Distinguished Senator Victor Umeh, an estate surveyor turned politician, is the Senator representing Anambra Central Senatorial District on the platform of Labour Party (LP).
Umeh, the Ohamadike Ndigbo, a former National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) who has earned several awards and chieftaincy titles on account of his service to humanity and philanthropic gestures, is the Chairman Senate Committee on Diaspora and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and a member of Pan African Parliament (PAP).
An outspoken lawmaker known for his valuable contributions on the floor of the Senate, the LP chieftain was a member of the 8th Senate where he spent only about 18 months, yet made significant impact on the lives of his constituents with the several projects and programmes he facilitated to Anambra Central.
In this interview, Umeh explained that there is nothing harmful about the tax reform bills presented to the National Assembly by President Bola Ahmed Bola Tinubu (PBAT). He also spoke about his representation of Anambra Central people in the Senate and other issues of national interest.
Excerpts:
On June 13, 2023, you were one of those inaugurated as senators in the 10th Senate. How would you say the journey has been so far in your representation of the people of Anambra Central Senatorial District in the 10th National Assembly in the last 18 months or thereabout?
Well, it’s been an interesting period. The truth about it is that our tenure started with a lot of challenges. When the President took over, he introduced so many reforms that brought severe hardship to Nigerians. And in a situation like this, the first set of people that will be approached by the suffering masses are the lawmakers. This is because we are accessible and more open and closer to the people than the Executive.
The period has been like an aircraft that ran into the storm and the pilot is struggling to stabilize the aircraft. You know that will come with panic and a lot of anxiety. Within the past 18 months or so, we’ve been trying to navigate through the challenges Nigerians face on a daily basis – insecurity, food crisis caused by people running away from their farms, high prices of goods and commodities, restructuring of the economy through oil subsidy removal by the President. Then, the floating of the naira for its value to be determined by market forces. All of these combined to plunge the country into turbulent times.
When we arrived here as a parliament, we were confronted with all these challenges immediately. So, through our law-making efforts we’ve been trying our best to see the laws and motions to pass and bills to enact into law, to be able to assist the government to steady the course and provide breathing space to the citizens. But it’s herculean because of the jump of the dollar from about N400 to N1700. That is something nobody can control just by mere pronouncement. The President and his team are trying all that they can to be able to arrest the situation. But you can see that it has been defying solutions. The economic situation is affecting delivery on all fronts.
The 2024 budget was the first full budget that the 10th National Assembly passed. What would you say about its implementation?
The 2024 budget that we did, its implementation has been very poor because of paucity of funds. Now, we are talking about the 2025 budget estimates. But we have to look at the performance of the 2024 budget. The appropriations we have made, how have they been able to implement the budget. To what extent and to what percentage. Because appropriation is a law. Once the National Assembly passes a budget, it becomes a law. It becomes an Appropriation Act which the government has to implement. So, we will have to look at the performance of the 2024 budget viz-a-viz the impact on the economy.
When we were discussing the Medium Term and Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Policy Paper, I said that the projections contained in the MTEF were all on a positive note. It is showing that the economy has grown, the GDP has grown, unemployment has declined and naira is at N1700 but projected to drop to N1400. These were optimistic projections. But I told them that the reality is that the taste of the pudding is in the eating. There is no way you can tell a blind man that there is salt in the food he is eating because he doesn’t need sight to know that there is salt. He will taste it. So, the impact of all this razzmatazz should reflect on the living conditions of the people. Have Nigerians experienced improved living standards and all that? It is not something that is going to be a paper work. If the economy is healthy, Nigerians will experience it on all fronts. Transportation costs should drop. Cost of foods would drop. Cost of services will drop. Cost of healthcare would drop. So, if these things are hanging somewhere high up, and you are using words to create the impression that everything is going well, it will not be believed.
Yes, I’m convinced that the President is trying to do a lot. But one thing is to try, the other thing is to achieve the expected results. I believe with the kind of programmes he is putting in place, he is not idle. The president is not idle. But the ultimate thing will be the effects of his efforts on the wellbeing of the Nigerians people.
How have your constituents felt your impact as their representative in the Red Chamber of the National Assembly?
At the constituency level, since we were inaugurated in the 10th NASS, I have continued to improve on my efforts when I was here in the 8th Senate for about 18 months. A lot has been done to positively affect the lives of my constituents. I’ve reintroduced again and rejigged my scholarship programme because I believe the youths need to be empowered through education. There is no empowerment you can give to a child that will be better than empowering the child educationally.
An educated child has become a national asset. The child will, one, be fully developed in his senses or her senses. Become more patriotic to the country. And then, be a source of hope to his or her immediate family. So, I have always placed value on education. Even on a private capacity level, since 2007 I have been offering scholarships to people who are brilliant but less privileged.
What is the nature of the scholarships you recently awarded to 223 students of tertiary institutions from your constituency?
