He is a man of excess capacity. Throughout his journey in public service, he has earned a reputation for excellence, integrity, and comradeship. In this exclusive interview with The Pointer, he reflects on his divinely inspired entry into politics, his impactful contributions across several government institutions, including the Delta Printing and Publishing Corporation (DPPC) and, currently, the Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (DESOPADEC), while also addressing other pertinent issues. Excerpts:
Let us meet you, Sir.
I am Olorogun Ebenezer Okorodudu, PhD. I am from Okpare-Olomu in Ughelli South Local Government Area. I am also a privileged prince. I was born and bred in Ughelli, where I was born 61 years ago.
I attended St Paul Primary School, Ughelli, and later attended Government College, Ughelli. Government College happened to be one of the very few secondary schools that also ran a Higher School Certificate (HSC) programme, which I also obtained there.
In those days, once you had the HSC, you didn’t need to look for admission. You could go to any university, tender your results, and you’d be offered admission automatically. So, I was admitted through direct entry into the University of Benin with my HSC result in 1983, and I graduated in 1986 with a Second Class Upper degree in Political Science.
After that, I obtained a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the same University of Benin, and later obtained my PhD from Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma.
I regard myself as a very privileged person. After my service year, I left for Lagos, where I worked briefly as a consultant. From there, I went into private business before I was called upon to come into politics, to contest the Chairmanship position of my local government.
In fact, I didn’t come on my own. Within a month after my mother’s death, I vividly remember having some visitors from Edo State who came to pray for me at my house. They prayed for three nights, and at the end, they told me that God said He would show me in a vision what I was to become, and that He had already shown them.
That night, in my dream, I saw myself contesting an election, and I won the election in the Ikeja Local Government Area. When I woke up, I told them about the dream. I saw myself inspecting the city in an official car, with a convoy of security men, lights everywhere. The pastor then said, “God said you’re going to be a chairman, but not in Ikeja, in your own local government.” Not long after, within a month, two groups came from Delta State, specifically from my local government, saying they were looking for a credible person to become the Chairman of Ughelli South Local Government Area, and they mentioned my name as the most credible choice.
The first group left, and within three days, another came. Then, when I visited my uncle, who was a General Manager at First Bank, a very wonderful, intelligent, and responsible man, he told me, “We have a meeting at my house tomorrow at 10 o’clock, and you must be there.” When I arrived, a delegation from home was already seated. I was introduced to them, and they said the purpose of the meeting was to tell me to come back home to contest. So, my venture into politics wasn’t self-inspired; my people sent for me from Lagos. If anyone had prophesied to me back then that I would one day live in Delta State, I would have said it was impossible. I thought life began and ended in Lagos; I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Of course, I contested in 2001, but the elections were postponed for another three years. During that time, I suffered greatly. I lost all my business contacts, everything I had in Lagos. Until God’s appointed time, I lost even my vehicles, to the extent that I had to trek for two years.
My first breakthrough came when I was invited and appointed as Secretary of the Technical Committee, a backup technical committee to the delegates of Delta State to the National Political Conference in Abuja. That was around 2003 or 2004, before any elections.
In fact, I can tell you confidently that most of the information contained in the Delta State presentation under the Ibori administration to the National Political Conference came from my hard work.
Before long, I was appointed as a member of the Board of The Pointer Newspaper, which is the Delta State Printing and Publishing Corporation. Then, as soon as the board was dissolved, not quite two months later, or even less than a few weeks, I was appointed Commissioner for Commerce and Industry in 2006.
After that, I was reassigned in 2007 to become Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs. When the new government came in, I was appointed Chairman of the Scholarship Board, where I served and reformed the place.
I did so much there, I truly restructured the Scholarship Board and introduced, for the first time in Nigeria’s history, the automatic first-class scholarship. I ensured that bursaries reached every genuine student of Delta State.
I reformed the place and established other categories of scholarship schemes. But behold, as soon as I reformed the place, I was removed from there and appointed as Special Project Director for Upgrading Schools.
You can see the St Patrick’s College (SPC), Asaba; I built 12 of such structures across Delta State. I worked so hard on those projects that I even had to demolish about seven existing buildings to make room for that building in SPC. Those projects eventually became the star projects of the Uduaghan administration.
From there, when the administration ended, I once again enjoyed the grace of God and was appointed to the Board of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) at the federal level.
After a short while, I was also appointed as Special Assistant to the Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs. So, at that time, I was holding two portfolios, as a board member of FMC and as Special Assistant to the Minister.
As soon as President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration ended, I was fortunate again to be called upon to serve as the Zonal Organising Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the entire South-South region.
During that period, I was drafted to act as the acting State Chairman of the PDP in Edo State, where I did exceptionally well. I was able to bring together all the warring factions, and we left a very good, enduring legacy.
