African Views Organisation (AVO) Writes to President Muhammadu Buhari: A Salutatory Letter to President Muhammadu Buhari from African Views Organisation

(AVO)

Dear Mr. President,

The African View Organisation (AVO) congratulates you on your well-deserved election victory in the last Nigerian presidential election. We are greatly gladdened by your well-deserved victory given your perseverance and tenacity in the pursuit of your legitimate political aspiration to govern Nigeria as President. Your undaunted determination and unflinching doggedness will remain a veritable source of lesson in patience, focus, courage and persistency for a long time to come. Having contested and won the hard-fought election, the great and monumental task of the governance of Nigeria is now your great challenge and there can be no excuse for non-performance or failure in delivering the so-called dividends of democracy to Nigerians.

We would like to highlight some key areas of concern to us that we would like you to robustly tackle as well as other pertinent issues that you urgently need to address. We would also proffer our suggestions. There are few areas that have been invariably mentioned as critical to Nigeria and they surely deserve your urgent attention. They include corruption – the issue of tackling corruption in Nigeria; the perennial problem in the power sector; the alarming level of unemployment in the country; and the ever-increasing level of poverty in the land. This is just to mention some few of the motley of problems besetting our dear country, Nigeria.

Corruption is at the root of Nigeria’s problem. We all know about this endemic and systemic problem of corruption in Nigeria and this is hardly an avenue to do an in-depth analysis of the problems and insidious consequences of corruption in Nigeria. It is our view that billions of public funds have been purloined by kleptoparasitic Nigerian government officials using their access to governmental positions to literally loot and divert huge sums of money to their personal use or to that of their cronies. The lists of such blatant kleptocratic defalcation in Nigeria are legion. Suffice to say that these callous exsanguinations of public resources have brought about a wholesale immiseration of the Nigerian people who, despite being privileged and opportune to be born in a country that is stupendously endowed, continue to live in sub-human level of penury and deprivation.

The African Views Organisation (AVO) strongly believes that the cost of corruption in Nigeria is exceedingly monumental and that dealing with corruption in Nigeria requires equipollent measures to effectively counter its nationally-enervating effects on Nigeria and her unfortunate people in the circumstances. In this regard, we suggest that your government should set up a special court or tribunal of an extra-ordinary nature, utterly devoid of juristic shenanigans and inordinate procedural technicalities to proportionately deal with corruption cases in Nigeria. It is beyond any doubt that the regular courts in Nigeria as presently constituted with its orthodox and unnecessarily dilatory procedure can hardly deal with the

1

scale of corruption cases in Nigeria. As a member of the legal profession in four jurisdictions i.e. Nigeria, the United Kingdom, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands of the British West Indies, I cannot launch a blanket attack or make a general statement about judicial corruption or corruption in the judiciary in Nigeria; however, it has been extensively written and vociferously said, that “a large number of judges in Nigeria are corrupt.”

We have no modicum of hesitation in concurring with the above assertion. Instances are legion where clear-cases of massive corruption in Nigeria are allowed to fizzle out into nothingness either through prosecutorial blunders or incomprehensible and discombobulating judicial pronouncements. We have a case in Nigeria for instance, where a man alleged to have embezzled the huge sum of 27 Billion Naira belonging to Police Pension Funds was given a paltry and ridiculous sentence of three months imprisonment or an option of a fine of 750,000 thousand Naira. We also remember that an Ex-Governor of Delta State of Nigeria, Mr James Onanefe Ibori was cleared of all the 70 counts of charges brought against him by the EFCC bothering on financial impropriety and was also able to secure a perpetual injunction restraining any agency in Nigeria from further investigation, arrest, prosecution, etc. of the said Ex -Governor. Recently, the Ex-Minister of Civil Aviation in Nigeria was said to have obtained an unusual kind of injunction unprecedented in any common law jurisdiction restraining any government agency from arresting, questioning, investigating or trying her for alleged financial impropriety regarding inflating the cost and price of vehicles she purportedly purchased.

