Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu (APC Abia North) says the 9th National Assembly will not serve as rubber stamp to President Muhammadu Buhari in any way. Taiye Odewale writes.
Are you not worried that the offices of senators are not ready one month after inauguration?
For the offices even on my part, I am still trying to get it up. I still operate from the office of the Senate President, Distinguished Senator Ahmad Lawan, whenever we are out of the plenary till I come back to my personal office here in Mabushi by 8pm or any time the Senate President leaves.
I think it is something the Clerk of the National Assembly has explained to us that they are looking into it and that once we go on recess they would be able to fix the National Assembly as regards properly equipping the offices.
President Buhari hosted the principal officers of the National Assembly to a dinner and was talking about appointing people he can trust, but months after his inauguration not even the Senate is sure of getting his ministerial list before the coming long recess, what is the situation?
I don’t think so. May be you did not hear the president well. He is making all efforts to get the list to the National Assembly. At least I was in the room, it is not good to misquote the president. I am sure that list would be ready very soon, sooner than you think. The president said that he is making wider consultations that in the last tenure he was just handed over the list by party people to appoint but now he is making a background check on everyone of them to make sure they are people he can work with.
Within the last 21 years you have been one of the key players at the national level on the workings of the Nigerian project but with the problem of systemic dis-functionality afflicting the project in terms of over centralization of power, resources and responsibilities of governance at the centre, do you think the project can give the desired results as it is , in other federations?
What I want to assure you people is that for me and other colleagues in the Senate led by Ahmad Lawan, certain changes will come from the senate in making the Nigerian project work or function better.
The reason is that the Senate President is a reformer right from when we were in the university. He was my roommate in the university, we were not in the same class but we were roommates. He has never changed like I have never changed he is supposed to be a comrade he is straightforward.
He also thinks about the people. I believe we are going to bring about a lot of changes than what it used to be in the past but is one thing to recommend desired changes , it is another thing to get them implemented, which to me, requires will and capability.
The 9th Senate is not afraid at all of taking decisions that will better the lots of Nigerians. Many of you have been writing that this Senate is rubber stamp but even President Buhari himself knows that we are not going to be rubber stamp.
We are friends of President Buhari, but we will think more of the Nigerian people and for Ahmad Lawan, Nigerian people come first before friendship with Buhari. For me, such friendship with the president or the executive arm of government should be based on the needs of the Nigerian people.
However, we are not going to openly wear our hand gloves and start exchanging blows with the president because we just want to be independent. No, we need to sit down and agree or disagree and tell him Mr President you cannot do this one because the law says this and that and luckily, President Buhari himself is a respecter of the laws of the land.
Buhari will never ask anybody to go against the law. For example, before the inauguration of the 9th National Assembly when they were working out those that would head the two chambers, the moment they told him that I was not qualified to run for president or deputy president of the senate based on existing rules and traditions, he said they should remove my name from the list of probables.
That is who the man is. He would not look at your face and he owes you no apology he would say but you wanted to go against the law.
Buhari is a leader people greatly misunderstood. I have known him now for 32years him and former President Babangida. He has not changed. Think of it, a man that ruled Nigeria as military Head of State has no house in Abuja or Lagos neither does he have house in Port Harcourt or Ibadan. If you go to his house in Daura, it is the same house, the same small house he built long ago. The television I saw there when I went there last year for Sallah that television must have been bought in 1973.
He detests materialism. The only story you can tell him is to say there are poor people in Aba and you have given them a lot to eat and tarred the roads for them to pass, that is how Buhari will like you not that you have bought a private jet. You cannot go and tell Buhari that story whether he is president or not, he would not hear you because it makes no sense to him. So, the Nigerian people should please be patient with him.
Any comment on the controversial Ruga policy?
When people talk about Ruga, I wonder because in 2001 I did a Ruga in Abia. In Lokpanta I built it and the cows were being sold in Umuahia and Aba. In 2001, I invited the Hausa community and they said Umuahia and Aba needed to decongest.
Where we have shoprite in Umuahia today used to be settlement for Hausa community. The same thing with Aba we had an honest meeting with them and agreed that I will provide them land and water, electricity, everything but this would be your location. I collected five coaster buses to show them the land and if it is agreeable by everyone.
I had meeting with the communities and they agreed in Lokpanta and that is the biggest cow market both South-east and South-south of Nigeria today. So it is about the attitude of people to issues.
Yes, federal government should always do very serious and extensive consultations whenever they want to embark on such issues. It is not just to go and put a deliberate policy and say I want to do Ruga. People in villages don’t understand what Ruga means they will panic and say they want to kill all of them.
Some of us are the largest sellers of cow. I started selling cow as far back as when I was in the university and I am still selling cows till tomorrow because it is profitable. Most of the cows you see are also not owed by Hausa people.
We trade on cows. So people should have information because information is power and power is information.
Few years back you and the two other senators from Abia State: Senators Enyinnaya Abaribe and Theodore Orji- were all in the same political camp before parting ways at different times. Now, the three of you are in the Senate to represent the state, how do you feel and what is the relationship like?
It has been a very faithful movement, you can see that even now within the last few days former Governor Theodore Orji is putting his best better than his first four years. So it is a good development. And you can see that Senator Abaribe is making every effort to do the work given to him very well. We are friends now for the interest of Abia and by extension Nigeria.
There would never be any division in decision-making, what concerns our people and what concerns the Nigerian people we must be together. Interest is the same interest and realise that I was their boss, both of them. I was governor, one was deputy and the other was chief of staff.
They have never given me any course to doubt their loyalty they have always respected me and I have always respected them. That is how we find ourselves in the Senate. There is no division, we are one strong family and it I’ll continue to be one strong family in the senate.
