Politics

DEAR Mr President,

I salute you most reverently in the name and spirit of our common experience and shared humanity. Permit me to congratulate you on your recent victory at the just concluded national elections. In your last term, which I campaigned vigorously for your victory, I suffered untold hardship in the hands of Nigerians because they blamed me for everything you did not do right and for the ones you did well they did not celebrate me.

As you embark on another four years at the Presidential Villa, I needed to write to beg you to help Nigeria move into the realm of an enduring and lasting civilisation. We need to draw lessons from America and India, two examples of great democratic experiments.

Your Excellency, the fight against corruption must change and the change is that there should be no sacred cows. Everyone who has held public office in Nigeria should be made to give account of what they had done while in power, it should cut across the political divide and no one should be given the impression that it is to victimise anyone. Public trial must be discouraged and the judiciary must be made to do its work and do it honestly.

I had sent an application for the Post of Minister of Power, for obvious reasons. Our power sector needs more than it is getting today. I had watched that sector since the time of Uncle Bola Ige, and since Ige could not turn our fortunes around, with his  strength of great patriotism, it will take great work to achieve it, and this is where character comes in and pedigree holds the key and for these two I am well-positioned. How I wish the opportunity could be given to me. I had volunteered to work without pay, because Nigeria needs men and women who are ready to give it all. If youth corpers can work for peanuts, can’t those who serve us in public capacity come with great strength for sacrifice, for it is only that which will set this country free?

So, Your Excellency, to set Nigeria on the path of total recovery, we need to do the following:

1. Declare a 20-year period of national emergency during which no political appointee will receive salaries. We will pay them allowances in the neighbourhood of graduated National Minimum Wage from 200% to a maximum of 400%.
2. We must stop the heads of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary from awarding contracts. We must generate a national or state agency which must be put under the supervision of the United Nations and/or the African Union with local input from the legislature and the civil society and professional bodies to ensure that due process is followed and the best bid wins.
3. All state governments must pay salaries ahead of any capital development or lose their right to federal allocations as this will mean that staff salaries will be paid ahead of their receiving the balance. It is the local salaries, more than any other source, that ignite the local economy.
4. All security votes must be accounted for. First 10% can be spent before due approval and must be retired before the balance can be drawn from and this must be defended. And security votes should be subject to due public accountability to stop graft.
5. All areas of security uneasiness must be visited starting from the cattle colonies, to all local boundary disputes and the lack of security must be dealt with decisively. We can start a national programme to recover our dwindling vegetation in the northern fringes of our nation, and stop the encroaching deserts turning the same to arable land with great irrigation and can be used for planting and animal husbandry.
6. Fencing of our nation’s borders, both land and sea, must be a priority because no security arrangement can have great meaning without this being done. I had volunteered to do this free of charge creating about a million jobs in five to seven years, and a quarter of a million will be permanent at the end.
7. Free and compulsory education for every Nigerian child up to university level.
8. The amendment of the constitution to make every Nigerian free to live in any part of the country without being made an outsider, by reconsidering the place of birth in our constitution.
9. Massive investment in Artificial Intelligence, creation of jobs by exploring agriculture, mining, and science and technology with value added chain being fully explored. Government must encourage the establishment of farm settlements supported by government extension workers with government produce departments to buy surpluses for storage and exportation with value added.
10. On security, we need to think outside the box and encourage proper synergy between government agencies with a zero tolerance for unrest and death of any Nigerian.
11. Bridge the increasing gap in salaries of executives and other workers and ensure proper adherence to labour laws 9-5pm/8-4pm. Discourage exploitative tendencies of employers of labour and allow practice of workers union in private and government workplaces to enhance workers’ welfare.

Your Excellency, I hope that this letter will find a place with your esteemed self.

Yours sincerely,

Col. Ikechi Anthony Okereke (retd.)

Fellow of Defence College  

-PUNCH

BE

– May 23, 2019 @ 08:12 GMT |

 

Tags: Open letter to President Buhari

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