By Soni Daniel
ABUJA—The open disagreement over the report of the Nuhu Ribadu-led
committee, which investigated the rot in the Nigerian oil industry, has
been described as a premeditated action by the Presidency to rubbish the
outcome and prevent the administration from accepting and implementing
the recommendations.
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Abubakar Malami, who made the claim in
an exclusive interview with Vanguard yesterday, pointed out that the
drama over the manner in which the report was written and presented to
the government was masterminded by the same government that set it up.
“The purpose of what the government did was simply to divert
Nigerians’ attention from the monumental looting by certain well placed
individuals and top government agencies so as have justification for not
implementing it.
“These elements are well connected and the government does not appear
to be in a hurry to touch them given the weight of the evidence in both
the Ribadu report and the Subsidy panel against them.
The legal practitioner said it was wrong for the Presidency to set up
a committee to probe the infractions in the oil sector only for the
same government to openly rubbish the outcome.
According to him, the President should have allowed Ribadu to hand in
his report and ask for any other dissenting opinion on the matter,
thereafter.
“The drama we saw was so clear that the government had planned to
discredit the report turned in by the former EFCC chairman and it does
not help this country in any way.
Turning to the political turf, Malami, who is the National Legal
Adviser of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, noted that
Nigerians should de-emphasise the issue of region and religion in the
choice of the next President and focus on the capacity of the person to
serve the nation.
According to him, the choice of the next president should be based
strictly on the ability of the person to take the country to the next
level, the preparedness of the person to take appropriate measures to
tackle rising insecurity in the land and check mounting corruption that
has eaten deep into the fabric of the nation.
Malami said, “No sectional presidency can salvage this country from
its present decay and despondency. What we really need is a man who has
the courage and the determination to confront the menace of corruption
and insecurity that has stifled the nation’s progress.
The legal practitioner also dismissed as a waste of time and
resources the current move to amend the Nigerian Constitution, pointing
out that Nigeria’s problem was not caused by the constitution but by the
treatment of issues with impunity by both the government and the
people.
He said that without a deliberate and sustained effort by the
government to tackle corruption and other challenges that have tended to
keep the nation down, Nigerian would continue to slip daily even if the
constitution was amended daily.
On the type of government that is most suitable for Nigeria given its
complexity of religion and culture, Malami suggested that Federalism,
which is currently being practiced in the country remains the best but
called for serious reformations in the system to serve the people
better.
He opined that the cost of governance should be drastically reduced
so as to free some funds for the development of the critical areas of
the economy and take care of the majority of the citizens who have been
cut off from governance and thrown into the abyss of poverty.
“We should continue with Federalism but reduce the cost centres to
the barest minimum by making government highly unattractive at all
levels. All expenses associated with all tiers of government should be
slashed substantially while accountability should be strengthened at all
levels.
“We do not really need a full time National Assembly, which has taken
a lot of our resources at the moment while the Executive should cut
down on several areas of waste and save the money to improve the
welfare of the majority of Nigerians who are languishing in squalour.
Vanguard
No comments:
Post a Comment