One Year In Office: By The Time I Complete My Four Years In Office, It Will Be Good Enough To Say Yes, We Have Sent Somebody To Abuja-Sen. Onawo

……My Set Objective Is To Make Sure I Attract Govt. Goodwill To All Five LGAs That Make Up My Constituency

In this no-holds-barred interview with the Distinguished Senator Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo representing Nasarawa South Senatorial zone, with our Universalreporters editorial crew, he gave it all out on his one year at the senate, speaking to us he said part of what will be his flagship while in the senate will be to make sure the Construction of the 164km Doma-Rafin Gabas –Abuja road, a road that has been gazetted 49 years ago by the Federal Government comes to reality and see that the road has been done.

Aside from this he also spoke on a lot of issues which include the Doma Eye Treatment Center which he sponsored its Bill for an Act to Establish National Eye Centre Doma, 2024 (SB. 193) which has passed Second Reading.

Distinguished Senator Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo, while speaking, said the aim is to prevent, diagnose, and treat the eye; coordinate research in Eye diseases, and train specialists in Eye diseases among others.

Who is Senator Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo

Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo is a public servant, a businessman, and a philanthropist, who hails from a humble background, I am currently holding the chieftaincy title of the Ciroman Doma. I have spent about 17 years of my life in public service and it has all been in the legislative circle, eight years in the State Assembly, I served as a Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Eight years in the House of Representatives, I served as the Chairman Committee on Industry and Chairman Committee on ICT and am now in the senate, I am serving as the Chairman Arts, Culture and Creative Economy.

Will it be right if one says that the business of lawmaking is at your fingertip?

We are still learning, we thank God.

13^th June 2024 will make you one year in office, how has the journey been?

The journey has been rough, and tough but as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, that is how it has been, we have been able to survive the situation. You know I came in here as a member of the opposition, we came through a very turbulent election, one of the most costly elections in the history of the country, when we came to the Senate, we also met a turbulent situation, where we had to elect a Senate President, and we were pitted among two camps, the Akpabio camp and the Yari Camp, it was not about the North and South as some people call it, it was not about Christians and Muslims as people call it, but at least who you feel you know, who you feel can deliver, but at the end of it all as it is always said it is God that gives power, God gave Akpabio power and we are now with him and he is piloting the affairs of the Senate now. He is the chairman of the National Assembly, and we are getting along. But generally speaking, it has not been very smooth, not very smooth because, in the course of our journey, we discovered that the business of the National Assembly is not being done as it is supposed to be done. Bills especially executive bills are being passed expeditiously, which is not supposed to be the case, sometimes when they take their time to prepare their bill the onus is on us as representatives of the people to go through these bills thoroughly and give the people the best that would better their lives. So as it is being said, so far, so good, but is not smooth.

Talking of bills, in the last year in office, have you sponsored any bills?

I have, I have three bills currently in the works, and I have a bill for the Solid Mineral Development Area Commission, which is intended to give all the Solid Minerals Areas at least a benefit of what their land is being degraded for and it is supposed to help regulate of Illegal miners. As you can see in Niger State just last week it was speculated that 50 persons died, that the mine collapsed on them, this commission is supposed to help in monitoring and regulating everything every miner is doing, it is supposed to reduce the activities of illegal miners. It is supposed to help the ministry in making sure that the revenue profile of the solid minerals industry is shored up because if you look at the country today, we are supposed to get more revenue from Solid Minerals than we get from Oil because every aspect of the Solid Minerals is more costly than the oil. Unfortunately, the Solid Minerals industry is capital intensive, it is not supposed to be an all-comers game, and it is supposed to be for those who have a passion for it, but you see a lot of things are happening now that everybody wants to go into it and because the regulations and things like that, the cost aspect of mining, that is why you find many people cannot afford it, some of these minerals abound in the backyard of people, but they do not have the money to go through the process of getting a license,  and even if they get a license, they do not have the money to mine, because you have to go through recognizance, exploration, then you go into small scale mining before you go into proper mining, so all of these things are not things you can do if you don’t have money for it, I doubt if you can count up to 5 or 10 miners in Nigeria who has done proper exploration. To do an exploration of a mining site, you have to go through all the processes, including core drilling, you have to spend nothing less than two million dollars before you do a proper exploration to determine the quantity of the mineral or minerals you are looking for, it is not easy and so how many people can afford that and that is why illegal mining is abound. Unfortunately is not investing enough in the sector, because if it is investing enough, it would have gotten more than what it is getting from oil. Everybody who can afford to get a license gets a license, and you have more speculators in the mining sector now than actual miners. What do I mean, many people go and get a license, keep it, and look for an investor to come and give them peanuts, and then sell or transfer the certificate to the investor or they partner with them. If you look at what foreigners are doing to this country in terms of degrading our lands and taking away what this country has without the country necessarily benefiting from it, you will weep for this country. So this bill is supposed to help the ministry monitor the miners, regulate their activities, and then see how it can help the government get more revenue.

