2015: Evaluate the viability of my vision- Ofuani

In this season of aspirations and declarations in the nation’s unfolding democracy, the name Chief Clement T. Ofuani has continued to resonate in the airwaves and public political discourses, especially being the first aspirant to formally declare his aspiration for the gubernatorial seat of Delta state under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). A former commissioner for economic planning in Delta State, an experienced banker, chartered insurer and chartered accountant, Chief Ofuani unveils his Three-Point Plan for Delta state, explaining how they can be achieved even in the face of challenges. He shares, here, his reasons for offering his incredible potentials to Delta state, stating why he feels confident about his chances to emerge as flag bearer of the party. The picture one gets listening to him is that of a prepared mind resolved on positively affecting his society through an enhanced service pedigree. Below are excerpts of the media chat. 

What are the changes you plan to make in this state, in order to transform it to what it is supposed to be?

The first thing is to realise what exactly government stands for. And my understanding is that government is an enabler; one that creates an enabling environment. Essentially, human society started with individuals doing their own things and at some point, society recognized that it was more efficient for them to cede certain decisions and certain responsibilities about their lives that could be commonly executed, to an agency, or a single power, so that they could face other things, and that is how we came about kingdoms and empires.

And then eventually, we recognized that leaving power to a few individuals as a matter of birthright may not be the best for each society and so we came up with democracy where there is an increasing involvement of all citizens, especially the adult citizens in making these decisions, or at least determining the people who will make these decisions. And so what are these decisions that we should be making on behalf of the people. It’s about how we raise revenue from the citizens, and how we allocate the revenue raised to meet the pressing needs of the society. It is also about how we prioritize spending in a way that we achieve maximum benefits, in other words the best value for every naira spent.

There are also other things such as social behavior in the society. If you have a lot of anti-social behavior prevalent in the society, then that society becomes predominantly dysfunctional. But in a society where anti-social behaviours are punished, then it is likely that there will be better behaved people in that society and it will be more functional. And so, it is the job of government again to provide leadership in terms of the social contract, and directing how people act. And all of these are functions of incentives and motivations. People are motivated to act in a particular manner by the incentives provided. If you look at our society, when the colonialists came, few people went to school and those people became economically better off than those who did not go to school. You didn’t need to coerce families to send their children to school thereafter. However, I hear nowadays  that we now have to coerce people to go to school. I think it means that something is wrong with the incentives that are in place because if people recognize the value of education, you don’t need to coerce them. So I would, for instance look at the kind of incentives that we have in our society, to make sure that those who work hard, those who are skilled, and those who are knowledgeable are the people driving the economy and get rewarded for it, so that others would follow in that direction. I’m just giving this as an example of a different perspective and approach to a problem. So in dealing with every problem that we have, I will have to approach them from a workable practical angle which I think will be more efficient.

So tell us precisely, Why do you want to become governor of Delta state?

Let me state clearly that it is not a matter of what my desire really is. It is a matter of looking at what our society requires at this point, looking at who I am and where I am coming from. It is a matter of turning back to ask yourself what are the characteristics that you want to see in your governor, and putting them in in a job box in other to tick off. You will find that you will be defining me essentially. And I have run this by a number of people and they feel the same way, and so for me, it is really about sacrificing. If it were about my comfort and convenience, this is the last job I want to do. But the society can only be developed by people who understand what needs to be done and are ready to make the sacrifice to make these things happen. It is not going to be an easy job. Anyone that tells you it is going to be an easy job is either lying to you or is ignorant of what the job is really about.

The big question people want to know the answer to is why we should support you. There are so many other aspirants and we need to understand why we should choose you and not any of the other gubernatorial aspirants.

If you listened to or read my declaration statement, I said that if our society wants to see change, then our processes of identifying and selecting our leaders have to be adjusted or reviewed. And what I meant is that simply looking at somebody’s CV and saying that he is Ex this or Ex that is inadequate to recommend the person for the job. We need to be able to evaluate each person on the viability of his vision, previous performance and strength of character. We need to ask whether he is the type of person that wavers, whether he is the type of person that is easily pushed around,  or is  somebody who is steady, spiritually secure, psychologically ready and intellectually sound.

These are, to me, the things that we require. Strength of character, firmness, fairness, integrity, openness, accountability, accessibility, and you can name many more of them. I have seen lots of highly intelligent people with all the good qualifications in this world get into office and into management positions and fail. They fail because there is a character flaw that was not identified at the time he or she was being elected. And this is what I am bringing to the table. That I stood up against big interests at difficult moments and made my decision and position very clear and at the end of the day, I won them over with superior arguments. Being a governor, you are going to face divergent interests and you have to make decisions at every point, one at a time. The question is, what sort of decisions are you going to be making? Are you going to be trading off the poor for the rich, or are you going to stand up to the rich in favour of the poor? These are some of the things that we need to confirm, and I know that I have that strength of character and I have demonstrated that I live my word.

