By Lawrence Mpama
The former Senate Leader of Nigeria’s 7th senate, former chairman of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Pro Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), distinguished Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, (SAN) is always a delight to talk with. Over the weekend, the Publisher and Managing Editor of Cross Atlantic Newspaper, and some senior journalists met with him in his resident after a long time to interact with him. He bears his mind on issues affecting some core sectors of the nation, like education, politics, infrastructures and other sundry issues. We bring you excerpt from that meeting, read on:
Q: How will you assess the administration of your friend, the governor of Cross River, Senator Prince Bassey Otu?
Ans: The administration of Senator Bassey Otu is resetting governance to traditional methods of governance that we are familiar with.You know, the eight years before him, it was eight years of experimentation of all sorts of styles. It was eight years of experiments. And those experiments have not been subjected to any empirical studies. So Otu is just trying to reset the system back to the kind of governance that we were taught in school.
Infrastructural Decay: Calabar- Itu Road
The erudite legal luminary went memory lane and recounted how our roads were then, and what is obtainable today, hear him, “I started practice, in Ogoja in 1979 before I relocated to Calabar in 1981. Ogoja to Calabar was 2 hours. Ogoja- Ikom was 35 minutes. Ikom Calabar was 1 hour 25 minutes. Ogoja to Obudu was 30 minutes.Obudu to Ikom was 35 minutes. And Calabar to Obudu was also exactly two hours. When I moved to Calabar, the bulk of my practice was in today’s Akwa Ibom, then Akwa Ibom was still part of Cross River. It was so because most of our cases were in Eket. Eket to Calabar was 60 minutes, Ikot Ekpene was 60 minutes, Aba was 1 hour 20 minutes and there was no airport in Uyo. If you missed your flight in calabar, you rushed to Port Harcourt, it was exactly two hours. I remember there was a case I was doing with the late Dr. Mudiaga Ojie, he was one of the earliest SAN and President of NBA but he was based in Warri and I went to court with him in Warri. I left Calabar that morning, went to court with him in warri, came back to Calabar and still played tennis. Can you try it now?We did not have a Court of Appeal in Calabar until 1999. So the court of appeal was in Enugu and we’ll go to Enugu and come back. We never slept in Enugu.We go to Enugu, finish our case and come back same day.
The distinguished continued, “today, I don’t know if there is anywhere in the south you can do that now. We used to drive with Professor Roland (Ndoma-Egba) from Lagos to Calabar, Lagos to Eket, where the old man was. It was seven or eight hours but today, where will you go to in the south that will take you less than a day?
He asserted that there is general decay in infrastructure, and concluded that it is not only Calabar – Itu road that need urgent attention, but nearly all the roads in the region are in a complete state of disrepair ” it is not just the Calabar-Itu road. If you try to move from Onne in Port Harcourt to the town, it’s like half a day’s drive. It is a national collapse of infrastructure. This is a distance that should take you ordinarily, 10, 15 minutes, you know.
HOW Does He Assessed Education in Nigeria
The former Senate Leader averred to the fact that, “the real resource or the real wealth of any nation is not in its natural resources or natural endowments.The real wealth of any nation is in its young men and women, his youth. And those youth are a resource only when they are educated or they are skilled and they are empowered. But if they are not educated and they are not skilled or empowered, they are no longer a resource.They become a cause, you know.” “If you look at all those countries that have done well, you take a country like Japan, or take Israel, for instance, or take Taiwan, or take South Korea, what natural endowments do they have?.Actually, zero. But today they dominate the world. Why? It is because of Education.See where China is with technology. Because they have developed an educational system, an educational curriculum that trains you to confront the challenges of not just today, but the challenges of tomorrow. Education that gives you a futuristic perspective of global development.”
In conclusion, the elder statesman stated the obvious, “that education is key, it is the window to our tomorrow. And then for me I went into education sector by just share circumstances. You know, my wife was running a school. It was when she passed on and I was afraid that there was going to be a gap in the school, because then, she was physically present, you know, and dominated how the school taught. So I needed to move in immediately as a way of reassuring the parents that, look, you still have the same kind of attention that you had when Madam was alive. So I now got involved and the school is nursery, primary and secondary.So at least I now had a background at that level of education until this university site now came. So I have a comprehensive picture of what the problems in education are right now”.