It’s full tuition and some support for the needs of the students. It’s full tuition, 100 percent. Then, there are marginal provisions for other things that they need. And the impact is heavy. 223 people benefited and they got 37 million naira total on the same spot as payment for the 2023/2024 academic session which was made on the 5th of September, 2024. The scholarship is for the entire duration of the course for anybody who is selected. But we pay the fees annually. I’m happy with it and the students are quite happy. They are making progress in their studies. As soon as we get into the 2025 budget again, we will provide for them and pay their fee for the 2024/2025 session. What we paid is for 2023/2024. If you add it to the people I have had in my scholarship over the years, it is something that gives me so much joy, that today we have so many doctors, so many engineers courtesy of my scholarship programme.
Why this focus and dedication towards education especially in the area of awarding scholarships to indigent students? What is the motivating factor?
One, it is because I attach so much premium to education. I know the importance of education. Like I told you, an educated mind is a civilised mind. When you educate young people, they will know the value of life. They know what to do and what not to do. You cannot come and brainwash somebody and tell him that if you carry a bomb tied to your body and hug somebody and blow up a place, you go to heaven. Any child that is educated will know that it’s a fallacy. That such thing cannot be true.
So, education is a weapon to liberate the mind. Education is a weapon to prepare a child even for leadership, because somebody who is educated can be anything. You can be governor. You can be a senator. You can be a House of Reps member. You can be a House of Assembly member. You can be a local government chairman. You can even contest for the Presidency of the country as God permits you growing up. So, I know that the foundation to life is proper education.
On my motivation for floating the scholarship, I am from a family of seven siblings. In other words, we are eight. And my parents were not wealthy people in that respect. I took to education very early and brilliantly too. My father was struggling to see me through school to let me have this education. But he had so much hope in my performance. I gained admission into secondary school from primary five. In secondary school, I finished first in my class in 1980 and got admission into the University of Nigeria Nsukka with awaiting result. I hadn’t received my WAEC result when I gained admission to the university. My father was struggling to see me through and for me to acquire that university education in the midst of other siblings all growing up at the same time. So, I knew that finances can make somebody not to get educated. Brilliant people ended up not going to higher institutions. Some even dropped out from primary school.
My peers at the primary school, many of them, those who were very sound academically that couldn’t proceed to secondary school and the university, they are all over the place. But with that opportunity my father struggled to give me, we were able to make it. That time it was small money but very difficult to find. For me to be in the boarding school then, my father was paying N20 a month because he wanted me to have the best despite the difficulties. N20 a month and you will be fine. Today to have a child in the boarding school, you know the amount of money they will ask you to pay.
I saw that education is very important in human development. And recalling how some of my peers dropped out of school and couldn’t further their education because they didn’t have somebody to sponsor them, I found the need to rescue children in that category. So, I started picking children who are brilliant but have nobody to sponsor their secondary school education. So, with my scholarship from secondary school to university, I was building them up and the results have been outstanding. People got to know that I was interested in helping people to go to school, and they came to me from various places. They bring somebody, oh, this child is in the first year in the university, the sponsor died in an accident and she can’t go ahead. I will take the person. There was a case of a young girl. That is the first medical doctor that I trained. She was in second year at university. Her sponsor died and one Reverend Father brought her to me and said the sponsor of this girl is gone, and she dropped out of medical school. And I said no, Chioma you cannot drop off. And I took her and continued full tuition and everything, full scholarship for her. She finished and became a medical doctor. There was another one that came and found her way to see me through guided steps that she took. She came to me to tell me that she would like to have a job from me. She wants me to help her get a job. And I said what are you doing with job. She said that she was in medical school at the University of Port Harcourt and that her father died in an accident so she couldn’t continue. That she wants to get a job so she can save money and return to school. And I said no! I saw that she is very brilliant. And I said go back, you are going to continue. You don’t need a job. It’s distraction. I took her. She finished and graduated as the best student in medicine at the University of Port Harcourt, having distinction in internal medicine and surgery. She comes here in my office. She is in Abuja now.
So, my students are always hovering around me. Even after graduating they kept coming. We have so many of such cases. And I have always known that children who are challenged financially turn out to be the best students in the end. There was one they brought to me. His father died and he just finished first year in chemical engineering at Nnamdi Azikiwe University. Because the stories go round, people try to come one way or the other. So he came and I took him. He was one of the people I took in 2018. One of the 76 students I gave scholarship in 2018 when I spent only 18 months in the 8th Senate. He finished and made first class in chemical engineering. He is now in Canada. I see that when you give support to brilliant but financially challenged students, they will surprise you with their results. Most of my students made first class because before I take you, I will know that you are ready to study.
I am known as someone who does not play with constituency funds. My projects are all over the place. When I was here for 18 months, the projects I did in Anambra Central Senatorial District were so numerous that people said so these things are possible. I was building classrooms, health centres, boreholes, all manners of things received my attention. And I was doing them and delivering them in that 18 months. And now that I came back, I have started the same thing. I don’t make noise about them. Even at that, I have just been getting awards all over the place. The projects I do are all visible in the communities. So, the people see them and they continue to write editorials. Even journalists on their own without prompting. They go round and see my work and write editorials.
How are your constituents taking these efforts of yours?
