join the party?
People have been talking about my closeness with the APC and everything, it’s interesting actually. I want to give you a little background so that it will guide you. First and foremost, I am an APC person in the first instance. I want us to understand that I came from APC. I was in APC, there was no division between me and APC and I never quarreled with APC. I never had an issue with APC, I had no issues with the APC whatsoever in the first instance. So, there is no way when there is nothing broken to be parting. I just woke up one day and decided to run an election on a different platform, it doesn’t affect my relationship with where I am coming from and it shouldn’t affect the relationship of where I am coming from. So, my closeness to APC, to me is a great advantage for us. The most important thing it has done is that you have never heard of any clashes in Ohaozara/Onicha/Ivo Federal Constituency because of party differences and everything. During our Christmas palliative, we called everybody as long as you are from Ohaozara/Onicha/Ivo Federal Constituency, you took part. So, there was no division to say you are from PDP, APC and all that. Like I said, it doesn’t matter whether you are APC or whatever, I am in tandem, my own is unity in my constituency to make sure that everything goes well. People talking about APC this, APC that, it doesn’t come up.
But one of your boys, Ifeanyi Ogba who is representing Onicha East State Constituency under the Labour Party has defected to the APC…?
When you say your boy, it’s a term that doesn’t exist because nobody is anybody’s boy. Everybody is a full-blown man who takes the responsibility to do whatever he wants to do. Yes, Ifeanyi Ogba is now in APC, that is a path he has chosen to toe and he has his reasons. Me, I believe that whatever we do, we have our reasons for doing so. So, he has his reasons for doing what he did but for me, Kama, I am not moving anywhere and it is obvious to everybody. I have no reason to move. If you like, you be in ANPP, he doesn’t care, all he does is to bring people together and merge everybody to become one. The governor is more interested in your performance than wherever you are coming from, he just wants you to perform. As long as you are performing, it also helps him to take away pressure from him. All he expects everybody is to work and perform and he is okay with it. So, he is not talking about party.
People are predicting that Governor Nwifuru and his predecessor, Sen. David Umahi will still have problems despite their solid relationship. What is your take on this?
We have terrible set of people and they have decided that the only way they can benefit is to create problems between these two men. These people predicting crisis between the governor and his predecessor are the worst set of people, they don’t like the relative peace we are all enjoying in the state because of the unity between the governor and his predecessor. You can see that almost all the former governors, former SGF Anyim Pius Anyim, my own father, everybody is in the same boat and people are now happy. Those that want the governor and the Minister of Works to have a problem want it for their own selfish interest. They want a problem so that they can start manipulating it but unfortunately, these two great men know themselves and they have decided that nothing will come in between them. There are people who are hell bent that these two men should quarrel but the governor and the Minister are very sensible and it can’t work for those looking for quarrel between them.
Do you think that there is viable opposition in the National Assembly to check some of the policies of the Federal Government that may not be in tandem with your party manifesto?
I have realized something concerning opposition. Sometimes, people want you to be in opposition for being in opposition’s sake; they don’t want you to look beyond being in a different party. They just want you to be doing, I am in opposition, whatever comes out, I will oppose whether it is good or bad.
Now, do you have a number to oppose a legislature you don’t feel comfortable about? One thing I discovered in the legislature is lobby, it exists even in America. Lobbying can get anything done in this world and that is one thing that people fail to realize. Even as an opposition, when the lobbyists come, they come up to you, it’s about who is running it, who is in the Executive, what he wants, how does he want to go about it. This is why it seems there is no much in-fighting, not really because there is no opposition but because there’re people who do soft-landing and we have challenged them. Like the electricity tariff thing, I stood up and talked about it and the House is looking at it, a whole lot is going on actually. When I raised the motion on the electricity tariff, the Orosanye Report, the committee looked at it and advised the government and told the government look, this is not the will of the people, it doesn’t augur well. Remember, when they brought up the security levy thing, nobody knew how it died, nobody knew how the President woke up and said stop it. The country is going through so much right now, so, taxing the people the more is probably not the right way. Rather, they should try and see a way to cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal; we have not recovered from the subsidy removal and then the floating of the Naira somehow. All these are part of the things that have almost affected everything that we are doing. But you know sometimes it gets worst before it gets better. If the policies being implemented are followed to the letter without sabotage, if the intensions are genuine for the people, I believe things will change.
How would you assess the government of President Bola Tinubu in one year?
Like I said, one of the greatest things the government did was the removal of the subsidy because it’s a monster actually but I have a problem with the implementation of the removal. One, I taught that there shall be a sensitization, the procedure to me is just where I have a problem. I am an advocate of the removal of the fuel subsidy. I thought Buhari would have done that in his regime, we thought that this would have been done long time ago. By now, this whole thing would have died down, the effect of it would have gone but unfortunately, he didn’t do it. The President should have planned for the removal, the effects but what we did was that we removed it before we start planning for the effects of it. This created a vacuum because it’s a big vacuum, we started from Z instead of A-Z and there are other policies being implemented, my problem with some of these things like I have always said is sometimes timing. For instance, we have not finished the effects of the removal of the fuel subsidy and your electricity is a no-go area for anybody now and you are adding a tariff thing. It might be a proper thing to do but timing again is very important. This is a major problem with some of the policies being implemented but these are the things we need to do for the country to move forward but you should also take cognizance of the feelings of the people, you step one, stabilize it, step two, stabilize it, then you move to step three gradually. There should be a stabilization, you can’t add fuel to a burning fire.