I also have a bill that has gone through the second reading for a National Eye Hospital Doma, the reason being that in the whole of the North-Central States, there is no single national eye hospital. Anybody from Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa, Kogi, Plateau, and Kwara alongside the FCT, just has an option of either going to a private hospital or going to Kaduna, now with the risk of traveling, even between Abuja and Kaduna, you and others have been writing on what has been happening, so it is risky sometimes, and to bring Government closer to the people I feel that as a Senator representing my people I should propose a bill that will bring this hospital to Doma where it will bring health care facility closer to the people instead of leaving from Benue to Kaduna or leaving from Taraba to go to Kaduna, you can come here and Doma looks central.

And I also have a third bill, which is supposed to help regulate the activities of the Executive on motions that have been proposed and passed by the members of the National Assembly. You will find that as a representative of the people, you will see that something is not going right, you will hear the cry of your people, you will propose it, and after using taxpayers’ money to discuss it extensively you will discover that the executive will say is just your personal opinion or just a suggestion, so they have nothing binding to comply with it. So I feel that if there is a compliance bill that will compel them to act on a motion that has been passed by the National Assembly, I think it will help to ease the activities of the executives and it will help the common man because most of the motions are things that are having direct bearing on the lives of the people. As the representative of the people, there is no point coming to discuss; after that, the executive will refuse to comply. So there is a bill to compel the executive to act on any motion that has been passed.

Those three bills, are some of the bills I have so far and all of them have gone through the first reading, the National Eye Hospital Bill is awaiting a public hearing, and I am hoping that before the end of the year, it will be passed into law

I have to take you back to the last question on the issue of the Solid Minerals Bill, last year I visited a mining site, and lo and behold what I saw at the host communities showed a community with poverty, no school, no portable water, no road, no school, and other social amenities even while companies including Chinese companies mining from their backyard, I begin to wonder what CSR do they do for the host communities and why is it that State Governments don’t even make it as a law to make sure these miners cater for host communities.

Yes, the scenario you have painted is the saddest of our lives, the saddest story of our lives because even some of our leaders do compromise when these foreigners come and give them paltry sums before you go into proper mining after your exploration, after setting up, you are supposed to sign a community development agreement with the community and part of Corporate Social Responsibility is to say okay, between this and this, I will provide water for you, I will provide classrooms for you, I will provide a clinic for you, I will sponsor some of your children to schools, I will give them scholarship and things like that. But because of the poverty level we find ourselves in, you will find that a foreigner will come and just give either the head of the community or the land owner Five thousand US Dollars, Ten thousand US Dollars and they think that is a lot of money. Because the foreigner has come to give you Ten thousand US Dollars, he feels he has bought your conscience and some of them after setting up the place will not allow the indigenes or the community to come near, so you don’t even know what they are taking, a piece of one gram or one Kilo of whatever they are going to take from there is ten times more than what they have given you not to talk of a trailer load of what they are taking. There is no assessment of the land, there is no environmental audit or impact assessment, so they degrade the land, the mine underground against the provisions of the law and they just leave. Even when they mine underground, they don’t provide safety measures, they just spoil the land they leave. So our people are in a very serious problem and they are using some of our leaders as their collaborators. So the bill I sponsored is meant to address these problems.

As big as Nasarawa South Senatorial District is, in the last year as a senator what are your achievements

Not much because I came here as an opposition and based on the circumstance of our contribution during the leadership crisis of the Senate led to a lot of things, but I have been able to touch the lives of my constituents, I have been able to help get employments for a lot of my constituents, am sure more than 20, in different agencies of Government at the Federal Level. I have been able to build four classrooms, for a community secondary school, fully furnished with solar-powered light and students have commenced learning. The day I am going to commission it, I will make sure you are invited.

I have succeeded in listing our road, the Doma-Rafinga-Abuja Road which has been gazette since 1974 and there has been nobody to push it, but when I came here through lobbying and some legislative contacts, I have been able to get it listed into the budget of 2024 and by the grace of God the road is going to be awarded anytime soon and when it is going to be flagged off, I will make sure you are there too.

