Former Minister of Education Mrs Oby Ezekwesili has again stirred a hornet’s nest. She expressed yesterday concern over the N1 trillion she alleged was spent by federal legislators in the last eight years.
She said: “Since 2005, National Assembly members alone have been allocated N1trillion.
Besides, she stressed, a research conducted in Britain identified Nigerian legislators as being the highest paid in the world.
“N699b went to banks as interest on borrowed loans in 2012 alone; also, 82 per cent of Nigeria’s budgetary cost goes for recurrent expenditure,” she said.
Mrs Ezekwesili spoke in Abuja while delivering a keynote address at a one-day dialogue session on the cost of governance in Nigeria jointly organised by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and the Federal Public Administration Reform Programme, United Kingdom (UK). She has been criticising the running of the economy, with Presidential aides challenging her to debate.
The former Minister said the long military rule might have had a negative impact on governance in the country. She said one of the greatest mistakes of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in which she served, was that Nigeria delved into democracy without necessarily doing away with the military mentality.
“There is a drawback to the military; one major mistake of the government under which I served was that we simply got into democracy and did not spend reasonable time of removing the militaristic ethos and principles from the minds of every citizen, every leader and every institution,” she said.
Ezekwesili demanded proactive engagement of the government by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and others and canvassed part-time legislation as a means of lowering the cost of governance.
She said part-time legislature would ensure that the right people got into governance, adding: “Things will improve through part-time legislations. It will also filter the number of people who will go into the National Assembly.
“You must have means of livelihood and you don’t need to depend on public funds. We need to learn more on the good and bad side of it. But we can’t rule out the possibility.
“There should be effective demand by civil societies for the Steve Oronsaye report. You should demand for a mini national transparent dialogue because it touches on the heart of good governance”, she said.
Mrs Ezekwesili, also advised the diversification of the economy, noting that over-dependence on oil is bound to drag the nation down in view of the alarming poverty level in the country despite its numerous natural and human resources.
She said: “While other countries are moving forward, Nigeria is entrapped in something called oil, where $1.6 billion is lost to theft annually.
“We must debate public policies as a nation because if we don’t debate public policies, we are going to make silly mistakes because we didn’t involve the stakeholders. So, policy debates must be encouraged.
The former minister went on: “The culture of personalising policy dialogues must stop. When you have a problem, you don’t leave the problem and begin to chase other matters. I feel sorry for any person who is fairly okay in this nation and doesn’t care about the poor because there will be an implosion.
“Whatever treatment that is given to the poor and vulnerable in the society must matter to everybody because except we have social inclusion in the society, we stand the danger of implosion and it has happened in other countries which ignored the vulnerabilities.
“We have to arrest what will happen if we don’t address the level of poverty in Nigeria.”
Executive Director of CISLAC Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani criticised what he called “the 10-plane size of the presidential fleet which allegedly gulps N9.08billion annually for maintenance”.
He faulted what he called “the recent media report of our National Assembly members being the highest paid in the world and the size of the government cabinet at the executive level, including the retinue of superfluous aides and special assistants. “
