1st Year Performance Report of Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe, Member, Senate

Name: Enyinnaya Harcourt Abaribe

Senatorial District: Abia South

Party: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

Position: Chairman, Senate Committee on Power and Solid Minerals

Brief Profile: Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe is a third term member of the Upper Legislative Chamber having been first elected in April 2007. Certainly a consummate politician, he has been involved in the politics of the Fourth Republic since 1999 when he was elected as Deputy Governor of . He is known to be vocal, articulate, calculating and knowledgeable in both the politics of the Senate and legislative affairs. During the first quarter of this political dispensation, Abaribe’s principled stand on issues of governance soon pitched him with his principal at the time, Gov. ; a development which led him through two impeachment attempts by the State Assembly at the time. By 2003, he decided to throw in the towel by resigning from office to circumvent a third attempt to remove him by the state’s lawmakers. That crunchy experience only served to toughen Abaribe who found space in the then opposition All Peoples Party (ANPP) to contest the governorship of Abia State against Mr. Kalu. Although he lost the contest, Abaribe proved the point that he was a man of steel and character who would not be intimidated to abandon his will and convictions on how to govern Abia State. In his own words, “the first task of governance is to restore confidence in government and make people believe in government, that government can be responsive to their needs. This will show that you are committed to the people’s welfare. Then, the basic thing that an Abia man needs is the common infrastructure.”

Thus 2007 came and he had a chance to prove his mettle and convictions through the federal legislature. During his first tenure in the Senate, he served as Vice Chairman of the Committee on Inter-Parliamentary Affairs, a position that gave him a good window of global exposure on parliamentary practices in many parts of the world. He also served as member of Committees on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Senate Services, and Works during that dispensation.

Sen. Abaribe became the chief image maker of the Senate in 2011 with his appointment as Chairman, Senate Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs. This position tasked his political sagacity and public service experience especially in those heady days when the Red Chamber made history with the famous Doctrine of Necessity that resolved the transitional impasse following the illness and eventual death of former President Musa Yar’Adua. He successfully served out that testy portfolio and got re-elected into the Senate in 2015, again as in previous cases, on the platform of the PDP. Until the reshufflement of Committees by the Senate leadership, Abaribe served as Chairman of the Committee on Information and National Orientation. He is now Chairman, Senate Committee on Power and Solid Minerals Development. However, Sen. Abaribe’s footprints in the legislature have often been on the political sphere where he does not shy away from his convictions no matter what. For instance, he was the first opposition senator in the 8th Senate to have openly queried the 2016 budget of President . But his stints of activism and political fearlessness in the Senate had been demonstrated much earlier. In October 2007, for example, he mobilized other Senators from the South East to protest the treason trial of leader of Igbo separatist movement (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazurike at the Federal High Court in Lagos and to demand his release. Abaribe was born on March 3, 1955. His official profile lists the University of Benin as the institution where he graduated from with both Bachelors and Master degrees in Economics and concluded his Ph.D course work in the same school. For work experience, he lectured at the then Bendel State University now Edo State University, Ekpoma, before branching off to the corporate world and finally berthing in politics. Abaribe has been conferred with several revered titles in Igboland including Nwadiohanma Ngwa, Ugo Ngwa 2, among others in recognition of his numerous services to humanity, especially community development.

Abaribe’s Accomplishments in 8th Senate: Senator Abaribe’s major accomplishment in the current senate is his sponsorship of the Public Procurement Act (Amendment) Bill, 2015 which is a culmination of efforts to promote Made-in-Nigeria products in the country. According to his Lead Debate, the Bill “seeks to propose am amendment of the public procurement act Cap, LFN 2004. The Public Procurement Act to mandate all sectors of government in prioritizing made in Nigeria goods to ensure that Nigeria businesses get ‘first dibs’ over their foreign counterparts in the procurement processes for agencies and departments of the Federal government.” The Abia South Senator further told his colleagues that: “The Bill seeks to amend Section 34 of the Public Procurement Act CAP P44 2004 dealing on Domestic preferences. The passage of the revised Law which will change the key word from “may” to “shall” will make it mandatory for government agencies to patronize Made in Nigeria products when available. “The amendment will also drastically increase the percentage of domestic suppliers for domestically produced goods from its present 15% to above 50% and bids for works by domestic contractors from its present 71/2% to over 25%. This alteration, once signed into law, will have ripple effects on the manufacturing industry, as it will assure local manufacturers of a ready and sure market for their products. “Nigerian products must have comparative advantage. Made in Nigeria goods should no longer produce adulterated or substandard versions of foreign alternatives because the market is available. Also, it is high time we pumped the very best into our markets to ensure overall consumer satisfaction and building confidence in the Nigerian brands.” The Bill has been passed by the Senate and when signed by the President after concurrence with the House of Representatives will be a major credit to Senator Abaribe’s stewardship in the 8th Senate.