You should consider something, our people are majorly a primordial society given to emotions and sentiments, and it is a big problem apart from what you have identified in terms of character flaw. How do you intend to overcome this primordial tendency on the part of our people? Because our people tend to become unduly emotional and unreasonable, taking short term decisions to solve long term problems.

I totally agree with you that there is a tendency towards being very emotional in these times when we ought to think with our heads, but end up acting our hearts. This is also not really a characteristic of our people as Africans, Deltans or Nigerians. We are a product of our historical experience. There is a tendency to feel more at home with someone who is your kith and kin. It could be either the same skin colour, which becomes a racial problem, or it could be the same language group and it becomes an ethnic problem, or it could be the same local government or senatorial district or zone. As you can see, you can basically classify them in various ways. I also know that the average human being is basically a decent being, and decency attracts people. It’s very attractive. Look at the issue of treating people with decency as I said in my declaration statement that in the course of travelling the length and breadth of Delta state, I sensed the yearning by our people to be treated with dignity but some people will not understand however, I will give you an example. When I wanted to do my declaration, I chose the venue as a hotel where people could be  under a roof  and where they could be calmly seated, because I realised that my declaration was  not going to be heard by only the people there. They represented a sample population that needed to hear me so that it could go out to the rest of the world. I was concerned about their comfort and convenience. We said we would start by 12 noon and we did. Everybody was comfortable. Now, some others took their own declaration to the open field creating the impression that it was about the size of the crowd. They were not concerned about putting people under the harsh weather and the elements, or about the traffic congestion they caused in the town as a result of their activities. So which option demonstrated concern and respect for your dignity? It is this same thing they are doing now that they will do when they get into office. They drive along the streets and believe you should not be on the road because they are passing by. And that is the reason I think it is important for our people to judge us on we  live out our examples.

Let’s have a look at your agenda. What do you have for Deltans?

That is ultimately what it is about. One thing is to have a plan of action and another is to implement it. Nigerians have often been accused of having beautiful plans but failing in the aspect of implementation, and that is why I keep going back to the issue of strength of character. And once you have agreed that I have demonstrated in my life, both in the public and the private sector that I am a man of steel, and I can implement everything I say, then we can start talking about what I have on my agenda. Now, I took the pains over the past three years to ponder on the problems of Deltans, and I have written copiously on most of these areas in over thirty essays on various aspects of our lives, from agriculture, to education, to industrialization to youth unemployment and I have published them on national newspapers and they are on my website. And these are ways which you can use to evaluate me. I then put together my manifesto.  It is a Three-Point Plan for the development of Delta state.

Again, because I know that it is the job of government to provide leadership, both moral and spiritual in directing the people, I take value reorientation as key because unless we have a society that is functional instead of dysfunctional, we can’t build. So that is the first plan, changing our reward system, and changing incentives for people to do the right thing.

The second plan is business competitiveness environment. I chose this because it has already been proved that there is a direct relationship between investment flow and business competitiveness and that there is also a nexus between investment flow and job creation. It is a recognition of the fact that it is the job of government to create an environment that will attract businesses to make profit and in doing so, they will create jobs for our people. What it means is that we now have to look at those societies we are competing with in the global village and ask why should somebody decide to come and invest in Delta state and not in Singapore, or Dubai? We are competing with them for global capital flow, and so we have to look at all those factors. What are the advantages and strengths that we have? I’ll give you a typical example. We have Koko Free Trade Zone, enormous studies have been done across the country that showed that it is one of the best locations for free trade zone. We got presidential approval for it and  there is no reason why we should not step up the implementation, because it has the capability of creating jobs and investment opportunities for the people.

Also, we have the issue of power supply which has reduced our business competitiveness. Now how do we deal with this? We have now liberalized the power industry and permitted states and private sector players to act. Now, if we look at Koko free trade zone, which requires about 130 megawatts to operate, and we know that the supply of power from the national grid to Delta state is far below that, so the issue is; why would anyone want to come and invest there when there is no power supply? But we can create an independent power solution there as a captive market, so that it generates its own electricity  so that whatever power that is being allocated to Delta can then go to the rest of Delta. These are possibilities.

Also, look at our towns, they are very dirty and I don’t know how you feel about them. I spend a lot of time in Abuja which is really  the only livable city we have in Nigeria, and perhaps you could add Calabar to it now. The thing is that we have buildings in our urban centers in Delta just as beautiful if not more beautiful than what you have in Abuja but the general environment is still unattractive. And that is why you see people stepping into Abuja and they don’t want to leave Abuja again. That is the way we ought to make our urban centers here. There should be urban development plans which should be implemented as a matter of law. People should not be allowed to build in certain areas that are not in accordance with the urban development plan. Certain facilities including waste disposal and drainage systems have to be provided so that our cities don’t stink. These are just some of the things that would make someone decide that this is where I want to spend the rest of my life.

