Open letter to President Bola Tinubu written by the President, CDHR, Chairman CACOL, Lagos, Debo Adeniran …We are constrained to join other well spirited Nigerians both at home and abroad to proffer possible solutions
Sir: We are constrained to join other well spirited Nigerians both at home and abroad to proffer possible solutions to the current protest being carried out by some groups of people in different parts of the country.
We would like to commend you for the various giant strides your administration has recorded in the last one year or thereabout in office. Some of these laudable achievements which cannot be overlooked are the signing into law of the Student Loan Bill which is now being disbursed to students. Securing Supreme Court pronouncement for Local Government financial autonomy. payment of forex backlog, increment in the minimum wage from N30,000 to N70,000. Increment in crude oil production from 900,000bpd to 1.6million bpd. Creation of the Northwest and Southeast Development Commissions and selling of crude oil in Naira. Suspension of tariff on imported grains and other essential food items. And the release of grains to state and local governments to ease the food crisis, among others.
We would like to make the following recommendations. All Nigerians whose business capital is not up to N5 million should be exempted from paying tax.
All essential commodities including foods, books, medicine, etc. should enjoy tax waivers. Free education and healthcare should be declared for all children up to the Senior Secondary level in the minimum. Grants should be given to indigent students in tertiary institutions. While those who are not so indigent should be encouraged to take the option of the student loan your administration introduced.
Nigeria is unnecessarily encumbered by the weight of its top-heavy and unwieldy system of government it burdens itself with. Our government consists of three tiers of federal, state and local.
Each tier consists of three arms: executive, legislative and judiciary. The federal legislature is bicameral with the Senate and House of Representatives. We would like to recommend that a unicameral legislature in the mould of the House of Representatives is cheaper. It is easier to maintain and makes government business simpler and faster and should be adopted in Nigeria.
At the end of the day, if the Senate is more fashionable, they should name the National Assembly, Senate or simply make it National Assembly. Election of Members should be based on the same criteria upon which House of Representatives members were elected.
It is also our recommendation that the three tiers of government be reduced to two; the federal and local governments. There is no need for State governments. State governments are just discomfiting interlopers. Whose roles can be better played as Local Governments. State Governments are the veritable excuses why Local Governments had not been functioning optimally. That is why State Governments don’t want autonomy for Local Governments.
We are aware that the Constitution provides that at least one cabinet minister should be appointed from each of the component States. Our recommendation is that ministers and State commissioners should also be elected by their respective States or Constituencies. In the same way that the Federal and State legislators are respectively elected.
The President should only have opportunities of appointing personal assistants and not even special advisers. Ministers should play the roles of advising the President on sectorial issues.
The President and Ministers should only appoint few assistants. Whose emoluments would be borne by the government for himself and his ministers. Any public servant who wants more assistants should remunerate them from their personal resources. You must nonetheless put a limit to the number of assistants employed for them.
Finally, we believe that the current Constitution, the ground norm with which our individual and collective lives are being administered, was foisted upon us by an illegitimate government of the military. It is on this note that we recommend that the government should convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). Wherein, every Nigerian voice would be directly represented and where a new Nigerian Constitution would evolve.
SNC is the foundation of a true democracy and nationhood. Without it, we would only be living under self-denial in a mere political contraption. Without any true unifying factor. And, therefore, signifying nothing but a keg of gunpowder waiting to explode!
written by Debo Adeniran,
President, CDHR, Chairman CACOL, Lagos.
first published by The Nation
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