Head Transparency International, Nigeria Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani) has carpeted former President Goodluck Jonathan for calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to implement report of the 2014 national conference which he (Jonathan) midwifed.
Rafsanjani, also the Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and a delegate to the 2014 national conference, in an interview with Blueprint in Abuja said the ex-president lacked the moral ground to make such call since he could not implement the report of the conference even during his tenure as president.
He also carpeted calls for a national summit as a path to solving the myriads of problems confronting the country, saying, “we have had several conferences and summits but lacked the political will to implement the reports”.
He stated, “The report was done; I was a part of the national conference, we produced a good report. Over 43 cases. One aspect of the report has to do with his own office, the executive power which is just a policy issue, another one required National Assembly to legislate on some laws which we didn’t go ahead to draft on some of those issues. The third one had to do with constitutional amendment.
“These three phases of the report we gave to Jonathan and he dumped it and now he coming to talk about the implementation. Nigerian leaders are not sincere. When they are there they will not do the right thing. Only when they are outside they will mow start talking.
“So as far as I am concerned, Jonathan has no even moral grounds to come and talk about the report because we gave him this report, he had the power to, at least out of these three key areas, take up one that had to do with policy issue which is under his own prerogative and nobody would question him, he was the president.”
He dismissed the issue of agitation by some northern delegates at the conference that the report was doctored in favour of the south, adding that the Nigerian elite would do everything to deplore and scuttle well meaning programme.
He said virtually every sector of the Nigerian society was represented from the labour, to the religious, to the traditional rulers to the politicians and economic sector was represented at the conference.
According to expert, the problem was that people who were not in that meeting also wanted their own conference convoked.
“As far as I am concerned, we have had enough conferences that if we have used the recommendations, we would have been able to, at least, address and respond to some of the challenges that we have in this country.
“But there is no political will. So you organise the report today, the report is out then you dump it somewhere. That’s not what we are looking for.
“We have enough strategy to combat insecurity, to combat poverty, to combat maladministration but what is happening is that there is a calculated attempt by the political elite not to allow Nigeria to benefit from good governance.”
He said some of the problems confronting Nigeria are not being addressed from the roots but are window dressed.
He attributed the problems of violent killings and kidnappings to the collapse of education and excessive corruption in the country, adding that the elite who were supposed to fix the public schools have abandoned them and opted to sending their children to America or Europe for studies.
“Some of the problems we have are not being addressed, they are just doing window dressing. Some of the root cause of these problems are the collapse of public education. Most of the public officials, their children are in either America or Europe. They passed through the public education system but now they have killed the public education.
“All their children are now studying in Europe or America. Meanwhile they were the children of nobody. They went to school here in Nigeria when the universities were functioning but now when it comes to the turn of other people they made sure they killed the system and some of them introduced their own private schools- private primary schools, private secondary schools and private university- using government money to do that.
“Number two, part of the problems that you see is because of excessive corruption. When there is a budget to provide, say healthcare, to provide education, to provide infrastructure, some few people sit down to siphon this money. How will you expect the people, especially the young people who are supposed to go to school and they are not able to go to school, they are supposed to be engaged in meaningful jobs, there is no job for them, you expect them to be decent?
“It’s just like people who are thinking that when the kidnappers who usually are people who have been abandoned, who grew up in the streets and expect them to show you mercy. These are people who have nobody to love them, nobody cares about them, they grow in a very harsh and difficult environment. Now when they become notorious and criminally and when they catch you, then would expect them to show you love?
“In the first place they don’t know that love, nobody ever showed them love, nobody ever liked them to move from their situation to a better situation. Corruption is the root cause of the violence that you see, not only kidnapping, criminal violence, religious violence, political violence are all part of it.”
