Dr. Legborsi Yamaabana is the President-General of Ogoni Youth Federation, OYF, and also a staunch member of the SIMplified Movement. In this exclusive interview with Port Harcourt Spectator, he barred his mind on sundry issues about governance in Rivers State, activities of the Hydrocarbon Remediation Project, Hyprep, and others.
Excerpts:
Question: May we meet you?
Response: I’m Dr. Legborsi Yamaabana President-General of Ogoni Youth Federation, OYF and Chairman, Rivers State Ethnic Youth Leaders Coalition, RSEYLC.
Question: How would you rate the administration of Sir Siminialayi Fubara ?
Response: The administration of His Excellency, Sir Siminalayi Fubara has performed beyond expectation and we are very sure that he is going to fulfill his campaign promises even beyond the letters. You are aware of the monetary policies to assist small scale businesses and also the laudable legislations he took to the State Assembly before now which the Assembly has abandoned. In October 2023, there were four executive bills the governor sent to the Assembly such as the Youths Entrepreneurship Bill, the power sector bill and others which have direct bearing on Rivers people but the Assembly abandoned those bills and this is to show you that this Assembly doesn’t believe in the people that elected them, they are just playing to the gallery and it’s unfortunate. This Assembly that has already lost their legitimacy are going about and trying to be a clog in the wheel of governance of Sir Siminialayi Fubara, they don’t want him to fulfill his campaign promises so they are the real enemies of Rivers people and Rivers people must trust them, that’s the message we have passed across to all youth leaders in the state.
Question: How do you want the youths to resist them?
Response: I’m an ambassador of peace and won’t encourage youths to carry arms against fellow members of the society but they should resist them politically. When they will come back to re-contest if they so which, if their party gives them ticket which is the All Progressives Congress, APC, I can tell you that from the sensitization we have done in the state, they are not going to win even in their own units , that’s the only way we can punish them because power lies with the people and youths consist seventy percent of the people, so the youths won’t vote for them and I’m sure elders and leaders alike won’t also vote for this set of people because they are a disgrace to our democracy and to Rivers people.
Question: Why did you choose to support Sir Siminalayi Fubara?
Response: Why I and Rivers youths are supporting Siminalayi Fubara collectively is because he is a youth and before now we have been clamouring for a youthful governor, that has been my mantra. Recalled that I contested for House of Representatives, it was all in the bid for youths to takeover, that’s why we are supporting him. Also, Fubara has been in the civil service and had grown through the ranks from being a classroom teacher to accountant general of the state so he understands the peculiar challenges of Rivers State, so we believed he was going to solve them and now we are seeing it happening. Ofcourse, as a Rivers South East man, we’ve been clamouring that our district has not produced a governor since the democratic dispensation in the state and Fubara happens to be someone from the Rivers South East Senatorial District, he’s from Opobo, the distance from Khana to Opobo is a stone throw so we believe that he is also our son, that was why we went all out even 00to other senatorial districts to galvanized support for him so the reasons for our support is numerous. However, the question is, has he disappointed us? The answer is NO! He is doing excellently well and Rivers people are with him. You can see the spontaneous support from every nook and cranny of Rivers State exemplified I’m the Simplified Movement thanksgiving going on in the state, people coming out spontaneously and spending their monies, that’s to show the peoples’ belief in a man that has come to become the governor of Rivers State and he is not someone that makes noise; he’s going about his administration very silently and he’s achieving great milestones, so we give kudos to him and I know that in the coming days when he will be marking his 1 year in office, Rivers people would be surprised by the amount of projects and empowerment scheme that would be churn out by this administration.
Question: Specifically, what does Ogoni as an ethnic group stand to benefit from Fubara’s administration?
Response: Ogoni as an ethnic group stands to benefit a lot from this government but all I would advice is that Ogoni people have to come together because the governor is in love with Ogoni people, he is happy with the people so it’s now left for us to come together, unite and push our demands to the governor and I know the governor would not say no to anything that would benefit the Ogoni people. Fubara is one governor that likes listening to the people and I believe by the time we do that His Excellency will listen in addition to what he is already doing.
Question: Recently the Assembly passed a law where they intended to elongate the tenure of elected council Chairmen, what is your position on that?
Response: The purported laws by the ousted members of the assembly led by Martin Amaewhule is neither here nor there because you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand. If they were still legitimate members of the Assembly we could have had some sleepless nights over that, but we are not because they do not have the legitimacy to make any law or amend any law, so all of that amounts to academic exercise because they have all lost their seats by their defection and because from the time they defected till this moment, there is no crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. So I can tell you this, His Excellency and Rivers people are not bordered by that law because it does not carry any weight whatsoever in the eyes of the law.
Question: Are there specific areas you would want Fubara to improve upon?
