•It’s failure of governance, says ACN leader at Chatham House
BEFORE an elite audience of intellectuals and eminent personalities, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu yesterday offered President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan his candid advice on the Boko Haram violence. Find a durable solution to the dilemma or watch as your failure damages Nigeria, he told the President.
Tinubu said the Boko Haram threat has serious implication for national security. He described the emergence of the sect as indicative of failure of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government.
The ACN chieftain was delivering a lecture entitled Democracy and the rebirth of opposition in Nigeria at Chatham House, London. He said without a secured environment, the touted transformative agenda of the Jonathan administration will crash.
In the about 100-man audience were technocrats, politicians, researchers and scholars.
Tinubu said though there was an improvement in the conduct of the 2011 elections, compared to the brazen electoral heist of 2003 and 2007 elections, there were strong indications that the 2011 election was systemically rigged.
He said the violence that erupted after the emergence of Jonathan could be linked to perceived inequities and obvious dwindling of quality of life.
His words: “The electoral violence comes from the same wellspring that has produced the urgent security threat called Boko Haram, which has launched a violent campaign against government authority. Boko Haram signposts the deficiency of the ruling party in governing the country.
“The nation’s stability and the President’s mettle are being tested. Should he stumble on this, unrest may follow in other areas. Different groups may race to mimic Boko Haram’s apparent success in challenging government. This is a serious matter not to be under-estimated. On this issue, the President has my full sympathy and support in finding ways to quickly resolve Boko Haram. He must succeed, for his failure will damage Nigeria. However, he must do much better at communicating with the public, to build widespread support for a durable resolution to this dilemma. Without enduring peace, government will not be able to achieve the transformational agenda already promised Nigerians.”
Tinubu, while acknowledging that the opposition parties did not get their acts early enough to challenge the machinery of the PDP, noted that the greatest electoral fraud was carried out in Akwa Ibom State where the full force of government security apparatus was used to emasculate the governorship candidate of the ACN and his supporters.
Reiterating his call for the full implementation of the Justice Muhammed Uwais report on electoral reform, Tinubu said although the Prof. Attahiru Jega-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could have achieved some relative transparency, it should not be seen as a total transformation of the electoral process.
He noted that leaving the power of appointing the INEC chairman and the other commissioners to the President would expose the electoral body to manipulation and political influence.
“It must be stressed, however, that the change in the leadership of INEC is insufficient for the total transformation of the electoral process in Nigeria.
“First, the recalcitrant government failed to resolve the issue of the independence of the Electoral Commission. Second, government refused to alter the selection process giving a president unilateral power to appoint the chairman and its commissioners. And third, government refused to provide the Electoral Commission an independent budget. This means the Commission remains susceptible to political influence because the National Assembly and President could control the Commission’s purse strings for as long as they deem appropriate,” he said.
ACN’s resurgence as the leading opposition party and government-in-waiting to a determination by its leaders to stand firm and fight the corrosive rape of democracy being practised by the PDP under the leadership of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his successors.
His words: “The PDP management of the economy in the last 12 years has been ineffective and here I am being charitable in my use of adjectives. They claim real GDP growth at a robust pace of nearly seven per cent per annum. How can that be? Inflation runs at over 12 per cent. Are they really claiming the economy is growing at nearly 20 per cent in nominal terms?
“High unemployment rates remain unchanged. Official statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics puts unemployment rate in Nigeria at 19.7 per cent, with about 10 million Nigerians unemployed as at March 2009. But we know the figures are much higher. The amount of people living below the poverty line has not decreased. The middle class – the backbone of any democracy - is an endangered specie. Manufacturing and industrial firms are closing faster than others are opening. Electricity supply remains a serious challenge. In the last 10 years, over $15 billion has been spent to improve power generation. Yet, it remains at an abysmal level of less than 4,000 megawatts per day. Cities, such as London and New York, enjoy four to five times more electricity than the entire Nigeria.
“Fuel supply is also a major challenge. We have a government unable to provide millions of Nigerians with refined petroleum products. While in the past, oil majors were able to meet demand, the reverse is the case now. Food prices are climbing so much so that hunger has entered households where it was once a stranger. After earning about 200 billion dollars from oil revenue in 10 years, based on NNPC documents, Nigeria is still a pauper nation. The PDP big guns must be the only ones benefitting from this illusory economic growth.”
Describing corruption as the bane of development in the country, Tinubu noted: “Corruption continues unabated and examples abound. There are allegations bordering on the extortion of illicit payments from operators in the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil economy. The outright wastage of financial resources on illegal subsidies that never percolate to the people need to be boldly addressed by President Jonathan. Mis-management of scarce resources as exemplified in the delegation of the Petroleum Subsidy Funds (about $8billion per year) to the Ministry of Petroleum instead of the Ministry of Finance leaves the door wide open for corruption.
“Nigeria suffers one of the world’s worst rates of income inequality. The economy is not an open one and we do not yet practise sufficient economic justice to change the skewed regime. The PDP strategy is a corporatist/financier model whereby it seeks to place a greater and greater concentration of economic wealth and power in the hands of a select few. The party exploits the levers of government to lay claim to vast tracts of economic power to the exclusion of everyone else. This is dangerous. This policy began with President Obasanjo, who tried to establish new economic elite in his own image. He pushed the formation of the holding company called Transcorp. The plan was to use Transcorp to lay claim to an obscene amount of the nation’s resources with the support of self-acclaimed technocrats in Obasanjo’s cabinet. Transcorp was to resemble one of the vast royal corporations of two or three centuries past. This entity began purchasing everything it could grab, from national telephone company to the best hotel in Abuja. Had Obasanjo and his platoon of merry men succeeded with extending to a third presidential term, this vision for the domination of the Nigerian economy would have been realised.”
Commending the late President Umaru Yar’Adua for dismantling the Transcorp scam, Tinubu cautioned Jonathan to be wary of some of Obasanjo’s men who are currently hanging around the corridors of power.
He lashed the PDP for its “skewed” fiscal federalism, “despite the Supreme Court verdicts”.
“Under the excess crude account and now its progeny, the Sovereign Wealth Fund, the federal government has improperly siphoned funds constitutionally meant for the states. This represents a massive slush fund that the federal government can use as it wishes with little public knowledge or oversight. At best, the monies will be used to fund rentier practices that enrich government cronies but pauperise the larger economy. At worst, the money will be squandered,” he said.
“I cannot speak for other states, but I wager that the people of the ACN states would rather see their states’ proper share of these funds in the hands of their governors than in the custody of the unnamed bureaucrats servile to PDP chieftains. The ACN will do better than the PDP in managing the economy by pursuing a true fiscal federalism,” Tinubu said.
At the lecture, which was chaired by a member of the British Parliament, Chi Onwurah, who also moderated. In attendance were the Chairman of the ACN, Chief Bisi Akande, Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi, Mr. Muiz Banire, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Rt. Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, Hon. Mudasir Obasa, Sen. Tokunbo Afikuyomi, Mr. Dele Alake, Muti Bello, Chief Segun Osoba, Chief Pivs Akinyelure and Prof. Adebayo Williams.
After the event, the entourage proceeded to the Novotel Hotel, Waterloo, where Tinubu delivered a lecture on deepening democracy.
Members of the Oyo State branch of the Joint Negotiating Council will today start an indefinite strike.
No comments:
Post a Comment