NLNG literary prize just
held……could you make an assessment of the prize? We have been very proud of
Nigerian talents in the area of writing. The NLNG Award has certainly been like
sunshine for writers both within and outside of Nigeria who are Nigerians. It
has provided hope and something to strive for. It has provided a sense of
recognition and acknowledgment of the repertoire of the pool of talents that we
have in the area of artistic and creative writing. And the result shows that
the impact has been ubiquitous. Dr Kudo Eresia-Eke For instance, we feel the
impact in the area of quality publishing, in the plethora of writing, in the
sophistication of editing, quality of literary judgment. We have also seen the
impact in the wide spread interest in the prize from across the country. We
have seen the impact clearly as a target which some writers strive to aim for.
Again, we have seen the impact of the prize in the harvest of new books in our
shelves and libraries. We have seen the impact in the manner in which Nigeria
is envied by all of Africa and beyond for hosting Africa’s biggest prize . The impact it has
made is unquantifiable. Now kindly tell me; is this prize of 100,000USD for
real? It’s whooping that some people doubt if you ever give it all…. Of course
it is for real. Anytime we announce the prize,
it means we are sure the winner would receive the money. There are two
levels; we announce and later crown the winner who receives the symbolic
cheque. Everything is for real. Now we are not in Bonny where you are based;
Could you take the reader on a mind tour of what you do at Nigeria Liquified
Natural Gas Company NLNG? Very simple…we buy gas from those who prospect and
produce gas, transport it through our pipelines into mighty refrigerators
called plants in Bonny. The gas is cleaned up and processed and cooled down to
-600degrees.
This processing is called liquefaction – that is turning the gas
into liquid – reduces the size of gas which is loaded into mammoth ships about
the size of four football fields to those who paid for them abroad. While
abroad, the liquid is returned to gas for whatever use it wants to be made
mostly for utilities. In a nutshell what we do is source gas, process it and
package it and then sell to those who need it. In so doing we make money for
Nigeria and the company. As you may have known Nigeria LNG is owned by Nigeria
represented by the NNPC
as highest
shareholder and oil giants like Shell, Eni(Agip), Total. We have paid taxes,
remitted dividends worth billions and excelled in Corporate Social
Responsibility. You must have heard about the Bonny Bodo road and bridge
project.
You also must have heard how our mopping up of gas has reduced gas
flaring in Niger Delta from 70% to 20%. We in the Niger Delta area are denied
nights due to gas flaring. Nights are just like days. People are next door
neighbours to furnaces. Thanks to NLNG which collects all these gas so it does
not flare. You talk about the new Bonny Bodo road project as biggest CSR so
far, how do you mean? I mean that this road project is the biggest CSR from a
single company. 60bn USD devoted to one single project is unprecedented and I
am particularly happy to be associated with it. You recall that Vice President
Yemi Osinbajo came to Bonny to flag the road project off underscoring the huge
importance of the project to Nigeria. It is the climax of our CSR efforts.
There have been attempts to do this all important bridge by successive
governments but it has never materialized due to various reasons until now that
the NLNG has waded in. There is no doubt that the people are happy about this.
It is going to be the first time that a road link will connect the island and
the mainland and it would change lives. Bonny is beloved by the people but the
big hazard has always been the turbulent sea in which many have perished. The
NLNG plan to turn Bonny into African mini Dubai in the next 25 years is still
on going.
Bonny must be lucky to be showered with all these….. If you say so.
