Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2015 and their families are in despair.
So, the world’s wealthiest one percent own as much as the 99% ‘rest of the world’, Oxfam says and £5trillion are in tax havens. How did they get so rich? Shrewd business? Hyper-priced everything, stocks, goods like computers, shares, land, services like cell-phone companies and materials like cement. No one says that prices, profits and costs of services are exorbitant. The citizen bears the cost to make the rich richer. The world is even sold God’s natural water by profiteers. Solution: The world should reduce the cost of ‘everything’ by 30-50% and four billion more people will afford more products making the rich even richer. Do you ask how our banks and cell-phone companies and ‘big-big’ companies can offer million naira massive free airtime and other prizes? Overpricing services is the answer! And Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) must reduce interest rates to single digit rates by cancelling the Monetary Policy Rate, (MPR) 11%.
Davos and the World Economic Forum, (WEF) and its Fourth Industrial Revolution should include this point! However Africa and Power were on the agenda everywhere but in Africa. Africa ignores electric power at Africa’s development peril. The African Development Bank (AfDB)’s President Akinwumi Adesina wants to lead Africa into the light. Is Africa still reluctant or willing? ‘Light Up Africa’ is willing. The Sun is willing but wasted! Can CBN, AfDB etc produce A $5BILLION SOLAR ENERGY LOAN SCHEME repayable over 5-10 years for Nigerians to get renewable solar at N1-2million for 500,000-1m families and get them off the gridlocked grid?
Nigeria must initiate a STAKEHOLDERS MEETING FOR LEGAL POLITICAL PARTY FUNDING GUIDELINES to find another way of funding politics, elections and reduce the cost of electioneering and thus allowing many to enter politics.
The disgraceful revelations at the $2.1b+ Arms Deal Investigation show a terminally sick politics dying from ‘political greed’ and one tip of many icebergs sinking the Titanic called Nigeria. There is a requirement to examine abuses of ‘Incumbency’. We must redefine the rights, responsibilities and limitations of ‘Incumbency’. What are the acceptable powers of ‘Incumbency’ and the relationship of ‘Incumbency’ to the budget? We must separate ‘budgets’ from ‘party funds’. The public budget cannot be expropriated under the ‘incumbency’ rule or diverted to FUND POLITICAL PARTY NEEDS AND GREED. This has truncated development, dashed dreams and devastated Nigeria, failing the Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs) and killing hundreds of thousands and condemning millions to poverty. Worldwide, people are going into outer space while Nigeria stumbles and quarrels over the number, cost and even the direction of ‘common’ pedestrian bridges, flyovers and Niger Bridge 2, not even 3 or 4. We still quarrel over the census figures -100,150, 180million? Why are we so cursed with accursed politicians?
Nigerians and Nigerian politicians must distinguish between Government Budget Funds and Political Party Funds. Almost all the Dasukigate Funds were diverted for political party activities- illegal under the law and unappropriated by National Assembly (NASS). In regard to the ‘right to bail’ for these mega-billion naira crimes, the Nigerian Human Rights Commission should be aware that the loss of that huge quantity of money has contributed to the injury and death of thousands and amounts to ‘murder’ –an unbailable offence. It is not just money, it is murder!
Following on Dasukigate, we must remember that besides ‘arms’ every budget item is subject to fraud. Remembering the deliberate attempt to entrap former Minister of Health Professor Adenike Grange, government must protect its ministers. She was exonerated but Professor Adewole must beware of a future ‘Lassagate’ and prevent any unscrupulous ‘oversight’ politicians, public servants, Specialist Committees and medical scientists passing him unexamined inflated ‘Emergency’ contracts in order to ‘chop-chop’ from the Lassa Epidemic. ‘Prevention of fraud is better than cure of the culprits’. President Buhari needs to get EFCC and INTERPOL desks in the Ministry of Health and all ministries to scrutinize even emergency funds management to protect his government’s reputation. Nigeria is already disgraced internationally in the medical world over AIDS and other funds mismanagement. Let us not add ‘Lassa Funds Fraud’ to the growing list of corruption.
Armsgate is a call for Nigeria to summon a 2016 conference on 1] Incumbency, and 2] legitimate funding of political parties- transparent and right, within and outside electioneering, elections and running costs. Without ‘Party Funding’ being debated, discussed and legally binding decisions taken ‘this NIGERIAN KLEPTOMANIACAL DEMOCRACY’, so similar to most military governments before it, will continue to disrupt our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Almost every political party is or has been guilty of this ‘budget looting’ whatever ground and budget they control at LGA, State or federal levels. In other states it is the taxes which are ‘looted’ often in the guise of excessive ‘Tax Consultants Finders Fees’ or ‘Excessively High Ground, Land, Signature Assent, Parking and Traffic Offences Fees and Fines’. A glaring incomprehensible example of this ‘legal extortion’ and ‘demented democracy’ is the torture inflicted by unsupervised STATE TRAFFIC TERRORISTS punishing often innocent ‘traffic offenders’ to meet ‘fine targets’, similar to what bank employees face in finding ‘new account deposits’, with fines which are higher than on Oxford Street, UK, where the minimum wage per hour is 3 days wage in Nigeria.
This is an urgent call to criminalise political fiscal excesses, curb ability to divert and digest the budget and incumbency factors and outright stealing with impunity or a glib ‘I Was Only Obeying Orders’ AKA ‘MURDER’!
