 Tonight, we delve into insecurity, the PIB, river state politics and what the future holds for the APC in the state that CWP decides joins us to discuss this and more on post-politics. And then of course the House of Representatives bill threatens five years jail term for unlawful protesters. This is post-politics and I very unequivocally. The year 2021 has been awash with events of kidnapping, abductions and insecurity. Even to the banning of Twitter, the fight for the electoral bill and the finding out of a new addition to the bill, well the passage of the petroleum industry bill is not left out and the controversy about the revenue percentage accrued to the host communities. The former director general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Namasa Nakoko-Petisai joins us right now to discuss the state of the nation as well as some other issues in the Niger Delta. It's good to have you join us. Thank you. Good evening. Well, I apologize to everyone for starting behind time but of course the conversation is about to start. Now, just like I said, one of the most controversial issues right now is the PIB, the argument from 2% to 5% to the 30% that is also going to be used for, you know, frontiers. Frontiers. Let's start with the issue of the PIB. The host communities have said that they initially proposed 10% but they were hoping for 5% all they could get was 2.5%. But what are your thoughts because the different people, I remember Chief JP Clark yesterday said that this is satanic and he called it very unfair to the people who are in the host communities but what are your thoughts on the position of the National Assembly? Alright, thank you very much. Let me start by correcting an impression that the host communities asked for 10% and that they are willing to settle for 5%. That is not the truth. That does not represent the true situation. I'm privileged to come from one of the host communities, one of the host oil producing communities. Now, the record that the PIB was first presented on the floor of the house some 12 years ago, that's one. At the time it was presented, the government, because it was an executive building, proposed 10% for the host community development fund. So it was government that proposed. The host communities have insisted all along that what they want is to control their resources and pay tax to the center and that's the model in other parts of the world, in the United States and in other places where you extract mineral resources and that is a sustainable model actually. What it does is it encourages people to work very hard and contribute to the center. It has worked everywhere that they've applied that model. But again, back to the PIB as it is now, it's not just talking about the ideal, let's be a bit more realistic and dynamic in our proposal and in the solutions we'll talk about. The current situation is that the Senate has proposed 3% to the host community development fund whereas the house version has proposed 5% to the host community fund and if you listen very well to Chief E.K. Clarke and other leaders of the Niger Delta who are mostly, who are very often they are the host communities of oil and gas activities. Now they said neither the 3% nor 5% is acceptable to them, so it's not like they would have preferred 5%. Is that clear? I spoke to a representative of PANDEF yesterday and he said that 5% would have been better if they were offered that. I'm pretty sure he wasn't speaking for PANDEF. Well he was. He was speaking for himself. No, he was definitely speaking for himself. Now Chief Clarke and other leaders of that region has made it very clear that the minimum they will accept is 10% because that's a part of fairness and justice. What he simply says is that listen, I contribute my shares and you are giving me one button out of the shares. So for other people to use this share and dress up and have only a button to myself, if you take a helicopter flight through that area and see the level of degradation, the level of environmental challenge they face, not coupled with the fact of climate change, you know that if people are literally in danger, they're almost going extinct. I want to say that even 5% intervention would not help their mother much. So what do you propose the Senate or the House would have done? Because the House is saying, as at today, when people were attacking the National Assembly, the House said that they are sticking to the original plan and the original proposal. They do not, they cannot speak for the Senate. So what would you have preferred that be done because you are from the host community? I'm not only from the host community. I used to be a member of the National Assembly. So I think I kind of understand how the mind of members of National Assembly work is a national institution where they try to accommodate the interests of all segments of the country. But in a community... At the expense of who? Because you just mentioned that if you take a helicopter ride above these communities, the level of degradation, the kinds of things that they're faced with is pretty bad. So if you are taking into consideration the state of everybody, you know, everybody's interests at the expense of the other people, I mean shouldn't they be the ones who benefit more because they're the ones who are experiencing most of the hazards that come from exploration in those communities? You're very correct. And so that's the position of the people of the host communities. But there is even a greater challenge. Now, if you want sustainability in the oil and gas industry, if you want peace, if you want cooperation of the communities, then you just have to be fair to them. They're not asking for so much. Now, when we talk about 3%, 5%, 10%, 3% or 5% or 10% of what operating expenses, operating expenditure, that's what they're asking for. It will not affect what the contribution to the collective force at the center. So I don't think that being fair to the communities that inhabit the area where you drill oil from. They suffer pollution. Their lives are in danger. In reverse state, of course, you know they're dealing with suits on daily basis. Oh, yes. Now they've got long problem, long problem, affect kidneys, cancer. They face all those challenges for the collective good of all at their own detriments, so their own detriments. So all they're asking for is, please, can you be fair to us? I think that both the house and Senate should