Later, I was called upon to serve as Political Adviser to the then Speaker, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, who is now the Governor of Delta State. I served under him as Political Adviser, and after some time, I resigned to contest for a seat in the House of Representatives. When that didn’t work out, he brought me back as Chief of Staff.
So, I was Chief of Staff to the Speaker when he was still in office, and even after he emerged as the Governor-elect. When he was eventually sworn in as Governor, he appointed me as Chairman of the Delta State Printing and Publishing Corporation, the publishers of The Pointer Newspaper.
Of course, I resumed there and did what I have always done best. To be very fair in my assessment, when I took over, the place was not in the best of shape.
Behold, I was able to reform and reorganise The Pointer Newspaper, bringing it up to a highly acceptable standard. Now, every copy produced daily cannot even keep up with demand.
I also reformed the online version of The Pointer and established a dedicated training fund, institutionalising it by ensuring that 20 per cent of every income generated by The Pointer was paid into a dedicated account meant strictly for staff training.
When we celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Pointer, the entire world heard about it. The Governor attended the ceremony, along with virtually every member of the House of Assembly, a good number of Commissioners, traditional rulers, and even a visiting minister from a foreign country. It was a mammoth gathering. The Pointer has truly come of age, and I can tell you it’s now a renowned paper in Delta State. Even people outside the state now request it.
Barely a year later, the Governor, in his wisdom, appointed me as Executive Director (Projects) in the Delta State Oil Producing Area Development Commission (DESOPADEC), and I am also performing excellently in that position.
Your last appointment was from being Chairman of the Delta State Printing and Publishing Corporation to becoming Executive Director (Projects) at DESOPADEC. How were you able to integrate and make a difference in your new role?
As far as I’m concerned, everything in life is about God. All the capacities that I possess, people refer to me as “a man with excess capacity”.
Even the former Governor, Sen Okowa, once told me, “You are a man with excess capacity.” Everyone who knows me knows that. But I always say these qualities are not mine; they were deposited in me by Almighty God.
First, I consider myself an administrator by profession and by calling. I hold a Doctorate in Public Administration, so, professionally, I am a trained and genuine administrator who can perform effectively anywhere I am placed.
Secondly, I am a man who has a passion for delivery. In anything I do, I pour my life into it. I want results, and I do everything humanly possible to achieve them. Take, for instance, when I was at The Pointer Newspaper, it was a part-time board, but you are all living witnesses to the fact that I was always in my office daily. Despite being a part-time Board Chairman, I worked more than most full-time executives.
When I resumed at DESOPADEC, I went there with the same vigour to deliver. For the first time, they met a man in that Commission who is a tireless worker.
Even the Governor himself had told them beforehand, “The man I’m sending there is a workaholic; he doesn’t joke with his job.” He made it clear that the man he was sending would be among the first to arrive at work and the last to leave, and that’s exactly what happened.
Every day, I’m among the first to get to the office and among the last to leave. I went there with the drive to deliver, and I have been delivering. You will never see a file stay on my table for one minute. Any file brought in by my Executive Assistant, I tell him to wait, I go through it, append my signature, and it goes back immediately. Sometimes, they bring about 100 or 200 files; I insist on treating them on the spot. Even when I have visitors, no matter how important they are, I tell them, “Please wait; I have to attend to my files first.”
My director would sometimes plead, “Sir, attend to your visitors,” and I’d reply, “No. The reason the visitors came to see me here is that I’m in the office. If I weren’t here, they wouldn’t find me, so they’ll wait.”
There was one evening they brought nearly 100 files to me around 7 p.m. My assistant said, “Sir, you can treat them tomorrow,” and I replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t carry any file home. If it takes me until midnight, I’ll finish them before I go.” And that’s exactly what I did. When I was Commissioner for Commerce, a ministry that handles market matters, I handled over 300 files daily, even from the Cooperative Department. No file was left unattended till the next day. The worst that could happen was for me to take the file home at night and return it to the office the next morning. I hold myself to a very high-performance standard, and that’s the truth.
One critical thing I did in DESOPADEC was to establish a central database for all projects. I believe that at any given moment, if you call me, the MD, the Chairman, or even the Commissioner and ask, “What’s the status of a particular project?”, at the tap of a phone, they should be able to tell you when it was awarded, when the contractor went to site, the current stage of completion, and whether payment has been made or not. That’s the system I’ve established.
Can you give us an overview of some of the interventionist projects carried out under your watch?
DESOPADEC was established in 2007, at a time when I was serving as a Commissioner in the State. The purpose, or the aim, of establishing DESOPADEC is quite simple: to manage 50 per cent of the derivation fund that comes to the State, for the benefit of the oil-producing communities, which we commonly refer to as the mandate areas.