My Colleagues Call Me Made-in-Aba Senator- Abaribe

As part of the #NASSReportCard series on the accomplishments of lawmakers, Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP, Abia South) spoke with the ORDERPAPER Team on his first 365 days in the 8th Senate, focusing on his legislative contributions and constituency relations. Excerpts:

How do you compare the current 8th Senate with the previous ones especially given your background as ranking Senator? Comparisons are done like for like to get it right. The circumstances between the two (7th and 8th Senate) are quite different. In the 7th Senate, PDP was the dominant party and had enough members to get the leadership. So we had a seamless transition from the 6th Senate -of which I was a member too- to the 7th Senate and we didn’t see the need for any change. So you could see there was only a change regarding the rest of the principal officers and not the presiding officers. But the 8th Senate started on a very troubled note and ended up producing what the French call co-habitation. In other words, the two parties (APC and PDP) produced the Senate President and Deputy Senate President respectively; meaning they had to work together to do that. That meant ultimately that the turbulence that was engendered by these two parties cohabiting has continually dogged the Senate up till this moment. This instability has made it difficult for us to make a very valid comparison between the two. But I will say that the 8th Senate despite the instability has also tried to live up to its job and its job essentially is to make laws and put Nigeria on a proper path by doing a budget in the interest of the public and also looking at the economic conditions and helping the Executive to mitigate the problems that the people face. I will say that it has not been easy but some milestones have been made- Ministers were screened and none was dropped; for the very first time you could see an increase in the capital side of the

budget and a reduction of the recurrent side. And also for the first time we also have a legislative agenda that the Senate has taken on; for the very first time too, the Senate engaged with the productive sector of the economy through the National Assembly Business Roundtable. It could have been better of course but as much as I know politics is the art of being able to cobble solutions when there are disparate interests involved and I think that going forward, we would probably be able to do that.

To whom would you credit the continuance of this cohabitation in the leadership of the senate so far- the leadership or the experience of senators? Well, I will credit it to everybody in the sense that everybody worked together to see how we can take this going forward. One thing that we know out of necessity is that you cannot make progress in an atmosphere of instability so everybody has been working very much together to see how we can resolve issues and do the things we were sent here to do by our various constituencies. It is because it is something new that is why we are having the trial that we are having today and it’s is affecting every side- it affects the APC as a party because it feels it has an interloper in their midst in the person of the Deputy Senate President and it also affects the PDP because we also see one of our own there; so the trenchant type of criticisms that we would have done has to be toned down because our people are also part of the leadership of the Senate.

It appears that the PDP caucus is more of the bulwark of support for the Senate President; why is this so? I do not think the PDP is more of the bulwark of support than others; I think the support cuts across both sides. The real reason why the matter of whether the PDP will withdraw support or not is because the party feels in the face of all the mounting problems and difficulties that we have today, concentrating an undue amount of energy in trying to effect a leadership change in the National Assembly is destabilizing to everybody including the government itself and we thought they ought to get their priorities right. And to get their priorities right that means we have to shock them into realizing the problems in what they are doing. And part of getting them to realize that is to also say we have certain limits we cannot want you to cross especially given the fact of the division of responsibilities between the three arms of government. We do not want another arm of government to overreach and dictate what happens in another arm.

Away from politics, how do you describe your legislative contributions in the 8th Senate so far including your sponsorship of the amendment of the Public Procurement Act? I do not think I am in the best position to do an assessment of whatever I do in the legislature. Essentially the job of a member of the legislature is representation- your constituency says ‘go there and represent us and make sure that your core responsibility which is the making of good laws should also affect us’ and we have to do that in such a way that no part of Nigeria will feel that it is not well representated. And that is what we are doing. So I will leave the assessment to my constituents who sent me here to determine whether or not I have done what they sent me here to do. Regarding the amendment of the Procurement Act, I will give you a background. For the past three years, we have been promoting made-in- Aba goods which you can translate to mean made-in- Nigeria goods and the core reason why we did the amendment is to be able to make sure that procurement of certain types of materials that can be produced in my constituency or any part of the Federal Republic are considered as of right. And Aba that I represent is known all over the world as a manufacturing centre with special interests in textile and leather goods. So we felt that if we can get the Federal Government in its procurement- for example, procurement of footwear for the people in uniform which is now getting towards the 2million mark because by the time you put the police, military, civil defense and all of them have to wear footwear. So if we are producing it here we don’t want you to procure it outside the country. But in doing our own job, we also needed to amend the law and when we looked at the