be fair to the host communities because that's the part of peace. That's the part of sustainability of drilling oil. Now, oil is a vanishing product of commodity. A time will come when oil may be there. It may not be needed by the rest of the world. In some cities, you have more electric cars than fossil-fuel powered cars. So in the near future, the oil may be there. You have destroyed the environment. You've destroyed their source of livelihood. And it's given them nothing in return. But I want to put you on the hot seat because you were the boss of Nimasah. You are in the ruling party. I remember, I lived in reverse state for six years. I was one of the people who were in the forefront of talking about the issue of the suits in reverse state. We tried to get the attention of the states. The states kicked it to the federal. The federal, I mean, it was a ping-pong game. And today you're here speaking about the suits. What role did you play in all of this? Because we're here now talking about spilled milk. It's almost done. So, I mean, what role did you play? Well, I like to define two things. The first one is the role of Nimasah and my role as chief executive of the Manitama administration of the country. And my role as a statesman in reverse, that's two different things. Well, as Nimasah, our function is regulatory. Regulate shipping and maritime activities. That we know. There's an agency to regulate the environment. In any case, the issue of environment is the concurrent list. It's under the purview of the state as much as under the purview of the center, the federal government. So primarily, it is not my responsibility as chief executive or the agency, the responsibility, not is it the primary responsibility of the agency. The responsibility of the agency is to the extent that it mitigates pollution arising from shipping activities. That we understand. But you are a statesman. You're a passing man. I'd like to talk about being a key stakeholder in reverse states. Yes. Now, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that I made a series of open letters to the governor of reverse states, to the federal minister of environment, drawing the attention to the dangers of the continuous, the fact of having suits in reverse states. Danger to the health of the people. Danger to the means of livelihood. And of course, I have sufficient data to show that it's done enormous damage to the health of the people. And what response did you get? Now, I got some complications from the federal minister of environmental various times. At some point, they raised the issue that they were not getting enough cooperation from reverse state government. At other times, they said, listen, we're dealing with it. I'm curious to understand what cooperation the reverse state government was supposed to give. I remember in the year 2017, if I'm not mistaken, a committee was put together by the state government to look into the suit. I remember a lemon petrochemical, some of those people. We're part of the committee. Exactly. Very much always. But when you say that there was no cooperation from the reverse state government, how do you mean? I'm telling you the communication I got from federal minister of environment. But you lived in reverse states. You came to reverse states. You breathed that air. If somebody gives you information, do you not take further steps to understand what cooperation meant and how you could further push for a move from the federal government? Apparently. Now, what happened is that the two levels of government were acting in opposite direction. The federal government or the federal minister of environment had her own ideas of how to solve the suit problem. And he has to be solved. Now, they attributed it to illegal refining of petroleum products. That was, for them, that was the primary cause of the suit in reverse states. What in local parlance is called profile. Now, one of the things they did, and of course I will not always agree with that approach, was to put the energy on the alert and ensure that you stop illegal refining of petroleum products. But that does not clean the environment. Now, they've also initiated what they call the high prep program. The high prep program was originally focused on the Ogoni areas. But in the course of this, the federal expanded their mandate to other areas of reverse states. But like every other thing, it requires a process. And I know that you've done a number of remedial measures. I am not satisfied with what you've done. I have seen pictures. I have seen videos recently. I'm talking about 2021 and the suit is still in the air. Oh, yes, definitely. I think these remedial efforts seem to be of no avail. Again, I ask, what pressure have you put in 2021 on the government, the federal government, because again, the federal government has the power to security agencies. They're the powers that descend here to deal with it. Refining of petroleum. Which you have pointed that the federal ministry of environment has said is the major cause for... From their studies, yes. Exactly. So what is holding the federal government from cleaning it out entirely? Because we have the rains now. No, but what I can say to you, that I can turn on the statistics that reasonably, the level of suit has dropped. Has it? Yes, it has. I can tell you that. Now, the number of illegal refining of crude has also dropped because of the intervention of the Navy. Now, what remains to be done is the fact that the federal ministry of environment should work collaboratively with the University of the Ministry of Environment and begin to clean impacted sites and impacted environment. That's the next logical step I expect them to take. Interesting. Let's move away from that because it doesn't become the biggest part of our conversation. But let's go back to the PIB. Another controversial part of that bill is the Frontier Basin Exploration Fund, which, oh my God, people are crazy about it. The fact that the executive has proposed 10%... Not 10%. Well, according to reports. 