About this time last year, I wrote a two-part article on what I called my “Change wish list” which I expected the then President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, to consider in focusing on governance. I wish here to review that list and see how far my wishes have been met or otherwise.
I called on President Buhari to limit the number of political appointees to the barest minimum. I emphasised that we didn’t need more than 20 ministers, but having regard to the provisions of the constitution, I asked that he limited this to 37 ministers. I also advised that he should not appoint more than 10 special advisers by whatever nomenclature.
Well, the President heeded the first part and appointed 36 ministers but shortchanged the Federal Capital Territory, even when the constitution expects the territory to be treated as a state in matters like this. But nobody expected the President to spend such a long time in making those appointments which at the end did not show any name exceptional or spectacular from the usual crowd and ‘suspects’. On the appointment of aides, the president got approval from the National Assembly to appoint 15. The last time I checked, he had not filled that quota, even though he seemed to have appointed too many people to manage information and yet information management remains one of the weakest and poorest points of the administration.
I advised the government to streamline the functions of different Ministries, Departments and Agencies that were overlapping, taking a few tips from the recommendations in the Orasanye Panel Report. I know the President set up a team to harmonise the functions of the MDAs following some mergers but I do not know how far that has gone and what the implementation is like, especially how the staff of the ministries are sharing their duties.
On tackling corruption, I canvassed actions to prevent corruption, apart from investigating, prosecuting and punishing infringements. I called on government to strengthen existing anti-corruption institutions and mechanisms, including the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation by ensuring that proper audits are carried out when due and the reports of such audits implemented. One has yet to see the actions taken by the National Assembly to ensure that all outstanding reports of the Auditor-General are submitted and appropriate sanctions carried out as appropriate.
In canvassing for the above, I also asked that we ensure the proper prosecution to its logical conclusion of all cases of corruption that have remained in court for many years, especially those against former governors started since 2007. It is sad that we still have a perpetual injunction against the prosecution of one of them and the Federal Government has failed to appeal against such an obnoxious judgment. This failure of institutions to act without specific directive by the President is condemnable. I find it embarrassing when it is reported that the President has directed the prosecuting and executive agencies, including the Inspector-General of Police to investigate certain instances of clear criminality.
On the cost of governance, I called on the President to show leadership by ensuring a drastic reduction in the budget of the Presidency and by extension the Executive arm so as to be on the right moral platform to request a similar reduction from the other arms. But the gaffe in the last budget process was too ridiculous. As of this moment, the detailed budget passed and being implemented has not been put in the public space. So, one cannot be sure if the scandalous proposal to spend more on the purchase of equipment for the State House Medical Centre than for many public hospitals scaled through.
I am therefore still canvassing the review of the budgeting system to ensure citizens’ involvement in a bottom-up approach. This would ensure that citizens’ needs are addressed in the budget. This would save the country the burden of government officials mortgaging our future through white elephants that do not have positive effects on the generality of citizens, even as many of such projects get abandoned after huge sums of money have been splashed on them.
One year on, President Buhari has simply refused to cut down on the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet as I canvassed, like many other citizens have also demanded. I still opine that we don’t need more than three of such aircraft. We must therefore keep pressuring government to offload the excess aircraft and pay a similar attention to the number of other facilities such as vehicles of government as well as those assigned to government officials. We currently assign too many vehicles to an official such that some of the vehicles are put to the use of the official’s family members, as though they were state officials. Let every paid official and worker be responsible for organising their families’ and their transport needs and not pass such to the public coffers, especially now that the country increased the price of petrol. The masses cannot have their belts tightened and their lean resources outstretched while those in government feed fat on public resources.
Although there seems to be a reduction in the spending of public resources on sponsorship of (privileged) citizens to attend pilgrimages, the time to call for a complete withdrawal of government from that is now. At best, the country could assist citizens with diplomatic and consular services for such travels but not spend public funds on people going for their personal interests. And this should trickle to the state and local government levels.
On the criminal justice administration, I agreed last year that there were peculiar situations that might warrant the entering of plea bargains. I suggested that even where such was entered into, the minimum the state should ensure was the recovery of stolen sums/proceeds of such corruption and a conviction which would therefore disqualify the criminal from certain privileges. I advised against granting state pardons, whimsically, to convicts whose only seeming qualification for such consideration was the fact that they were politicians and as such part of a ‘family’. Today, we hear of cases of returned loot. The least the government can do is let us into the details of what has been returned, by whom, where the money is and how it is being appropriated by law. We cannot afford to have looted funds being re-looted.
As I said last year, I again stress that in order to provide the basis for driving development, we need data for proper planning. The government should immediately strengthen and expand the national citizens’ registration system to ensure that every citizen from birth is captured in the database. It should be very easy to register new-borns in hospitals and during the monthly immunisation exercises and such registration should feed directly into the national database. There should also be a harmonisation of every other citizens’ data capture such as from the voter registration, international passport, telephone SIM registration and the bank customers’ registration.
I equally wished for the thorough audit of government agencies with reputation for financial opacity detrimental to the wellbeing of Nigeria and its citizens. These include the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and the Central Bank of Nigeria. I wish to add the Federal Inland Revenue Service to it today. It is clear that there is something fishy and faulty about the financial DNA of those agencies that make them perpetual cesspit of corruption, while a few crooked citizens benefit from it. The salaries, allowances and other benefits in these agencies run totally out of sync with the rest of the public service. Little wonder that these agencies have become the preferred offices where the privileged citizens push their families and friends into through criminally unfair recruitment exercise. And I am embarrassed that the president has done nothing about the report of such back door recruitment in the CBN.
I had last year called on the president to not only live by example but to lead his government to ensuring that every breach of the law and regulations is punished. I went on to call on government to re-open investigation and ensure appropriate sanctions for certain glaring cases of impunity in the recent past including the bungled recruitment into the Nigeria Immigration Service. I am happy that that has since happened. But I now also call on the president to act on the similar allegation of backdoor employment in the CBN.
But above all this, we need to fix the economy. That is all that seems to matter now.
PUNCH
END
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