They are very happy with my honest representation. When there was this provision for rice palliative, I was one of the first five senators in Nigeria that delivered to their constituents. It was brought out in an open field and distributed – over thirteen thousand bags of rice. I shared it. Many people were still struggling but I did it because I knew that people were hungry. So, they know that if I have anything, I will give them. I won’t even talk about the daily phone calls from people asking for support, for one thing or the other.
How would you rate His Excellency, Senator Godswill Akpabio, in his leadership of the 10th National Assembly?
I will score Godswill Obot Akpabio a good pass mark. He is somebody who jokes. He is a very funny person. But he is also a humanitarian person. If you stay around him, you will see the kind of things he does, showing that he has human conscience. Somebody who can go and pick children that are helpless and begin to take care of them and give them education. His office as Senate President of course is bombarded with all manners of pressures, both from the executive and from the citizens of the country.
But he is providing leadership with the best of his ability in his position as the presiding officer of the National Assembly. The executive would normally be bombarding the National Assembly with requests. But I have been here working and seeing that we are in very perilous times, and most of the requests the executive brings, we give support to them because we don’t want the President to fail and blame the National Assembly.
That is why he selects his appointees. He brings them here for confirmation. We confirm those who do not have any serious issues. You allow the president to use his discretion to work with those he wants to work with. Because the truth is that if these things we are doing fail, it is Tinubu who has failed. Not anybody! The buck stops at his desk. He selects his ministers. He selects all the appointees. Every day Mr President releases new appointments. He makes the decisions on who he wants to work with. And so, when he runs into trouble, he will not blame the National Assembly. What we are doing is that we are performing our statutory function of approving his appointees for him as required of us by the constitution. So, the real task of governance lies on him and his team.
How do we get out of the quagmire that we find ourselves in as a nation?
The president has to do extraordinary things to pull Nigeria out of the brink. The government, no doubt, inherited so much rot from the past administration. We don’t want to go there. But I can tell you that they plunge the country into hopelessness. When we came here, we saw that the government was down to 31 trillion naira in ways and means. And we’ve been trying to investigate that ways and means, how that came about. Thirty-one trillion naira!
You are talking about the previous government?
Yes, the previous government. Buhari’s government. They couldn’t show what they did with the money. I’m in the adhoc committee investigating ways and means. They’ve been doing hide and seek with us. We are calling for information, data. We may be very slow, but we are determined to get to the root of it. What they did with the money. Because the things we have received are skeletal documents showing that the president was giving approval for 500billion, 800billion, sometimes within one week. And they are couched in such a manner that there are no specifics. They will say, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and shortfall in revenue for the government to take care of situations in infrastructure. No breakdown! That was how they plunged the country into the abyss. So, we are gradually getting there by blocking such recklessness.
President Tinubu has veered away from that reckless ways and means in the current administration. So, we are just carrying the burden of the previous one. And it is very difficult to clear. This thing is responsible for the spiral inflation we have. Because CBN printed money and dished out money totalling 31 trillion to people who did not use the money for anything meaningful. They didn’t pursue any meaningful development with it. So, they had the money. They are all stolen money. Gradually we will get it and I’m happy that I’m in the committee.
A number of bills emanating from the President regarding tax reforms is currently before the National Assembly. It has been quite a contentious issue. As a lawmaker who is privy to the content of the tax bills, what is your take on the matter?
Globally what people don’t like to do is to pay tax. Nobody likes to pay money. But a system that has worked effectively would have the confidence of its citizens to pay tax. When you charge tax that people will not be willing to pay, and then you use force to get the tax, it is not a good tax. Any tax that you use force to get is not a good tax. A good tax is a tax that people will be willing to pay. And so, it will be easy to administer and the collection process will be easy.
If they (the citizens) know that the money they are paying, government is using it to provide infrastructure and services, people will be more persuaded to pay tax. But Nigeria at this state, we are in a situation where Nigerian people have lost faith in governance. So, any action that is geared towards taxing the citizens will receive immediate rejections. And that is what we are seeing with the tax bills.
People have not been able to read the bills. They have continued to rely on social media posts to condemn the proposed tax reforms. I have read the tax reform bills. And I can tell that in as much as we will be doing consultation, I have not seen anything that is very harmful in the bills, that should warrant a total rejection.
What we need to do is to explain and ensure that people understand the purpose and the intent of the bills. So, the government has a lot of work to do to market its objectives to the Nigerian people, and do things that will promote confidence on the part of Nigerians. The drivers of the government should be able to show that they are ready to be like ordinary people. So that when you are asking Nigerians to pay money, they will know that they are not paying this money for you to go and buy luxuries for yourself and your family.
If you subject the tax reform bills to critical analysis, you will see that most of the resentments and outcries are misplaced. I have studied the bills and I don’t think there should be any cause for alarm. Most of the things they were pointing out to kick against the bills were not true. They were thinking that there was an intention to make Lagos and Ogun States take all the money that will accrue from VAT. They felt that because the headquarters of all the big corporations and companies are registered in Lagos, therefore any tax they collect will go to Lagos State. It is not true. People have demonstrated ignorance with such position on social media. But if you take time to study the bills you will see that it is not true.