It is a primary habitat where we have our base and offices. You could imagine
what this bridge and entire vision for Bonny will turn out to be in the next 25
years. Hmmmm. Non could tell the extent to which life would change in Bonny with
the road coming. The contractors say between four to five years, the road would
be completed considering the difficult terrain. History will be made with this
and generations of Bonny people and indeed many Nigerians who have cause to
travel to Bonny will not go through the hardships like their fathers Your job
takes you around as one who resumes in one city and closes in another; how do
you coordinate your department with offices scattered across Nigeria? You see,
I love my job which keeps me on my toes. I work in between Bonny, Port
Harcourt, Lagos and Abuja. It is difficult to be in many places at the same
time. But you never run from the challenge of duty. More so,
when I am passionate about my country and
believe in Nigeria. I love to communicate. I love to teach. I love to write. My
job revolves around these passions of mine. It has been so exciting employing
these passions of mine to teach, to write to communicate to the world that
Nigeria LNG is number one company in the world that Nigeria could be as good as
any other company in the world. The job also helps me to make indelible impact
and imprint on the nation. It gives me opportunity to work with a little bit of
wisdom to ensure there is an oasis of peace in the midst of militancy, It is
indeed challenging. Kudo teaches, writes, sings, speaks, acts, dances etc…how
do you describe yourself? I think I am just a renaissance man, a man to whom
there is no demarcation in professions who is ready to use any vehicles
provided for him to actualize goals. One who is not quarantined to the arts or
sciences or to management. This is how knowledge bearers, the classical
philosophers of old like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and a host of others lived.
I see myself as a humble man who is out to help the next person. You sang
before, will you sing again? I have no choice but to continue to write poetry
and more poetry because it is my life. If these poetry come out in songs that
producers help to put out that is it. The whole idea is that wisdom should no
longer be hidden inside books.
We should try to return wisdom to the market
place where it used to be, so when we share folk tales under the moonlight or
share everyday stories amongst ourselves we are spreading it. We share poetry
which helps us hand over from one generation to the other. I believe we should
take our poetry from the rooftops where it is hung and bring it down to where
the people’s hand can reach. Did your parents have a hand in your early all
out
pursuit for academic excellence? My
parents did not influence my seeking academic excellence. My father even
believed that people with doctorate degrees usually ended up wacko and
behaved like mental cases. He was reluctant to see me move higher since he
believed that my Bs.c was good enough.
I was about to clock 30 when I got my doctoral degree in 1989. I had a
collision with my father over my choice of course at the very beginning. I had
been successful at my prelim to study chemical engineering but I stumbled upon
arts and mass communications. If I were in heaven doing mathematics I was in a
bigger heaven in the arts. I took my result to the Professor of Chemical
Engineering, Prof Ogunye who was happy that I was successful. All my tales of
wishing to change course did not yield any fruits as he insisted I started
before any change was possible. He advised that I do a first year to prove
myself and I did but he also screamed that with such a result, no one would let
me go. Professor Ogunye went on sabbatical leave a few months after and his
successor Professor Susu heard my tale and let me go. For my parents they had
reasoned that a degree in Chemical engineering would provide for me in the oil
industry. However, I got the support of Professor Olatunji Dare who had told me
of his coming into mass communication from a science related background. He was
an excellent teacher of mass communication. I did not have the good fortune of
him lecturing me but I was happy to note that . His reassurances gave me much
hope that I was not really doing something really mad the way they made me
feel. Then we had Professor Alfred Opubor, prof Nwuneli, Prof Ugboaja. I did
not want to do a master in mass communications because I felt that I had done
almost all there was to do. I was contributing to Dele Giwa’s Page 7 in Daily
Times and also did a stint with Radio Nigeria 2 with Jacob Akinyemi Johnson,
Jones Usen and a host of the other guys. Dele Giwa made me realize that you
could write in an artistic way, I won’t forget one of our great minds Ely Obasi
who is no longer with us.