AI And Education In Nigeria
Again, the erudite senior advocate did not minced words on our backwardness as far as technological driven education is concerned. “Today you have artificial intelligent (AI). It’s a new thing in town, artificial intelligence, you know, it has altered virtually everything. How we even approach learning now. So AI has even become another challenge.The other day, I wanted to write something on late Justice Binang. He was a famous Judge, but I just used AI and said, give me something on Justice James Binang. In two seconds, I had two full pages. Two full pages, including his village and everything.
He went further to states that, “if we don’t begin now, because we already are left behind, our budgetary provision is not sufficient to even take us to the UN threshold of 15 percent, we are still very far behind.You know, so there is a challenge to education today. And while we are struggling with where we are, the world is moving ahead. So the gap between us and the rest of the world will just keep widening, so we must do something. Why we are sitting here now sharing ideas and sharing thoughts is because we went to school.
He ended by advising us to brace up quickly, if we were to ever go near the modern educational tech. “Here we are still struggling with courses like classics and all those things.Yes, that is source of knowledge, but today’s world and tomorrow’s world will be technology driven. I sat with a gentleman on a flight from the US to London some three, four years back, and he turned out to be a University professor in the US. When we got talking and I got to know he was a professor, I said to him, Prof. how will the school curriculum in the US look like in the next five years?He said, victor, I can’t tell you of how the curriculum of my own University will look like in the next 12 months. I can’t even tell you because it’s evolving so very quickly.”
What would you say is the success story of FUOYE?
Well, first, it is the most subscribed public university. It is not the University that says so, it is JAMB. It is JAMB that processes admissions that has said we are the fourth most subscribed public university. So the question will be why has the university become so attractive? The quality of its academic offerings and I think all their courses are fully accredited by National Universities Commission
And then yes, we still have deficit in terms of infrastructure. There’s a gap. I’ll give you the most obvious one which is accommodation.The students live in the various villages, because we don’t have enough on campus accommodation.
Two, we don’t have any staff quarters of any kind. What makes a university a University is that it is essentially a community. There’s academic work going on or no academic work going on. It’s a community of people seeking knowledge. And that is why staff clubs are very important in the University because that is where people need to unwine. So there is that challenge of infrastructure, in the classrooms we are still trying to catch up. We have achieved quite a lot in 14?years and if you check the last visitation panel report as the basis, you would see how much has been achieved.
On sexual harassment at FUOYE
The issue of sexual harassment, the University Governing Council set up a committee to investigate and I was told two weeks ago when we had our convocation that the report was ready but because of the week long activities of the convocation, we could not take the report . So the committee formerly asked for an extension of time which we granted and I am hoping that we will have an emergency meeting very shortly to consider the report and close that matter. I am anxious to close that matter because the University is now being defined by that allegation of that sexual harassment rather than its other achievements. We need to put that matter behind us.
The issue of State Creation
I think it is legitimate to aspire or agitate for a new state. But I think we should remain conscious of the provisions of the constitution and move beyond mere agitation to making sure that we are able to meet the requirements of the constitution because there are constitutional provisions .
We also have the mechanics for achieving those provisions which the agitators of the Ogoja state should keep their eyes on. It is their legitimate entitlement to agitate for a new state but should remain conscious of the constitutional provisions.
Politics and your plans for 2027
I haven’t left politics. I’m in politics. My only plan now is to continue talking for my people.You see, people mistake politics for holding office, elective office or appointive office. When last did Chief Edwin Clark hold any office? Since in the days of Gowon, now he just died at 97. So for almost 50 years, he did not hold any office, but he was the voice of his people. The same thing with Chief Tony Anenih. So you don’t need to hold an office to be involved in speaking for your people.
God did not take me to this level for me to go and keep quiet, it’s too late. I remember in 2019, when I tried to go back to the Senate when then President Buhari said I should go back to the senate. He told only me and nobody around him. I had a meeting in Ikom and somebody asked when I would retire. I asked why and he said, I am too old. My classmates who are still in service, are Justices of the Supreme court and they did not retire. Even those teaching in universities have not retired.
When ask his plan for 2027, the distinguished has this to say, “I do not know what 2027 would bring because I have been everything that I did not plan to be and I have never been anything that I planned to be but I will still be talking for my people, whether from the palace or from the trench.”
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