In a candid reflection on Nigeria’s political evolution, former Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba has pinpointed a fundamental shift in political culture, away from the modest service of the nation’s founders to the current era of ostentatious wealth and authority. Speaking on The Exchange podcast hosted by Femi Soneye, the seasoned lawyer and public servant contrasted the mud house of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa with the opulence of today’s public officers, stating that the defining “environment” for governance has been lost.
Mr Ndoma-Egba, who will turn 70 in five months, provided a living history of Nigeria, having witnessed its trajectory from the hopeful dawn of independence through civil war and successive military regimes. He recalled a time when the economy was “one of the fastest growing in the world” and the national problem “was not money, but how to spend it,” a stark contrast to the present-day realities.
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The former senator attributed the weakness of Nigeria’s institutions to a deep-seated “cultural matter” of excessive deference to authority. He lamented that citizens have become “very timid about holding authority to account,” creating an environment where leaders are placed on a pedestal and not subjected to necessary scrutiny.
Reflecting on his early career, Ndoma-Egba revealed he became a commissioner at 26, in an era when a state cabinet had only seven to nine members. While acknowledging the perennial debate on the cost of governance, he cautioned that extreme austerity can come at the price of efficiency, recalling how he single-handedly oversaw the equivalent of over a dozen modern ministries.
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His time as Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) exemplified systemic failure. He revealed that a comprehensive, stakeholder-generated master plan for the region was “abandoned almost immediately” due to “convenience and political pressure,” reducing the commission to a vehicle for distributing the “national cake.”
He detailed a crippling bureaucracy within the NDDC, where payments required 62 separate steps, a process he said inherently breeds the inefficiency that leads to corruption. “Corruption is an opportunistic situation,” he stated, explaining that it flourishes in dysfunctional systems.
Mr Ndoma-Egba also defended the National Assembly, recalling the “furniture allowance saga” where the public narrative ignored that the legislature had actually rejected a higher N12 million estimate in favour of a N3 million one. He cited this as an example of the public’s deep-seated impatience with an institution often seen as an “irritant.”
Looking to the future, the former leader expressed his desire for a “secure and prosperous Nigeria” for his grandchildren, reminiscing about a time when night travel was safe and industrial hubs like Kano boasted over 50 textile factories.
On his home state, Cross River, Mr Ndoma-Egba offered a sobering assessment, describing the post-Donald Duke era as an “era of experimentation” where, unfortunately, “those experiments haven’t worked.” He advised the current government to return to “traditional forms of governance.”
Concluding with a personal note, the distinguished senator revealed that had he not pursued law and politics, he might have been a Catholic priest or a journalist, and shared the quirky detail that he eats pounded yam every single day he is in Nigeria.
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