As I was saying last week and now that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) has been inaugurated, I wish to continue with my change wish list. I am excited to hear that some of the suggestions contained in my last week’s wish list may be implemented by the new president, especially the one about a leaner government in terms of cabinet appointment. The decision we heard of not taking or working with a list from the state governors for the composition of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) is a welcome one. It is a political masterstroke to save the country from the clutches of the governors who constitute one of the most powerful political cabals.
The new government must take adequate steps to reform the criminal justice system to allow for speedy prosecution for crimes. Happily, the vice president is not only a professor of law and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), but was for some years the attorney-general in Lagos State, where he drove some reforms in the justice sector.
Agreed that there are peculiar situations that warrant the entering of plea bargains, we suggest that even where such is entered into, the minimum the state should ensure is the recovery of stolen sums/proceeds of such corruption and a conviction which would therefore disqualify the criminal from certain privileges. On no account should this new administration consider granting state pardon, whimsically, to convicts whose only seeming qualification for such consideration is the fact that they are politicians and as such part of a ‘family’. The cases of the pardon and active involvement of Salisu Buhari and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in the public space should never be used as precedent and must be seen as an embarrassing milestone of our political history.
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.
There is no doubt that our country and the component units are broke! Much of what led to the present situation include corruption, greed, poorly thought out projects with poor funding architecture and, very importantly, the failure to make savings.
PMB and team must commence a process of getting all stakeholders to buy into and approve a legal framework for saving a percentage of our earnings for the future. They need to revisit all issues associated with the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and address all obstacles. If well managed, it is even possible for states to also set up similar savings and wealth management schemes at their levels.
My other wish is for the PMB government to immediately commence a thorough audit of government agencies which currently operate in an opaque manner, detrimental to the wellbeing of Nigeria and its citizens. These include the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). 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.
We also need to review 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 elephant projects that do not have positive effect on generality of citizens, even as many of such projects get abandoned after huge sums of money have been splashed on them.
We must take every step to end impunity. This means that PMB must not only live by example (and I have no doubt he can) but he must lead his government to ensuring that every breach of the law and regulation is punished. On this account, the new government must re-open investigation and ensure appropriate sanctions for certain glaring cases of impunity in the recent past. Of particular note is the bungled recruitment into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) where money was extorted from applicants and the process was mismanaged, leading to the death of about 20 citizens and injuries to many others across the country.
There are certainly a lot more things too wish for. But I would leave them at these few, knowing that many others also have their wish list. It is left now for President Buhari to consider the list and address them. It is a new dawn for the country and we all must work hard to make this work.