Tackling Nigeria’S Problems in APC Government

Let us hope that the election of General Buhari, for the only reason of his stern leadership quality, will bring succour to the country for the next four years. Now that he has won the presidential election, not free from uncomfortable acquiescence, the true and assertive Buhari will now emerge. Those whom he tolerated before his election that dictated issues around him could be out for shock. With the evident mixed ideological bed fellow in All Progressive Congress (APC) and the squaring for share of the spoils of office, we pray that civil war shall not break out in the party sooner or later.

What need to be done to make Nigeria secure, stable and take her rightful place in the international community to some people may be legion. In effect, this may not be the case. We only need to put few fundamental things in place. The rest will be generally self regulating. The APC party and General Buhari are not so far known for having concrete and sustainable national policies which Nigeria needs at these critical times. Therefore, General Buhari needs to listen to the critical media and writers from whom he will get most of the feasible right ways forward to fine tune the policies of his Government. Also General Buhari needs to sit down, read more and not to continue to listen to the troupe of praise singers.

The priorities of the President elect, General Buhari, should not be the rounding up of the past wrong doers, such as those that were behind all the rigged elections, corruption and looting of public fund of the country through various methods.

There is nobody that can change the past. The wrongs of yesterday can be visited at any point in time. While from day one of General Buhari’s Government investigations on these culprits are quietly ongoing, full action should not be taken until the Government has put in place the necessary structures. The time scale for these could be between nine and twelve months.

First and foremost General Buhari should immediately ensure that the Nigeria Police Force is decentralised. There should be several Independent Police Commands in the country. This is where every head of each Independent Command is accountable only in his area and responsible to the President. We are not here talking about state or regional police forces. Fresh Police personnel should be recruited to bring the number to at least a minimum of one million police in the country.

Security of a country starts from a strong Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Home Affairs with equivalent strong Minister. The Police, State Security Services, Prisons and Customs & Immigration are generally under the Ministry of Interior to enable well co-ordinated and successful law and order and security in the country.

The substantive Minister would then have three Ministers of State under him. One will be in charge of the Police, the second will be in charge of Prisons and the third will be in charge of Customs & Immigration. The Minister of Interior himself will be directly in charge of the State Security Services. The current Federal Ministry of the Police should be a department in the Federal Ministry of Interior.

The immediate other tasks the new APC Government should undertake behind the priority issue of security are: There should be comprehensive political restructuring of the country. The wasteful present thirty six State Government structure should be abolished immediately. There should be significant economic reformation. Nigeria economy, the largest in Africa, cannot be complete without an independent currency. The Naira should immediately be restored as a convertible currency in the foreign exchanges at its realistic value. Therefore, the auction of the currency must now stop. Company Law should be reviewed and Taxation system reformed, all of which define the conduct of business and amount of revenue that accrue to the treasury.

There should be free Education for school pupils from the age of 5 years old to 18 years old. There should be free tuition fee for students in the tertiary institutions in the country. There should be fully or partially free National Health where patients shall at least be able to consult doctors and receive treatment free of charge at the public hospitals.

General Buhari must avoid religious conflict of interests in governance. Dual legal systems, religion or otherwise orientated should not be entertained. All the dual and parallel religious laws that exist in some State Government areas in the country should be abolished. There should not be any attempt to bring specific, separate religious ways of doing business, such as in banking, stock exchange trading, etc. into the economy. What we need to rebuild the far North from its terrorism destruction will largely come from the economy of the South. This can only happen when there are peace and harmony in the country. As things are, those peace and harmony are in the hands of the far North. Although this is a different era, the pre-civil war of 1967/70 and sensitive issues must not be stoked. It should be one law for one country.