Amongst the conditions, there were certain
things that needed to be submitted to the Federal Ministry of Environment. All
what we needed to have submitted we have submitted, environmental management
plan, social management plan, all those ones we have submitted; we have
finished with all the submissions to them and we have also made a commitment
for them to know that we are in the process of compensation... —SA Eric Akpo.
On Saturday 19th August, the Special Adviser to the Executive
Governor of Cross River State on Technical Matters, Arc Eric Akpo, granted some
journalist an interview session particularly bordering on the
Superhighway.
It was quite an interesting 90 minutes session as the SA took us
through a detour of the controversial pet project of His Excellency the
Governor of Cross River State, Sen. Ben Ayade. SA Akpo intelligently addressed
questions on the manner of funding for the Superhighway, made clarifications on
the EIA, and compensation plans for those whose properties has/will been
affected by the construction, etc.
To avoid boredom, this publication on the interview will come in
bits of at least two. What follows, is the interview as it transpired last
week. Happy reading.
JOURNALISTS: Can we get to know you, please?
SA: My name is Arc Eric Akpo Special Adviser to the Governor of
Cross River State on Technical Matters.
JOURNALISTS: Can you give us a rundown of your stay in
office as SA Technical to Gov Ben Ayade?
SA: The journey so far been an SA to a governor known as the
'digital governor', you know, means that you have to be the reason behind the
'digitality' of the governor. Being the SA Technical... it’s not been an easy
ride I must say because the Governor is a very dynamic person, a very dynamic
thinker; he thinks like there is no box all the time, he believes that he can
achieve anything so when he mentions something, you know it falls back to you
as the SA Technical to decide how to achieve that particular goal.
Good enough, when he mentions those things he already has one or
two guidelines to give to you to do those things. But at the end of the day the
bulk of the work falls back to you because you have to do the nitty-gritty to
ensure that his goals are achieved. So, it’s not been an easy ride.
I think I can say that unofficially, I was one of the first
persons who had an appointment with him unannounced even before he was
inaugurated.
We conceived the idea of the Superhighway and the Deep-sea port
together before his inauguration and he told me, go ahead, go to Federal
Ministry of Environment let them recommend a consultant for you so that we can
start work on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
I had to step out immediately. And when we moved from Abuja
coming down to Calabar for his inauguration, he told me take that car, I want
you to put a sticker on it because immediately after my inauguration as people
come out, I want them to see a car with the superhighway and the deep-sea port
already inscribed, so that they will know that I am serious pursuing these
projects. That is how I started my work on the deep-sea port and superhighway
before my appointment was eventually announced.
So, it’s been work, work, work all along for the past two years
for me. There are so many projects, so many creative projects and so much
planning to do and most of these plannings have been my responsibility. Of
course, carrying out the feasibility, carrying out the pre-project planning
process and everything, it’s my responsibility as the SA Technical. I liaise
with the consultant, I liaise with the prospective investors for whatever
project it is; they come first to my office. I hold the preliminary meetings
with them. I tell them what and what we need to do, and off course, he had
given me the guideline for our engagement with investors in whatever project.
Which is why I think we were very vested here.
Some people raise so many issues which we from the origin and
the conception of any project had already taken care of. For instance the issue
of you are partnering with this company, you are going to give them counterpart
funding, you are going to give them equity contribution and all that; our
guideline with these people is straight forward whatever investor, wherever you
come from.
So if you are coming in as an investor, you are coming in as an
investor to put in your funds 100%. We do not have any guarantees for you. If
you are coming in to invest, you have to carry out your feasibility, you have
to be sure that this is a business that you can run profitably and recover your
money, so it is your technical know-how that should guarantee your fund
recovery, not we tieing our own future down. When you come to do an investment,
when the profit comes, you take it; but, if the business fails we bear the
loss? It doesn’t make sense at the end. These are the things we discuss with
these prospective investors or consultants on any of these projects before we
set out to discuss terms of contract and other things generally.
So, yes I have been engaging with almost every prospective
investor that has come into the state; I have been going about the budget
planning process with most of them and of course I supervise most of the
project in the field. For the past two years, that has been what has been
keeping me busy besides making sure that Governor's Office and most other
facilities are very functional as a duty of my office.
JOURNALISTS: For the purpose of clarity and specificity,
can you itemise some of these projects whose planning and supervision you have
been involved in for the past few years?
SA: Okay, I will start with our signature projects: we have 2 key
signature projects but generally we have 3 key signature projects which include
the Garment Factory, the Superhighway and the Deep-sea port.
Economic transformation is one of the key targets of this
administration and that is wrapped around the Deep-sea port and the
Superhighway as solutions to this economic transformation drive that we have.
The deep-sea port, the superhighway have been since we hit the ground running,
we are still on course, they very heavy projects. Now, the planning of these
projects takes time even though we try to devise different means to see that we
save time, because most times, why most of the projects like that are started
and not completed or not even stated at all is because when you look at the
bureaucracy of achieving these projects, it take too much time, before you know
it, you only have four years in the first instance and you have another four
years in the second instance and then the time is gone and you are not able to
complete it and meanwhile you have put in so much resources into it and because
you have not achieved the result, people think you did not do anything.