The third part of my plan is security. I take the issue of security seriously because we know what is happening to us. It is a failure of the national security architecture that had prior to this period been more directed as show of force. Security was seen only in terms of armed soldiers and policemen on the streets, but now we have people other than our policemen and soldiers who have access to better and more sophisticated weapons than even our soldiers, and they are overrunning the whole place. We need a new security architecture that focuses on intelligence gathering, intelligence analysis and utilization such that crimes are actually nipped in the bud before they occur. Then we will have a safer society. Then we will support it with food security, with plans that improve agricultural production through robust value chain development as is being implemented currently by President Goodluck Jonathan led Federal Government, and of course support it with social security structure, especially with full implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) at our state level, and by then the kind of security challenges we have will begin to diminish.

Very laudable, but how do you think you will bring all these to fruition, especially the aspect of security which is more or less a federal issue. How can the state be made to play a vital role? Another challenge is that of funding since we are still tied to the apron-strings of the crude oil sector which is not in our immediate grasp in terms of control. How do you intend to tackle these challenges?

Let me take Koko Free Trade Zone for example, I’ll develop it without recourse to state revenue because it is an economically viable business activity. We did a study that showed that even if you take a bond to provide the sites and services there including sewerage and electricity, the businesses that are going to be located there will pay for the services and pay off the bond. So you don’t need to put pressure on the federation allocation from the oil revenue or internally generated revenue. It is the same thing with so many other development infrastructure that we will have in our state. There are certain critical infrastructure in our state that we think you must  put 100 percent state resources before you can develop them, but that is not true, especially where business cases can be made for them. You will find out that in going into partnership with the private sector, we can deliver all these with minimal utilization of federation account allocation and internally generated funds.

Then on security, we have to admit that we are evolving. And the lesson for me, is that we have to learn to do things within the ambit of the law. Today we have vigilante services, all across the country, and they are supporting our security system. But the problem there is that we are not integrating them as legal entities and part of our constitutional security architecture. Now, this can be resolved by somebody who understands the need for appropriate legislation to be passed to make them function as legal parts of our national security architecture. Once they are functioning that way, they can provide the basic intelligence and support for the other security services with clearly defined jurisdictions because there are things that they can competently deal with at local community levels  while some others can be escalated to higher levels.  This is not just about Delta state, it is also about starting and promoting a national conversation that will make everybody to admit that we need to change the way we have done things because they are no longer working for us.

The PDP primaries are coming up by the end of this month. How prepared are you and your team?

My team is very prepared. We have taken all the steps required of us, and we participated in the delegate congress which elected the three ad-hoc delegates per ward. These are the people who are going to make the decision of who the flagbearer of the state will be. Typically, these delegates were sponsored by leaders here and there and we are networking with the leaders to make sure that they have an appreciation of what the state stands to benefit with a government led by Clement Ofuani. And we are beginning to cut through that. They already know me, they know what I can do, and they are prepared to assess me on that basis. And before long, we will begin to see the direction that the gubernatorial primaries will go, because there is going to be the election of House of Assembly candidates which will give a strong indication of the direction and the dynamics of the way things are going. Then the national Assembly will follow before the Gubernatorial. It is still the same delegates who will be involved in these processes, and they will clearly show the direction the gubernatorial primary will go in our state.

I like to believe that the delegates are very reasonable people and they know that the decision they make today will affect their children’s tomorrow, and I have already appealed to them to make these decisions with the highest sense of responsibility and not to be lured by the razzmattaz of power wielders and that of people who have excess dollars and want to continue to maintain a stranglehold over our common patrimony.

I feel confident because I believe I represent a very strong brand. In all my consultations, I have not met anyone that did not feel that I am prepared for the job and I believe that if more and more people have that belief in me, eventually our sense of decency and our sense of desire for a better society will drive them to come to my corner of the ring.

What message do you have for Deltans, to your team, to the delegates and to Nigeria?

First to my team, I’m immensely proud of what they have done. These young men and women, mostly youths, have been incredible. They have been out on the waterways, been on the roads day and night, working the political field. I am very proud of them, and I hope that when we get there, they will become good examples of the future of our state.

To the rest of Delta, I know that you could feel that the political class has given you reasons to doubt the sincerity of people but I come to you with my public records out in the open, with my determination to serve you as your servant, as your very humble servant in the best meaning of those terms. I ask you to support me and together, we will build the Delta of our dreams.