Procurement Act particularly the area which deals with patronizing made-in-Nigeria goods did not make it mandatory. What it simply said was that any officer in procurement ‘may’ choose to take the nation-first policy before you can go foreign. But because the operative word there is ‘may’ we knew that any unscrupulous person who is not patriotic will not consider indigenous goods even when they are of superior quality. So we had

to sponsor the Bill to make it mandatory by changing the ‘may’ to ‘shall’ and what it means now is that when the Bill gets signed everybody who has to do procurement will first make a choice – are things locally produced? If yes what are the different ones and which is the best so people can bid on them. That will give us a boost especially now that we are finding it difficult to pay for all the myriad of imports that we make as a country. Amending that law affects my constituency directly because when they now need to purchase they will come to my constituency and say give us 100,000 boots and that will keep producers in powerline market in Ariara in business. And it has a multiplier effect because from the people who make the glue to the people who make the sole and those who cut and string the lace- because they are specialized in the way that they manufacture so with each order everybody gets something and of course for they themselves going back to their suppliers for the people for leather in kano and so on and so forth. Even for those who cook and operate canteens and eateries for them you see a multiplier effect that is so much. If you simply go and purchase from Dubai or China you create jobs for them there but when you purchase here you are creating jobs for Nigerians. So that is why I said earlier that it is my constituents that will determine whether or not I am doing what they sent me to do.

What inspired the Made-in-Aba campaign? Was it a campaign promise made during the elections? Part of what we do in this office is that we brainstorm every year when the time comes to determine our intervention in constituency projects. When we came first of all, part of the problems we had in Aba and environs was the lack of power. The people complained about lack of power, dilapidated infrastructure, no transformers and all that. So part of what we did at the very first time which was unprecedented in the constituency was to provide 65 transformers at once which translated to upgrading most of the areas of production. We also did water and some health programmes. And by the next year, after our assessment of projects we had done following from our intervention on health we did drug procurement and ambulances for hospitals in Abia South and built a mini hospital in the border between Akwa Ibom and Abia State- communities that were ridden with all manner of problems including border clashes and all kinds of criminality. When we interviewed them the thing they kept saying was that ‘no government presence’ and so we built the hospital and brought transformers with cables and all. But I noticed something about the projects that we were doing- they could have water, light and so on but the people were still without skills to earn a

living. So I said why don’t we do human development? So from the time I came in 2011 we decided to concentrate on human development to take people out of the poverty level because they have a skill. For the very first time, we partnered with SMEDAN to train people. We started with training the rural women on bead-making and small things that they could do; we bought sewing machines, grinding machines and things they could do to move them out of depending on somebody else other than themselves. We then discovered that we had a set of people with skills; who are producing things under the small-scale group but they were limited in their focus because they produce and wait for somebody to come from outside to purchase as middlemen and all that. We felt that they could be able to expand their horizons and we discovered that even the trade fairs in Aba would not attract people from for instance. So if Abuja can’t come to Aba, let’s move Aba to Abuja and expose their skills to those who are the decision-makers here. And that’s how this whole thing started. At first these producers did not believe us- the very first time we went to the market to meet them in their production areas to invite them to say, we want to move you to Abuja’ they felt that, ‘oh this is just how government people do.’ They told me in my office while interviewing them in Aba that they had always had government people come say ‘we would do ABC but after that we never hear from them again. Now you have come to say write down your names.’ The very first time we brought them here- 150 of them- with their goods and everything we put them in the hotel, fed them, they did not pay a dime for a full week, they could not believe; some of them sold off what they came with and ran back to bring more. And this was when others had their eyes open and say we want to participate and we said well, you have to wait till next year. We have done it for two years now and have developed expertise and we have put it in this year’s budget because we want to make it a permanent thing that every year they can look forward to it. Last year because it was an election period, part of the budget was delayed and implementation issues were there and the National Assembly in its wisdom extended the implementation to March and that allowed us to get funding to be able to hold last year’s edition in February. This year’s edition of Made-in-Aba would hold by the later part of the year God-willing and hoping that implementation of the budget will go on.

