My Worries About Jonathan’s Presidency – Hon Davies

For the past three years, Hon. (Dr.) Sokonte Davies has been a member of the House of Representatives, re-presenting Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency in Rivers State. As a Niger Deltan, he believes that God has a hand in the emergence of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan as the President of the country, the first Niger Deltan to occupy that exalted position in the history of the country.

To actually buttress the fact that the emergence of President Goodluck Jonathan was not by a fluke, Hon. Sokonte Davies in this special interview went down memory lane to highlight that the President is a firm believer in politics without bitterness.

This, he did by stating that Jonathan’s campaign bill board in 2007, when he was aspiring to be the Executive Governor of Bayelsa State, spoke volumes about the President.

According to him, the bill board which read” “No one politician is worth your blood, not even mine”, made a great impact on him as a young politician.

“You can see the kind of mindset President Jonathan has. I saw the bill board when he was preparing to be governor in 2007 and it made a lot of impact on me, “Sokonte intoned.

Further commenting on the emergence of President Jonathan, he said: “As somebody from the Niger Delta, I will tell you that I am delighted, something people thought would never happen. It happened in a way that confounded everybody. It goes to prove that power actually belongs to God.”

Shedding more light on the assertion that God had a hand in Jonathan’s presidency, the lawmaker recalled that the President had never indicated interest and ambition for the political offices he had occupied in the past.

“This is a man who did not  contest for Executive Governor, he became Executive Governor. He did not contest for Vice President, he became a Vice President. He did not contest for President, he became President. He did not do a coup. He was not appointed by military fiat. So, you can see that when God wants to appoint a leader, nobody can stop it”, he said.

The greatest worry about the Jonathan Presidency, the Tombia-born politician noted, was whether or not the President would restrict himself to developing only his region, the Niger Delta even as he admitted that there was hope for the Niger Delta, contending that all sections of the country require adequate development.

According to him, no region of the country was fully developed.

His words: “Yes, there is hope for the Niger Delta with President Jonathan on the saddle. You know, what we have been shouting about the Niger Delta is the situation of marginalisation, neglect and non-representation in the process of governance. Now that a Niger Deltan has come, the worry is that will he behave like others in the past to only address their region and neglect others? This is the worry. So, every area of this country deserves adequate development. An objective observer knows that there is no region in this country that is fully developed.

The President of the country is expected to strike a kind of balance that will address the remedial short- comings in the Niger Delta and also make sure that the entire Nigerian nation does not crumble”.

On the Niger Delta question, Hon. Davies said the President is quite familiar with the terrain and difficulties of the region, and therefore should urgently address the challenges staring it in the face.

“We would have preferred that the President, as a Niger Deltan that he is to go out of his way and make things happen in the Niger Delta. It is a good thing that the President does not need to be fooled or taught. He does not need any seminar to be told that the area deserves adequate development, because he is a true son of the Niger Delta, somebody that grew up from the creeks and can work with the people in the creeks,” he declared.

He further emphasised that addressing the electricity needs of Nigerians, electoral reforms and relentlessly waging the war against corruption were critical to the success of the Jonathan administration.

On how to go about the power problem of the country, Sokonte suggested that the Federal Government should deregulate the power sector. Hear him: “For electricity, it does not take million years to put the equipment in place. Most of these things, the contract had been awarded for a long time. It is now time to put in motion those machineries of government that side tracked the process of clearance, the process of installation and the process of distribution. Government should truly deregulate the production and supply of electricity. It should hands off distribution. It can only be involved in transmission.”

Making a case for electoral reforms in the country, he stressed the need for the country’s electoral process to engender confidence and credibility to the extent that losers of elections could easily concede defeat while winners demonstrate magnanimity and humility by embracing those that lost elections.

His words” “We are going to have elections next year. What will be the first indication that we are serious? It is to bring people that have credibility. It is not only the people because Prof. Maurice Iwu, the former INEC chairman, I did not know him in person but I don’t think he was a bad person. We, the politicians who are involved in the electoral process should be willing to accept defeat.

That is the first thing. Those who win elections should also be humble in victory.”

When he was asked if he had moved motions on the floor of the House to address environmental challenges facing several part of the country like the devastation in the Niger Delta, gully erosion ravaging the South-East  and desert encroachment in the North, Sokonte replied: “At this point, we are not talking about motions because we have enough laws to tackle these environmental challenges. In environment issues, you don’t look at anybody’s face. Environmental issues are not issues you give concession to anybody because when the environment is destroyed, it is destroyed.

We have laws and we are still thinking of how to fine tune the laws because there are no perfect laws. Only the laws of God are perfect. We are looking at loopholes.

We are going to look at the issues definitely from a broader perspective. You can see that our laws are not totally deficient. It is the unwillingness to implement them”.

Commenting on the on-going dualisation of the East-West Road, he condemned the slow pace of the construction work, and called on the contractors handling the road project to quickly move materials and people to the site and work both in the day and at night.

Said he: “You cannot be satisfied with anything until it is done. That is the truth. But the satisfaction can only be denied from the fact that the contractors have returned to site. But the contractors handling the Bodo/Bonny Road do not have the capacity. For the East-West Road, the contractors have been mobilised to site but that is not the end of the thing. The contractors cannot spend 100 years on site doing nothing. We are talking about movement of equipment and resources. The road is better done at night when no one will disturb them”.

On the Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi administration, the House of Representatives member had this to say: “I will tell you that the administration is doing well and has done well. The only hope is for the administration to continue. I would have advised that the Governor should not award more contracts. Let him concentrate on the jobs on hand and complete them. It is going to be a good milestone in the industrial strides of the state. It is going to transform the state. At the end of the tenure God has given to him, it will be easier for another person to continue, to ensure maintenance and expand a lot of them”.

On what the administration  should do about government-owned companies which appear to have gone moribund, he suggested that the government should privatise them.

“My candid advice is that government has no business in business. There is nowhere government has been a good business man or a good business woman or a good business entity because unfortunately in developed countries, government is doing everything possible to hands off business because whether you like it or not, some form of it, is going to political patronage, Because people ensured that this government is in place, when government is in business, these people are always interested to run it, either to run it down or to own it later. There is no personal involvement. Government is an entity, we can not hold anybody, that you are government. What government needs to do is to create the enabling environment and basic infrastcturture. It should hands off business and concentrate on governance.”

Commenting on his future political ambition after serving his people in the House, the fair-complexioned federal lawmaker said” “My four years in office will end on 4th of June next year. Like I said, power comes from God. I must let you know that I am properly schooled in the process of politics. I believe that everything has its time and purpose. I don’t believe in jumping the gun.”

He said it was only the people he has been representing that were in a better position to assess his performance and thanked them for their support.

Donatus Ebi