Look at the international conference center, Liyel Imoke sunk in
so much to it but was not able to officially commission it before he left
office; Ayade came in and put in some funds to tidy the place up, but most
people give the glory to him for having commissioned the project; so, that is
how it is.
So, we try to see how we can save time on some of these project;
at some point it looked like we were infringing on the law even though we know
very well that the law itself is a bit flexible to make these things work
somehow; that is for the superhighway and the deep-sea port projects.
It was expected we would have procured the EIA which of course
everybody knows that it took us two years to get the approval, we started with
identification of site, we started clearing after determining the route of the
superhighway, we started clearing while we were still doing the EIA which was
an infringement on the law.
But, the law is very clear on that, anybody who starts a project
before procuring the EIA certification pays a fine, a well stipulated fine, and
I can tell you almost all federal projects in Nigeria do not have EIA, they
just go ahead and start the work. I think also that superhighway project has
actually given a different out look to the EIA process in the country because
it was sensitive and attracted so much interest, I can bet you that not so many
people knew what the EIA was all about, but now people can talk about the EIA
comfortably.
I do not know if any of us has been in any public hearing for
any project ever before on an EIA? In fact, we don’t even hear about the EIA
but we have the Odukpani Power Plant; we have the NIPP power plant. When did
anybody ever come for a public hearing? We have electrification projects going
on everywhere I have never seen a gathering of a public hearing, to tell you
that the laws were there but nobody was actually following them.
It is only the Superhighway that everybody in the country is now
looking at to say okay, we actually press on this EIA to know how things are
done; for me it is a plus.
JOURNALISTS: The statement you made that almost all
federal project do not have EIAs, is it across Nigeria or just in the Cross
River state?
SA: No! It’s nationwide. If you ask them for EIA, they don’t have
and even if they do, it is actually after the project has been executed just to
have something to show.
That's why am telling you that, we have so many federal projects
in the state, so you would have been hearing of several public hearing everyday
but you hardly hear of any because they don’t actually carry out EIA.
However, the governor in his wisdom had told me to secure the
services of a consultant for EIA even before he was sworn in as governor.
JOURNALISTS (cuts in): What is the name of the consultant?
SA: PGN Resources. We had recommendation of three companies, we
engaged the three companies and luckily we had PGN who knew the terrain around
Cross River and Akwa Ibom, so we procured their services. Precisely, on the
9th of May, 2015 that was when we engaged their services for the
EIA.
The governor knew we needed the EIA and as an environmentalist,
he wasn’t going to undermine that; even though negative publicity made it
looked like he was going to undermine that. No, he didn’t, he took it very
seriously.
Under my office, for every where we had contractors clearing the
superhighway we had somebody called an Environmental Management Assistant
(EMA), employed from within the community and we always asked the community
when we go to engage them, if you have any of your children who studied
Environmental Science, Agriculture, Forestry please recommend one for us we
need someone to serve as environmental management assistant (EMA) with us.
They are all engage in my office. They are the ones who took
records of all the farms, economic trees, take measurement of the farm size,
etc. So, they record it against your name, phone number and other contact
details. We had all these records because these were supposed to be components
of the EIA; so we gathered all these information. There is nobody whose
property was touched, be it cash crop or economic trees, we have records in my
office. We have details of everyone. It is people from your community doing
this job, so if you think you are been marginalise or cheated, it is your own
son you will call.
JOURNALISTS: Are there plans for compensation?
SA: Of course, why we are doing this is because there will
definitely be compensation for what you have on the land —not for the land;
government does not pay compensation for land according to the Land Use Act.
But you pay for any valuables on the land. There’s what you pay for economic
trees, melon farms etc the stipulations are there, when it has to do with
places of critical or cultural importance to the various communities, it
depends on what the community demands. The community will say you need to give
us so so and so for us to carry out some particular rituals to relocate our
shrines, grave, deity to so so and so place. In the clearing so far, none of
those ones were touched, if you tell us that this is a sacred area, this tree
or from here to here to here is a sacred area, our machines don’t go there,
they just avoid that area. Before now, before we do that we must have
negotiated with them to do the needful. You are not just going to sweep through
somebody’s father's grave, we must strike a balance between communities and the
people.
The answer is compensation will be paid for any valuable that
will be affected on the Superhighway and the Deep-sea port.
JOURNALISTS: How far have you gone with the 23
conditions given by the Federal Ministry of Environment as it regards the
Superhighway?
SA: Amongst the conditions, there were certain things that needed
to be submitted to the Federal Ministry of Environment. All what we needed to
have submitted we have submitted, environmental management plan, social
management plan, all those ones we have submitted; we have finished with all
the submissions to them and we have also made a commitment for them to know that
we are in the process of compensation.
May be I should explain something about compensation.
Compensation is not something any government does one-off. It is usually a
gradual process, Compensation begins with enumeration. What you have to prove
is that you are in the process. There is no government that will just demolish
somebody's house and walk away; it's not obtainable unless the house in the
first instance is an illegal structure that was marked hitherto for demolition,
that’s a different case.
But first of all, what we do is enumeration which is usually a
very tedious process. You know why? It would have been very easy to say bring
your claims and then we settle, but people go and proliferate the numbers. In
fact, if you allow it like that you will pay billions and billions and you have
not finished paying.
To be continued...
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