Now, DESOPADEC is unique in the sense that out of the 25 local government areas we have in Delta State, the mandate area covers 21. That means that 21 out of 25 local government areas are oil-bearing communities.
Let me quickly give you a structural breakdown. The Project Directorate is the heartbeat of DESOPADEC because every aspect of the Commission’s concept revolves around development. There are four Directorates in DESOPADEC: the Directorate of Finance and Administration, the Directorate of Projects, which is the core of the Commission, the Directorate of Social Services, and the Directorate of Planning and Statistics.
The Directorate of Social Services handles other supportive programmes such as bursaries, scholarships, skill acquisition programmes, and other social empowerment initiatives that are not purely infrastructural projects.
Now, the Commission has a non-executive Chairman. Then you have the Managing Director, and four Executive Directors, each heading one of the Directorates I just mentioned.
In addition, there are representatives of the various ethnic nationalities, whom people commonly refer to as Commissioners. These include Commissioners representing the Ijaw ethnic nationality, Itsekiri, Urhobo, Isoko, and Ndokwa nationalities. So, you can see that DESOPADEC has a very robust and inclusive structure.
Now, to the projects under my Directorate. The Project Directorate handles a series of projects, and within it, there are different departments.
You have the Department of Works, which handles road construction and drainage projects. They also handle projects like shore protection and what we call platforms for berthing. Then, you have the Housing Department, which is responsible for all housing-related projects. That includes school renovations, construction of new schools, maternity centres, hospitals, skill acquisition centres, basically anything that has to do with buildings and physical infrastructure. We also have the Utilities Department, which deals with water projects, electricity, transformers, and other related utilities. Then we have a department we refer to as the Department of Project Monitoring and Evaluation. Of course, their duty is to ensure that they visit the various projects that have been awarded to contractors, to confirm that the implementation of such projects meets the bill of quantities and the standard specified for the contractors.
So, in the DESOPADEC, we have different types of monitoring mechanisms. While the Project Monitoring and Evaluation Department is dedicated to such oversight, the Office of the Executive Director also has inbuilt staff who equally verify these projects. For example, I have my Executive Assistant, who is a seasoned engineer, and he helps to drive such processes. I also have my Special Technical Assistant, whose function, too, is to go around and ensure that such projects meet specifications. Then, of course, my Special Assistant and other support staff are also involved. Even the Managing Director’s Office has its own unit that goes out to verify projects independently.
Then the Executive Director, Projects himself, that is, myself, embarks quarterly on project inspections and submits reports to the Board. During such inspections, we identify some projects that are not quite satisfactory and others that are very commendable, to the extent that I sometimes recommend such projects to the Board to be replicated by other ethnic nationalities. So, the DESOPADEC has indeed come of age and has been able to justify the purpose for its existence.
Are there criteria for siting or awarding projects in those communities?
DESOPADEC operates based on production quantum. The implication of what I’m saying is this: all ethnic nationalities are not equal in terms of oil production. So, the more you produce, the more funds are allocated to that ethnic nationality.
The template we are currently using shows that the Itsekiri are the highest oil-producing ethnic nationality, so they have more funds, followed by the Ijaw ethnic nationality, then by the Urhobo, and after them, the Isoko, before Ndokwa and Ika. So, these ethnic nationalities do not get the same funds. The implication is that those who produce more oil receive higher allocations, and this, in turn, influences the number and value of projects they can undertake.
Now, how do we generate projects? There are many mechanisms in play. One way is through town hall meetings, where we engage with our people to identify their areas of need. From these meetings, we gather valuable information about what the communities genuinely require.
I’m talking about the various ethnic nationalities, each with distinct, variegated areas of need. For example, what may be of great interest to the Itsekiri communities may not appeal to the Urhobo. Similarly, what concerns riverine communities may not interest those in upland areas.
So, we obtain our information through interactions at town hall meetings, and sometimes, communities themselves write directly to the office. As the Executive Director of Projects, I have received several letters requesting specific projects that address their immediate needs.
Another key input comes from the elders of the various communities, as well as the women’s forums and youth groups. They often interact with their ethnic nationality representatives on the Board, that is, the Commissioners.
What is your take on the 13 per cent derivation?
That’s a very serious question, one that needs to be addressed by the Federal Government. In fact, the history of derivation dates back to the period of independence. The greatest problem we have in Nigeria, as a federation, is that while we call it a federal system, federalism is not truly in practice. That’s the number one error. What we practice in Nigeria today is akin to a unitary form of government.
The main issue we’ve had as a nation is that in the First Republic, the country practised the true tenets of federalism, which was then referred to as regionalism. At that time, resources were domiciled within the regions, and the regions paid a specific percentage to the centre.
The regions controlled their resources and remitted an agreed percentage to the central government. At that time, the regional civil service was more powerful than the federal civil service. In fact, federal civil servants were resigning to take appointments at the regional level because there was more money there.