10% rent for the fund, which is meant to explore oil. Cumulatively 30% of all. Yes, yes. However, in the passing of the bill, the lawmaker's resolved that there will be 30%. Oh yeah, okay. Especially for, proposed for the NNPC, all profits from the exploration. A lot of people have asked why we have to allocate that much to explore land in the Chad basin and all of those areas when we already haven't been able to deal with the problems of exploration in the Niger Delta. Now, it's not about exploration in the Niger Delta. It's about the fact that oil exploration, whether in the frontier basin, in the deep sea, onshore, should be a private sector activity. It shouldn't be the primary concern of government. Now, it is a profit-oriented venture. And the best government should do how to be to provide some basket of incentive. Listen, if you do exploration and you find oil, we're going to give you the following concession. In other clans, that's what's done. Not for government itself to fund exploration. But even that model of government funding exploration, why do we need to put cumulatively 30% of our earnings on frontier exploration? So what it means is that if we put that fund and at the end of the day, now what happens is that government bureaucracy will continue to feast on the fund and they will find no oil. Every year you give them 30%, 10% from the profit of AMPC and 20% from all the other collective that you put together in a basket. Every year they'll go out for exploration and they will never find oil. The reason is simple. They are comfortable having 30% of that fund. But if you make it a commercial venture, a private sector venture, it is in their interest to find oil as soon as possible because that's when they'll begin to make their money. Interestingly, the governor's... And so this will be penny wise and pound foolish. Which you seem to be in agreement with the people who are criticizing this. The governors of the southern states have also kicked against... Even though they're governors of southern states, they haven't been very realistic. Yeah, I know, but I want to... I'm going somewhere. We have experienced militancy in the Niger Delta over the years, which stemmed from the fact that oil was being taken from the Niger Delta, but they were not seeing the dividends of that oil exploration in terms of healthcare facilities, education, no schools. I mean, you would see buildings that were commissioned, but they are all just lying follow. How do we prevent this from happening again because he might raise his ugly head with this agitation against the 30% for all frontiers exploration? How do we stop this from happening? Because you're sitting here to say, we should have privatized it. We should not... It should not be government's business. But well, here we are. This is what the bill says. How do we deal with that? Plus, coupled with the fact that the government has its plaitful with the pockets of violence, ethnic agitations and insecurity that's going across the country. Now, I like to make this clear. It's still a bill. It's not an act yet. Well... What it means is that if we identify deficiencies or loopholes in the bill, it can still be addressed. It can be addressed in two ways. One, at the conference committee of chambers of the National Assembly, or by the presidency just before Ascent. It can send it back. Why not do the country any good by putting 30% of our funds for oil exploration and like any other typical government? What it means is that you put bureaucracy in place every day, every year, every budget cycle. You give them 30%, they keep and they'll break down. I say, oh, I'm chief executive now of some frontier exploration agency or some frontier department in the Federal Ministry of Environment or Frontier this thing in some government department. And of course they will feast on it. I've made that point very, very clear. But that if you say the private sector, the incentive will give you is that if you go, do your seismic work and find oil in commercial quantity, then we're gonna... And that was actually more than a nebulous shell and early, early firms that did exploration in in the United Data region, find oil. Oh, you're gonna have exclusive exploration rights for social number of years. We're gonna give you these acreages and all of that. So if we go with this model, the same challenges we face currently in the Niger data will be replicated in other regions of the country. And it will be an endless cycle. I don't think that's what we want for ourselves as a country or as a people. And when people begin to, it will let any day when we begin to find out that that model is not working. But at this age and time, we shouldn't reinvent the wheel. We should look at models that are working in other areas. How did they do it? Study it, adapt it to our environment and apply it. It bids me and I'm not sure if you want to answer this question, but because you've been a member of the National Assembly, you travel, you go on programs across the globe. You see these models that you're making reference to and you see how it's working. But then when you come home, it seems like we do not want to... Local politics. Well, who's this local politics benefiting because your job is to serve us and make decisions or pass bills that would help us to get better as a country instead of taking us back to the dark ages? I know that you're not a member of the House of Assembly, but you were, so National Assembly. What, why, why don't they... It's unfortunate that very many of us do not look at things from a pan-Nigerian perspective and a long-term perspective. What happens is that we come very often with ethnic or regional agenda. And when you say we... I will not look at the par-Nigerian agenda. Well, I was in the National Assembly and I know that a few of us looked at things from the prism of a national agenda, not from the prism of a regional agenda. But what I know clearly is that majority... Yes, it's a pan-Nigerian institution. Majority looks at issues from a regional agenda, but that's been short-sighted. On the long run, you need to look at things from the bigger picture. It's a challenge. Petranny is a challenge in this country. Let's talk about politics of Nigeria since we're already there. The issue of the electronic transmission of results, that's also been an issue that's been on the news. Now, people who have been advocating for this electronic transmission of results by INEC seem to have been very disappointed by the recent outcome where it's been removed totally from the Electoral Act bill, which is going to be accented too soon. What are your thoughts on this? Because what do you presume the Senate's... Why, what was happening in the mind of the Senate's members to actually take this out? Even though, I mean, I've understood American politics and there are certain