I chose Political science for a master’s degree, I
felt I needed to sophisticate communication for social change. I needed to
understand how society works. It was after my master’s programme that Late Prof
Claude Ake came on the scene. It was under his wings that I did political
theory which was very rare for several political science students. Ake was my
supervisor. While running the doctoral programmes at Uniport where Prof Ake was
my supervisor, I was close to Rivers Television. What do you recall of your
days at the Guardian? When I graduated from Unilag, I was posted to Enugu to
serve in the Customs service during my NYSC. Guardian
was being packaged and I do not know who
gave them my contacts. I guess it must have been one of my professors at
Unilag. I was redeployed and whisked out of Enugu to work at the Guardian as
one of its founding staff. I was given a small room in Somolu to live. It was
at the Guardian that I met the stars of Nigerian journalism; Chinweizu, Stanley
Macebuh, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Eddie Iroh with whom I worked directly. They had read
me a few weeks and realized that I was an unusual writer and sent me to Eddie
Iroh who was heading a pool of elite crew including Ndayo Uko, Ely Obasi, Taiwo
Obe, Afolabi Adesanya and a host of others. Readers would study the Guardian
supplements for weeks. Those years were great. You once resigned your
appointment as editor of a Nigerian newspaper for reasons some people will not
see; what spurred you to resign from Sunray newspapers It was while waiting for
my doctoral convocation that I joined Sunray to edit Point Newsmagazine, from
the Sunray stable. You must have heard how I resigned the job. It was during
that Abiola election period of 1992. I had researched with my colleagues, Late
Darlington Eziukwu and others and predicted with data from across Nigeria that
Abiola of the SDP would win that election. Rivers state was under NRC and the
government had tremendous influence over Sunray. They learnt that The Point
Newsmagazine was about to publish that SDP would win the election. We had
finished production and I left about midnight for the printers to complete
printing. When I arrived early on that day to supervise circulation, I found
out that the entire warehouse was littered with shredded pieces of paper.
Someone told me that the pieces of paper I was seeing were my newsmagazine
shredded in pieces. I was transfixed. All the labour? All the work? All the
creativity?
All the risk we took. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I stood there
motionless. I knew it was truth destroyed. I walked straight to my office and
wrote my resignation letter. I could not be part of any destruction of truth. I
took my letter to Mr. Bobo Brown, Editor in Chief of Sunray. He advised me not
to resign but I had had enough. I had driven to work with the 504 official car
but I had to drop the keys and sent a message to my wife to come along with our
old Passat car which could not start when I was ready to go except after it was
pushed by some of my colleagues. I knew I had no money to fend for my two
months old family but it did not matter. It was a matter of principle. I am
still very glad I resigned and gave it up. I went back to the University and
got a job to teach political science at Uniport. I also got another to teach mass
communications at Rivers state University of Technology. While contemplating on
which to choose, a mystery letter from my secretary at Sunray got to me. I had
been appointed Rivers state Director of National Orientation Agency, Rivers
state. Up till today, I still do not know how that job came, who gave my name
or anything. In the course of doing that work, then Rivers state Military
Governor Col. Dauda Komo appointed me Commissioner for Information. But my boss
Prof Elochukwu Amaucheazi
didn’t feel I
should leave the NOA considering all he thought I had done so we negotiated a
way out which saw me doing the two jobs but earning only from the source. The
two jobs enabled me to be sincere, to dare and also encourage young ones. It
was that period that generated ideas for my book; How to make it. How did the
NLNG job come to you and what did you do differently to contain youth
restiveness in your area of operation? It was as I was preparing to leave the
job as Commissioner that the opportunity to be Community Relations Manager at
Nigeria LNG emerged. I wrote the community relations philosophy which was a
complete departure from the regular way. Being a grassroots person who loves
people, I couldn’t copy and paste what was handed down to me. People were completely
disconnected from the community relation plans because they were regarded as
objects. The community was a nuisance and not a neighbor. Communities were
regarded as impostor while we came to meet them. If anyone was disturbing the
environment then it must be us. Before now big men in the communities were
awarded contracts to protect these infrastructure. Most of these contractors
did not even know the communities well so the companies were alienated from the
communities.
What we did differently was visit the over 100 communities first
hand, break kola with them and we were explaining to them who we were and what
we were bringing to the table. In doing this, we found out the real land lords
and from there got to the focal points of who became a contractor which was
made rotational. In this way the people started protecting their own thing.
This brought about peace. It’s as simple as that. It is like showing respect
and giving what is due to Caesar to him. The land does not belong to us but to
them. It is when there is peace that you could then develop human capacity
programmes for the children. That is what NLNG did differently. It was
originally challenging because there was no manual to refer to.
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