Response: I want His Excellency to look inward and immediately flush out dishonourable and disloyal elements within his cabinet. The other day I heard Mr. Emeka Woke, the Commissioner for Special Projects calling the government of Siminalayi Fubara clueless, this is a government that he serves in and he’s referring to that government as clueless and the governor has not taken any action; so I want him to start taking action even though we know that he’s a man that doesn’t act rashly, he wants to respect Mr. President as it were but Mr. President will not also take that insult from any member of his cabinet. Infact, this is the first in history that a serving commissioner will be referring to his own government as clueless, so how could he serve in a clueless government? That commissioner must also have a rethink because it is a shame on him to be serving in a supposed clueless government, so he should resign and if he does not, the governor should not let that go unpunished, he must take drastic action to serve as deterrent to other members of his cabinet that are sabotaging his government because the commissioner’s role in realizing his campaign promises are very pertinent, because the various ministries are the ones to be the forerunners of the government, so if they are sabotaging it, what’s the hope of the governor because he cannot do everything. He should get them out of his government and look for credible Rivers sons and daughters to fill those offices so that his campaign promises can be fulfilled because the time is already ticking and this is almost one year, in the next two years, we’ll enter another electioneering period so we don’t want him to fail so he must act as soon as possible to flushout those elements from his administration.
Question: What is your assessment of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP?
Response: HYPREP that we lost our leaders to achieve have not fared well thus far with Ogoni people. Today, I cannot pinpoint a duplex on the streets of any council in Ogoni which a young man has built and we can now say this was built from the proceeds of HYPREP. But I know that billions of naira has been churn out by HYPREP to service political loyalists and exigencies which is not what the project is meant for. That project ought to bring some respite to Ogoni people but today HYPREP seems to be like a course which ought not to be so and like I’ve always said, the One Billion Dollar is not like government wants to dash us money, it was money paid by the polluters, Shell and its Joint Venture partners for destroying the Ogoni environment and since the money was meant for the Ogoni people, our people should be the first beneficiaries of what that monies is being used for. Although they will claim they are doing cleanup, what they are doing are they following the laid down procedures? what’s the local content component of all of that? When you have thirty contracts and you give twenty eight to outsiders and you throw two to few elites in Ogoni, leaving the people in abject poverty and making them slaves in their own land. The other time we carried out protest what was the reason? The reason was that they were paying Ogoni youths 1400 Naira daily which is not enough for one meal in this times and economy which amounts to modern day slavery in our own land. And HYPREP management was sitting fallow, looking at this whole thing going on without uttering a word, so all of these have to change, we must go back to the drawing table to see how to make our people benefit from the process other than that, I do not see any reason for us supporting this HYPREP project.
Question: What should be done to correct the supposed ills in HYPREP?
Response: What should be done to correct the wrongs going on in HYPREP is for stakeholders to sit on a roundtable and review this whole project and see how to put in clauses that would benefit the Ogoni people. For instance, there is a section in the UNEP Report, particularly page 13 which states that all sources of artisanal refining must be brought to a swift end before the clean up, that was a recommendation that was categorised as an emergency recommendation in the cleanup exercise because UNEP attributed artisanal refining as one of the major cause of pollution so they said end it before you do clean up because you cannot be doing clean up and people are doing ‘kpofire’ but till this very moment that has not been done and for that purpose, the sum of 10 Million United States Dollars was earmarked and it has been released. Where is the money? The report went further to say provide potable drinking water for our people who have been drinking benzene and hydrocarbon in place of clean drinking water, till this moment where is the water? Everyday they give contracts here and there and people are being mobilized with thirty percent contract sums and a lot of these contractors are not even on site. The one that has to do with shoreline restoration that was given by the last administration till this moment they have not moved to site but they have been mobilised with thirty percent of Ogoni people’s money, so a lot has to be done and that’s why we had hitherto called on the Minister of Environment who has been trying to shape this project to listen to stakeholders from this place so that he won’t take one sided information and make decisions. We must all sit-down in a town hall to redesign this project to benefit our people and blame those that should be blamed because you cannot give a contractor job, give him money and you allow him to go, we would not allow that. So these are the things that should be done to bring back the hopes of the people in the project.
Question: Message for youths of Rivers State?
Response: My message for youths of Rivers State is that they should continue to give support to His Excellency, Sir Siminalayi Fubara because from what he has displayed so far, it shows that he is not going to disappoint us. If you go through his appointees, you have alot of young persons there starting from the Chief of Staff, Dr. Edison Ogerenyie Ehie. Other than the clog of retired politicians that the erstwhile governor imposed in the system, the original appointees of Siminalayi Fubara are young chaps and that’s to tell you that this government is a youth friendly government so the youths cannot afford not to support this government in all ramifications because that’s the only way to say Thank You to a man that has decided to support his generation.
Fubara’s government is going to be a wonder in Rivers State and Rivers people would be glad they elected him; we have total confidence in him.