states who still do manual voting and there are states who still do e-voting. But we're in the 21st century where we do electronic transfers of monies and other things. Why should this be taken out in 2021 if we have been advocating for it for several years? I'd like to put it in perspective. What has happened is that the Senate committee inserted a clause, clause 50, sub-2, saying that that clause outlaws electronic transmission of results, not electronic voting. And I'll try to distinguish what's going on. And my initial take is that it's like putting the electoral system of the country on reverse gear. Instead of moving forward, we want to re-progress, we want to move backward and that's absolutely unfair. It simply will destroy everything we have achieved thus far in the electoral evolution process. Everything wrong with our system has to do with the electoral system. When we have bad leaders, it leads to the fact that education surfers, healthcare surfers, infrastructure surfers, the economy surfers, and it's already product of the electoral system. In the past few years, we thought we've made a lot of gain. And as recent as it do elections, I like tried using electronic transmission of results and it indeed was wonderful. That's why you had an opposition candidate, Governor Basiki, who got returned, who got elected for the second time as governor of a new state. Now, what? That committee, I'm not saying Senate. I didn't say the Senate. I said, what that committee is suggesting is that we should go back to mana coalition of results, then hand carry the results from the various units to the world, from the world to the local government for coalition from local government to state, from state to federal. It's absolutely unfair. It's uncharitable. It's unpatrotic. It's everything evil. It represents evil. It represents typical retrogression. Now, if you look at every other place, initially the thought is that we'll progress from electronic transmission of results to electronic voting. We're not at electronic voting right now. What we've done as a country is that currently we do electronic registration of voters, even when it is partial. And electronic accreditation. It was first tried in 2015. When I happened, I was promised to be a candidate in 2015. Now, we think that our thoughts is that the National Assembly will codify, put in proper legal framework the issue of accreditation and progress of course to the electronic transmission of results and in the near future we'll go into electronic voting. But we're not seeing that. We're rather seeing that instead of moving forward we are on a reverse gear. That's totally not acceptable. Now, with manual transmission of results, when you carry from unit to the world, there will be dispute. There will be contest about which result is original because of course another result will surface. And when it moves from there between the world and the FDA, of course there will be a lot of contest. And that's why very often almost all elections end up in court. So instead of the people's choice prevailing, it is about the decision of the various courts. That denies the people the right of free choice of electing their leaders. And when they deny the right of electing the leaders, the leaders are no longer accountable to the people. They know that it is not the people that put them there. They may be maneuvered their way to the court process. But yeah, just to tie to what you're saying. So these leaders are also found in the National Assembly and they could be in that committee. Oh yes, might be that. This is the reason why they continuously are dilly-dallying around this situation because it's in the benefit or in the best interest of the average politician. And what happens is that the electoral act provides the governance framework for elections in the country. And so if somebody has intents to cheat in the near future, it begins with the electoral act. And so there must be. But I know that the Senate will rise to the occasion and correct this defect for which Nigerians have risen up in one voice to speak against manual transmission of election results. Now mind you, there's also the House. The House provides another window of opportunity for Nigerians to correct that. The House is a bigger platform representing more Nigerians than the Senate. They represent equal number of Nigerians. Of course, you know the Senate, you have three past states. The House, you have more peasants in the House, younger elements, more vibrant elements in the House. And I believe that they will correct this. Like His Excellency, the right, the honorable speaker, Femi Bajabemila, had said, oh please, why Nigerians? Please, why not wait for the House version? Ultimately, when the House deals with her own version of the electoral act, then they move to a conference committee and harmonize positions. I'm very optimistic that at the end of the day, they'll be able to fix this. Because for us, as a people, for now, I don't know of an alternative to electronic transmission of results. In any case, the machines are designed in such a way that if you vote, the machines will transmit the results. So I don't know that the machines that will be or you vote using some electronic needs to vote, then when it comes to transmission, that means they're going to manufacture special machines for Nigeria. Well, that's an issue that we will continue to continue to train. So that's our own passion, is to strengthen the electoral process so that, strengthen it, that it guarantees credibility and integrity and the whole essence of democracy is that periodic elections should have, they should enjoy the confidence of Nigerians, should be credible. So Nigerians will continue to have faith in democracy. Well, that can't happen until that section of the bill is changed. Oh well, Nigerians come out, speak forcefully, saying, oh, what the Senate committee did represents the position of Nigerians. That's not our position, that's not our aspiration. Exactly, so while people have been campaigning that all Nigerians call the members of their representatives. Their representatives. Yes, of course, and impress upon them to make the right moves. But let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're still talking with the Cuckoo Adore, Peter Seid. He is the former director general of the Massa. And when we come back, we'll be talking about insecurity and the state of the nation. Stay with us.