Currently, we have flagged off the construction of an eight-kilometer road in Doma, we have provided funds for the rehabilitation of the largest Dam in the North Central zone, and we have lobbied for some feeder roads like Ashangwa-Dedere Road, Atabula-Duduguru road, all of these are in the works. And then in the budget of this year, we have provided for training and empowerment of a lot our youth, women, widows and disabled, because every time we go home and we go home and you go and give them small, small stipends, it is not going to help them and you cannot satisfy everybody but if you are able to empower them, it means you would have been able to touch the lives of many families. So anytime from now, we are going to make sure that the program starts, most of the agencies that we have put this budget has already advertised, people have bided and anytime from now, they are going to start the training programmes. There are so many things we have planned to do. So, far I won’t be able to list all that we have done in one year, but moderately these are some of the things we have achieved and I think in the circumstances in which we have found ourselves, I think is a modest achievement.

Nasarawa South is a predominantly Farming zone, most times there are issues of Farmers/Herders clashes, what is the solution to this?

Farmers and herders clash, and I have always taken a different position from the position of many of my colleagues. I know that some Fulani people have become a menace to our society but some criminal elements of our people have also cashed into it and are disguised as Fulani. Not all the Cows are owned by Fulani, I had a herd of about a hundred when I was threatened that they were going to steal them, so I sold them. Some so many people have hundreds of Cows within Nasarawa South, either they were rustled or stolen, or the boys who were saddled with the responsibility of taking care of them took them away, but the fact of the matter is that the solution to that problem is that since most of the cattle route that was provided for in the first republic has been taking over by farmers or by villages, the best thing is for us to modernize, to look at the possibility of Ranching.

Cattle rearing is a business, if you have the money to buy those number of Cows, you should be able to buy land, that you can fence the land and partition, this side is for them to come and graze, and this side is for them to come and rest, and so if proper ranching is adopted and the herdsmen or Fulanis are educated enough, are sensitized on the need to ranch, on the need to settle in one place, most of these problems stop. Am sure you are very conversant with the recent story of Ekiti where they said, Herders went to attack and kidnap some people and when the security men apprehended their kingpin, it turned out to be a Yoruba man from that Community. You saw in Benue that it is not every attack that is done by the Fulanis, you see the same thing in Nasarawa, in every state. Fulanis started it but some people cashed on it, so it is holistic and just like Abacha said, any problem that has lasted more than 48 hours means that the Government has a hand in it or the Government is in the know of it. This is a simple thing the Government can handle and the Government should live up to its responsibility at all levels, the Local Government levels, State Level, and Federal Level, because if there is a problem, there is nobody that will go into your community now that your people will not know it. So if this land has been empty before and all of a sudden you see smoke coming out from afar, you say ah, I know this place has nobody before who is burning tree there, let’s go and check and when you find the person there you ask him what brought you, why didn’t you report to the chief and things like that, so you tell him to either go and document himself or you tell him to leave, but things are much different now and the only way curb that, when Cattles are now ranched and are monitored, the issue will drastically reduce.

Doma LGA houses the Olam Rice Farm, as the heartbeat of the people are you satisfied with what the company is doing in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, in terms of students’ scholarship, provision of incentives.

Well, thank God you are from the community, you will agree with me that Olam is not leaving up to its beats and when I was in the House of Reps, I had the opportunity to accost them and because of the problems we have, the problem of poverty level and so many like I have mentioned before, I don’t know how they have been going about it. You will find that the road between Doma and Rukubi that is used mostly to transport their rice, A bridge will break and they will not do anything about it, Potholes are developing every day because of the heavy trucks that are being used by them and the road is not being catered for and the Government is not doing anything, it is sad, they are to be given a condition you either leave up to your CSR or you leave. People cannot be suffering and even if the Government repairs the road, it your truck that is following the road and spoiling it. How much tax are they paying, they may be under-declaring what they are producing, So I get very sad, but because I don’t have the power to do anything, and if I have my way I will call them to order, this is the community you are living in, this is the community you are benefiting from, this is the road that is used in transporting your produce, assuming that there are no roads, how will they transport whatever they are doing. So, I followed there, I went to Akpanaja and I busted at Makurdi, I was very, very sad, we went to a place I couldn’t pass. If they are living up to their responsibilities, between Akpanaja and Rukubi is a very short distance and is within the confines of the area they are farming. So what they are supposed to do, is to repair that road, even if they are not going to put Asphalt, let them grade it, let them have graders that constantly they will be grading it to make sure that at least it is passable but they are not. Makurdi is a state capital, Lafia is the state capital, if they have two warehouses in these places they will be doing a lot of business. I am not happy about what they are doing at all.

