By Nwafor Okafor
The Senator representing Anambra South Senatorial Destrict, Chief Ifeanyi Ubah, has said he will ask the Federal Government to pay his constituency five percent of N700bn alleged oil fraud he revealed to the government through a bill he sponsored that is now yielding that amount to Nigeria from that sector, annually.
He said his constituency was entitled to the five percent commission for the whistleblowing job he did in that respect through the bill. He stated this on Sunday in an interactive session with some journalists in Awka, Anambra State .
Ubah, a member of the Young Progressives Party (YPP), said the bill in issue was signed by President Muhammadu Buhari while he( Buhari) was on his hospital bed in London, considering its importance.
He said that was the first time a Nigerian president was signing a bill into law outside the shores of the country, adding that he would need to go back to senate in 2023 to continue what he called his good works.
He said since the existence of Anambra South Senatorial zone no senator from the area had done, in his first tenure, 30 per cent of what he had done in his term, stating that in no time he would unveil his scorecard to his constituency as a matter of right to them.
He said despite being sponsored to senate by a ‘small political party’, the YPP had grown by leaps and bounds because of tenacity of purpose, adding that the party had now two sitting House of Assembly members from Oyi and Nnewi South as well as a former board of trustees (BoT) member of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and others as members.
He said,”Let me give you a few points. I will start with Nigeria and then come back to Anambra State and move down to Anambra South. Never in the history of legislation in Nigeria has any legislator raised a motion that got the president to sign outside the shores of Nigeria. No president has ever signed a bill outside the shores of Nigeria. I am the first senator that made that possible in the history of Nigeria.
“It is my motion and my bill today that is the highest bill that is giving Nigeria over N700bn annually. In fact, I can tell you today that in the 9th Senate, my bill today is responsible for the payment of salaries to 70 per cent of Nigerian civil servants. As journalists, go and do your investigations. I raised a motion that brought about the bill for the Deep Offshore Act.
“This is an agreement between the Nigerian military regime and the international oil companies (IOCs) over the last 20 something years that enabled the upstream investors to drill Nigerian oil from the deep offshore. That agreement between Nigeria and international oil companies (IOCs) signed by the military regime has been like that and the agreement was that after 10 years, Nigeria will renegotiate. But since then, over 25 years, there has never been a renegotiation.
“They continued to milk Nigeria. And that constitutes close to 70 per cent of Nigeria’s total oil production. And they have been making this money annually. I am not saying N700 million. I said N700 billion annually. In the next three or four weeks, I am going to write to the president and make it a national issue because by right, Nigerian government is supposed to be paying whistleblowers five per cent to my senatorial district and I think that we should revisit it because nobody in the history of Nigeria has given Nigeria this kind of upliftment. It is something that has never been done in the history of Nigeria. And immediately I raised the motion, it sparked international concerns and there was a lot of pressure which made Mr President to sign it in his hospital bed in London and made it a law.
“No president has ever signed a bill outside the shores of his country. My bill made Mr President to sign it and Nigeria is benefitting N700bn. If you have a legislator that just went for the first time and raised such a thing, I don’t know what title you will give him. You know, it is the Lord that doeth all these things. It is not by my own power. It is the grace God has given me; by the little knowledge I have in the industry. And that was the very first bill Mr President signed.
” I have given to Nigeria what belongs to Nigeria. I have also played a role as a politician by proving that a journey of a million miles starts with a step, but a good one and contentment is the keyword. I am the very first politician that has ever gotten to the Senate of Nigeria with a relatively unknown political party and I got there and remained in that Senate with that political party throughout my tenure.”