Because the regions had more financial autonomy, they practised what we call true fiscal federalism. This led to what was known as healthy economic competition among the federated regions.
Unfortunately, when the military overthrew the government, they came on board, and the first thing they did was to convert the country into a unitary system. By the time they got to the centre and saw that the entire money of the Federation was now under their control, they became intoxicated and said, “This money cannot go back to the regions.”
And what happened? It was at that time that oil was discovered in commercial quantities. Because of the enormous inflow of money, the military government said, “No, no, no.” They created many states, but in doing so, they removed derivation. To the extent that Gowon could boldly say that Nigeria’s problem was not about having money, but how to spend it.
Later, there was renewed clamour for derivation, and reluctantly, over a period of time, they brought one per cent, three per cent, which they implemented under OMPADEC and the rest. But with people like Chief James Ibori, who became Governor of Delta State, the clamour for an increase in derivation intensified. Through his dogged hard work, in collaboration with others like Chief Okrika and the rest, they succeeded in establishing the 13 per cent derivation. But in the Constitution, it is clearly stated that it is a minimum of 13 per cent. When the word minimum is used, it means there is a constitutional provision for it to be increased to 50 per cent or even more.
So the provision is there. It is now left for you and me, people from the oil-bearing states, to intensify our clamour for it to be moved upward from 13 per cent, because that is not enough to address the developmental challenges facing the oil-bearing states.
Some people have alleged that the new entrants into the APC, that is, the former PDP members, are trying to hijack the party. What is your response to this, sir?
To start with, that allegation is false, completely false.
Let me go back a bit. The PDP, under the able leadership of the Governor, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, because the Governor is the leader of the party in the state, did not just wake up one morning and say, “Let us move.” You know, the PDP as a party was very formidable.
Several reasons led to the decision, and you see, a leader always sees farther than the followers. When he called a stakeholders’ meeting, he laid all the reasons on the table, why he felt we needed to rub minds and take a collective decision.
The decision to move to the APC was not a unilateral decision by the Governor. The Governor is a true democrat to the core. All he did was to gather all the reasons, place them before the people, and invite the various stakeholders to a meeting for deliberation. Because he is a democrat, he decided to listen to the people. So, do we collectively move? Yes, that was the thinking of everybody. It was a collective decision.
Now, let me tell you something as an objective political scientist: the PDP started losing ground from the moment President Goodluck Jonathan decided to contest again in 2015. That was the beginning of the collapse of the party.
If President Jonathan, after completing the tenure of Yar’Adua, had decided to say, “Let me hand over to a northern party stalwart”, either to his vice, Namadi Sambo, or another northern figure, or even to popular governors like Tambuwal or General David Mark, the PDP would still be in control of Nigeria’s politics today. But the greatest mistake was that he was pressured by some selfish stakeholders to contest again.
And of course, the northerners took it as a challenge, saying, “It’s our turn. You cannot continue.” At the end of the day, the entire northern leadership ganged up to betray President Jonathan. That betrayal led to the emergence of APC and Buhari.
You can see what happened in the last elections. The PDP could have regained power if the presidential ticket had been given to a particular governor or a certain person. But Atiku came again and said he wanted to run, and the political system was manipulated to favour him.
So, I can confidently say, without apology, that the decline of PDP started with President Jonathan in 2015 when he went against the zoning principle of both the party and the country. And the same mistake repeated itself when Atiku was again given the ticket, against the zoning policy.
Having lost out, the PDP as a national party was hijacked by two Governors, and things were no longer going well. The party structure became weak, disorganised, and divided.
Till today, the PDP finds it difficult to even conduct a proper convention. Today, one person will be chairman; tomorrow, another will go to court and obtain a judgment. The secretary is replaced every now and then. You have one today, another tomorrow. At the end of the day, if you operate under such instability and even go to an election, the court will nullify your victory.
So, the Delta State Government, under the brilliant leadership of Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori considered all these factors. We knew that if we continued under that platform, things would not go well. We had to move.
Having moved, the majority of the old or existing members of the APC were happy and received us warmly. They were courageous enough to subject themselves to the leadership of the Governor, because in modern party politics, the Governor is the leader of the party.
A good number of the political leaders of the old APC celebrated the Governor’s coming and willingly handed over the leadership of the party to him.
Of course, change is never easy. There must always be some pockets of resistance to change. Some people with deep-rooted selfish interests are still resisting. But I can tell you that in a couple of months, they will realise that their resistance is futile and will come back to join the fold, because the train has already moved, and it is moving with speed.
The beauty of it all is that the Governor is performing so well. His performance is outstanding. The entire APC as a party has adopted him as its sole candidate for the next election, and has also adopted President Bola Tinubu as the sole presidential candidate of the party.