How much of Made-in-Aba does Senator Abaribe wear himself? As you are looking at me, you are looking at made-in-Aba. Aba people have not got the technology to be able to do watches. So that’s the only thing I get elsewhere but every other thing is Made-in-Aba- from my shoes and all. They are very nice and every day I wear

something from Aba, people hardly believe it- they’d always ask are you sure it’s Aba product? And they make their stuffs to match. Even the Clutch bag that I carry is Made-in-Aba and it looks like it’s made in Italy or Spain or elsewhere. I took this bag to a shop in Barcelona where I had gone for a programme and the people there were amazed. You would be able to get the type of design and quality you want; that’s the beauty of it. And we have encouraged them to always brand it with the Aba sign instead of those foreign labels they think should be used. And as brand ambassadors, I know how many referrals they have received from me and others through this Made-in-Aba campaign.

How do you feel being involved in empowering the people through enhancing their skills and vocations? For me, what is actually the most thrilling part is the awareness that have been created and the pride that people have from what comes from their constituency. For instance, many senators call me Made-in-Aba and I am happy because we are promoting locally made products. There’s a young lady that has been part of the campaign who has been doing all kinds of beautiful things like IPad covers, and stuffs like that which are very unique. And she has had recommendations and referrals here and there. So what we are doing is to expand their market base and then encourage them to do some quality enhancement by using machines and other implements for better finishing. In fact, we have put in the budget a provision to purchase certain equipment for them in this regard and we also working in tandem with the Abia State Government in this regard. As they improve on quality and increase production, you know we have the whole of the West African sub-region which we can dominate with our products and of course we can even look beyond the region to the entire African continental market. So we can make progress on step-by-step basis. So coming to your question I don’t feel fulfilled yet because there is much yet to be done. I see them, they talk to me and the myriad of things that can be done is so much but there is very little that you can do because you are just a part of the whole struggling to get a part of the country’s resources to your constituency. So in as much as there is a sense of pride in seeing impact in the lives of your people through your efforts, there is a whole lot to be done yet. One area where I am having serious issues is the aspect of education; we have now left education, especially technical education in the hands of the artisans. So you see somebody comes today and decides to be a shoemaker and goes on apprenticeship. But he would be a

better shoemaker if he had gone to technical school and known how to be precise about the radius and circumference and proper measurements because that is the key to be a better producer unlike the cutting and pasting without proper technical knowledge that we have now. So you’d become a better technician if you go to technical school.

How you relax and keep away from the pressures of work? Luckily for me at 61 my children are grown up and I am a grandfather also. And I just live with my wife and the little kid that we have adopted and create time for them; I finish my work and go home to them; I don’t do late nights. I love reading so I always have my Kindle and read at my leisure. One thing I have not been able to know how to do is to go sit in the bar and drink; it was just not my lifestyle; those who are my friends know this about me. I try as much as possible to exercise, eat moderately and am a member of the Adventist Faith and one of the tenent we uphold is temperance where you are expected to show temperance in all you do.

After leaving the position of Senate spokesman which you were in the last Assembly, you have noticeably been quiet on social media where you were on the firing line, why is that? At a point before the last election I will say matters went out of restraint and it was very difficult to engage with people because people became very unrestrained and I felt that engagement that only brings resentment was not in the best interest of the people you were engaging with and myself so I decided to stay on the sidelines and watch. Secondly because I am no longer the spokesman of the Senate, I also felt I needed to give the new spokesman the opportunity to engage and make submissions. Because I may make submissions that may not tally with what he is saying and it can be latched upon by those intent on mischief. I consciously deactivated my Twitter account and said let me take a step back. I will say one final thing about social media; as much as it is the in-thing now and because I am of an older generation I am not very comfortable with goes on there. Because once you are there you cannot detach; I can come in occasionally to just make an intervention sometime but I like to be left out of it for now.

FEEDBACK: OrderPaper.ng encourages feedback on this Special #NASSReportCard publication. If you are from Sen. Abaribe’s Senatorial District or just a reader with comments and questions for the Senator, kindly send an email to [email protected] and we would be glad to pass on your message and revert if need be.