Last time the people of Tunga brought a petition before your office over the issue of a road project, where are we sir on that petition?

The report is still at the committee level, the report was referred to the committee on the public petition and code of conduct which I am a member, I brought the petition before the house, several when they were invited, the Tunga people have always shown up, the contractors TRIACTA has always given one excuse or the other why they were not able to show up, the last time their MD was able to show up, the committee Chairman was attending a programme and he didn’t finish the meeting in time and the MD couldn’t wait any longer, it has been rescheduled to another time and the Tunga people are coming back. So the issue is at the committee level and am sure they are going to get justice.

You have touched on almost all sectors, but what about electricity, what are you doing in that regard?

Yes, even among the 2024 budget there are plans that we have to provide transformers and Solar Street lights to so many communities, all those are in the works, there is a primary health care center currently going on in my constituency, and we intend to build more. The issue of prepaid meters is something that we want to come up with in the last phase, the reason being that you cannot give people prepaid meters when they don’t even have the light, so when we provide the light, we can now make available the prepaid meters.

In the itinerary of your activities, I saw something like 20 boreholes in your constituency.

Yes, I mentioned it, some boreholes are in the works also.

Distinguished Senator, there were a lot of encomiums during your two-day visit to some of the areas destroyed by the windstorms, where you supported them financially and also wrote to NEMA. What is your message to the people waiting?

Yes, I want them to be patient, Government procedures are long, and they have to be patient, Thank God I am a member of the committee on Special Duties, I came and appealed to my Chairman that this is what to my community, and I am calling of NEMA to come and do the needful, I sent my SLA, to take a letter from here to NEMA office, they have received the letter, they have acknowledged the letter and they are working on it. The chairman intervened personally and so it is being attended to. So we are hoping that anytime from now they will get the outcome of our request for NEMA intervention. NEMA is not sleeping on it.

Being in the opposition party both in your state and at the federal level, how has politics been?

What is happening today, though it is happening everywhere even in the US, at the level we are developing is not palatable, not palatable in the sense that it is like a scenario where the winner takes all, if we continue to have a winner takes all situation, we will be rolling our development backward. One of the saddest situations is that no government is ready to continue with projects of the previous government, and that is why we have abandoned projects all over the country. So I will urge the government of the day to embrace every Nigerian that is capable of contributing to the growth of the country regardless of political party. Once politicking is finished, once one is elected into office, he should embrace everybody and make sure, even if you are going to give a little fraction of your position to an opposition, there is nothing wrong with it, they are also Nigerians and they are going to help Nigeria grow. For example, our President is the Southwest, if he picks somebody who is from the Southwest of the PDP, or Labour, or SDP, and gives him a position, I mean that is building a government of National Unity, they have just taken us backward to our old National Anthem, that because of diversity, because of this and that, okay let us show that through action by bringing everybody together. Our tongues differ yes, our tribes differ, let our actions be the same so that we can move forward.

Three more years to do, what are your set objectives for your constituency and the nation at large?

My set objective is to make sure that before I leave here I will attract enough goodwill of Government to my constituency, making sure that all the five local governments are touched adequately so that at least they can feel the presence of their representatives and that Government is brought closer to them. I intend to make sure that I bettered the lives of my constituents, I intend to make sure that I create opportunities where I will help them get more federal jobs, and many of our youths finished school 10 years ago without doing anything, without any job, if there opportunities for us to get them engaged, why not. There are lots and lots that I intend to do and I want to make sure that by the time I leave here, it is good enough to say yes, we have sent somebody to Abuja.

Will it be that good enough to ask you to come back or to go for a higher office?

If it is good enough for me to come back, it is going to be determined by what I have done, because many people have come to ask me, oh we heard that you want to run for governor, we heard that you want to come back to the Senate, I said is less than one year, is premature, is to tell God I am not grateful enough to now declare my intention after having not shown anything, by the time I get that road that has been abandoned since 1974 done, I will be proud to tell anybody that because I have done this, even if they have started halfway or even 1 Km, I will say I need an opportunity to come and complete that road. This is a road that connects from Lafia to Abuja. It passes through so many local governments, Doma, Lafia, Nasarawa, Karu, and Kokona. So if I try to get only that road done and I try to get this National Eye Hospital done, and even after it if I die, I would have died a happy man. So my ambition of wanting to come back here or to go higher will be very much determined by what I can achieve, because now if I tell people that I want to run for governor or I want to come back to the Senate and people ask me what have you done, what have you achieved, what will I say.  So, by the time a lot has been achieved, it is people who will say please go back to the Senate to go and complete what you have started or people will say no you have done much here come and contest for governor.