Ireti Kingibe Promises to Work with Wike, Aduda, Others to Reinvent FCT After Court Victory

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Senator Ireti Kingibe of the Labour Party (LP), representing Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has pledged to work with the Minister overseeing the capital city, Nyesom Wike and other stakeholders, after the National Assembly election petitions tribunal sitting in Abuja, affirmed her election last Tuesday.

Speaking with reporters in Abuja, Kingibe stated that she already has a very long list of issues affecting the FCT to be resolved in collaboration with the minister and other stakeholders, including Senator Philip Aduda.
The Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women Affairs noted that the minister had only been in office for weeks and therefore needed to be given time and properly guided on the salient issues.

She explained that both politicians would need to sit down soon to discuss some of the challenges affecting the people, saying that for instance, the FCT needed a lot of by-laws to be passed.  “I have a long list of problems that the minister, I and the National Assembly have to resolve,” she stressed.
Kingibe explained that because she barely knew the minister and Wike had only been in office for a short while, she wouldn’t want to judge him, noting that the minister might have also been waiting for the court case to end to know who to work with.

“We plan to sit and talk and see how we can work together and since my agenda is that of the people (I don’t know what his agenda is), but I would like to think that it is also that of the people, so we will see what happens.

“Our priority is security, water, infrastructure, nor necessarily massive roads , but graded rural roads will do and agriculture because five of the six area councils are agrarian. Also, women and youth empowerment and those things are easy to do,” she added.
The senator also said she would also leave the matter of whether the FCT deserves a governor until the court gives its final word on cases currently with them.
“So we’ll leave that for now, but going to the subject of demolitions because I have been engrossed in my case, and many things and the minister is very new, we have not met.

“We spoke for the first time today (Wednesday) when he called to congratulate me and we assured each other that we will work together. Now, you must remember, the minister and I have different goals. I was elected by the people, therefore answerable to you the people of the FCT, he’s not.  But working together, I hope that we can merge our interests.

“For one thing, I’m not telling you that there won’t be demolitions. There are many problems with FCT. You’re looking at the flooding that’s taking place everywhere. Why? Because houses have been built on flood channels. Permission has been given for people to build estates on floodplains.
“So many things that we need to fix. In the process of fixing them, I’m not talking of random demolitions that I think that the minister has not been here long enough to have studied everything holistically.
“And I really feel that he needs to take time to look at the whole picture of the FCT, then decide what places and things, lots of things need demolition. There’s no doubt about it. I can tell you several right now.

“When I went to Trademore, you could even see houses being built. They are in the process of being built in the flood channel. You know, that for the good of the whole estate, those houses must go down. But truthfully, I can’t tell you about the ones that have been demolished so far. I have not been paying attention.
“I feel that I have the full rights to now speak as the senator representing the FCT, now that I’ve been reaffirmed. Before, we were in court, and every day as the case concluded, I was pretty occupied with it. So we will address them but what I can assure you is that the interests of the people will be paramount in everything that I do,” she assured.

However, she argued that the recently appointed Mandate Secretaries in the FCT will need to be approved by the National Assembly.
“The mandate secretaries need to be approved by the National Assembly. I’m not aware that they have been. That’s number one. Number two, one of the reasons why…, I think I can’t talk about previous times, but I would like to say between 2015 and 2019 and why FCT has not thrived.

“You cannot bring mandate secretaries from outside FCT and expect them to excel. Mandate secretaries if they are zoned, they should be found in the FCT. You can find every zone in FCT, people who have lived here for several years, who are politicians or bureaucrats in the FCT. That is necessary.
“I remember I was speaking to the mandate secretary of agriculture or one of them 2016 or 2017, he didn’t even know where Kwali was. It’s like taking me now to Bayelsa and deciding that because somebody asks that I’ve been given a slot, and then you want to make me a commissioner of anything in Bayelsa. I won’t know.

“By the time I get acquainted with the place, my tenure is finished. So, people live in the FCT and just like everything,  you need to know the terrain, you need to know the problems, you need to know to be able to solve them.
“ But the minister is new to the FCT and maybe he wasn’t guided right. So we need to look at that again,” she said.
She added: “So you have to remember that the senate is on recess. I’m a lawmaker. I haven’t been around. The Senate is a recess. So they’re not approving anything. You cannot get approval from a House that’s not sitting.

“ And also, you also have to remember that the Minister of FCT now and I don’t think we’ve ever really had a governor…we have had one as a minister of the FCT. So some governors may think that as minister, because the minister administers FCT and the senator is the highest elected office in the FCT.
“The minister of FCT does not have executive powers. He works hand in hand with the National Assembly and the president to administer FCT. So I’ve never met the minister. So if there’s a lacuna, it’s completely my fault.  The senate is our recess.

“ And remember, the minister has been there two to three weeks. The senate has been inaugurated two months and for most of the two months, we’ve been in court.”