In the light of the above, it is our candid opinion that the Nigerian courts as presently constituted cannot or rather is not in a position to effectively adjudicate cases of corruption in Nigeria. In this respect, we strongly urge your Excellency, President of Nigeria, to adopt a new approach to the fight against corruption in Nigeria from the judicial angle. The prosecution of cases of corruption in Nigeria should be dealt with (with) maximum expedition and sentences/judgments carried out swiftly to send a clear and unmistakable signal to perpetrators of this dastardly crime against Nigerians. Nigeria needs to reform their criminal justice system in respect of their mode of trial of corruption cases, so that it can be carried out in such a way that lawyers are not allowed to use legal or procedural technicalities to stall, abort or subvert the due process of the law in this aspect of the Nigeria’s criminal justice administration system.

Such special courts as we are advocating in this piece, to the country’s President, His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari, should have power to arrest, detain, try, convict and execute those Nigerian corrupt persons who purloined and defalcated Nigeria’s treasury in any way. Their assets should also be subject to confiscation by the State as one of the mandatory punitive consequences of their nefarious acts. This should not sound harsh or draconian as the inevitable and inexorable consequences of Nigerian-style and level of corruption ranges from death of thousands of innocent children as a result of lack of basic health facility, ignorance, mass illiteracy, poor quality of education, loss of lives on Nigerian roads etc. They are kleptoparasites and should be treated as such.

2

Nigerian corrupt government officials are well known to be persons with armoured conscience who do not consider the deleterious and pernicious effects of their unscrupulous, criminal corrupt practices. Thus, equipollent punitive measures as mentioned above i.e. long term imprisonment, death sentences and assets confiscation can justifiably be meted out to these kleptoparasites with armoured conscience.

In the case of problems in the power sector, while we appreciate that a slight improvement has been recorded in this vital area since your Excellency’s assumption of office, we do suggest that your government should seek a lasting solution to these problems which have turned thousands of Nigerian graduates into commercial motor cycle riders because they can hardly afford the cost of any meaningful business endeavour they might have ventured into for their livelihood, owing to the non- availability of power to support such self- help endeavours. We have been told that there is a cabal in Nigeria that are into the business of importing power generators into Nigeria and that these profiteers will literally sabotage any meaningful endeavour to deal with the perennial power sector problem in Nigeria. This problem which has exposed millions of Nigerians to untold hardship should be scrupulously investigated and those responsible for this scourge should be appropriately sanctioned. African Views Organisation (AVO) wants your government to investigate the whereabouts of the billions of dollars allegedly earmarked for the power sector in Nigeria in the past ten years preceding your coming into office as the President of Nigeria. This alleged huge sum of money must be accounted for. If any person is found wanting or involved in this dastardly act of economic sabotage, such persons should be arrested, tried and if convicted, be punished by execution and assets confiscation. African Views Organisation (AVO) is of the opinion that all crimes bordering on gross economic sabotage in Nigeria should be proportionately dealt with by punitive equipollent measures by the President Buhari administration.

We are of the firm view that some Nigerians have no conscience or that if they do have any, they have an armoured conscience and as such only severe punishment can deter or discourage these kinds of kleptoparasitic people from unscrupulously stealing the national treasury if and when they find themselves in positions of governmental power and trust in Nigeria. Your Excellency, Mr. President, your patriotic government may borrow a leaf from the Peoples Republic of China, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Cuba in terms of the way they deal with corruption. Cases of corruption of the magnitude and incidence as in Nigeria are rare in these countries mentioned above. Besides, the overwhelming majority of Nigerians actually want you to vigorously deal with this menace called corruption in Nigeria for much of the moral anomie and ethical turpitude into which this country, Nigeria has slithered, fundamentally stems from corruption and its pernicious ramifications. Above all and just to say the least, crass corruption in Nigeria engenders poverty in the land.

Poverty in Nigeria has reached alarming proportion. When we see how many Nigerians live and survive on a daily basis our blood runs cold. Granted, that Nigeria is not a very rich country but Nigeria is also not a poor country by any stretch of the imagination. We in the African Views Organisation (AVO) strongly believe that Nigeria as a country is stupendously endowed with natural resources and almost all her lands are arable and fertile. Your government should focus on policies to achieve autarky in the interest of Nigeria’s

3

overwhelming population and in this regard, your Excellency can commence work by encouraging massive extensive mechanised farming (Agriculture) and providing government incentives for those who wish to venture into this area. Even in this area of agriculture/farming, popular consciousness and awareness founded on education should also be pursued vehemently as government policy to empower the masses.

In this respect, education in Nigeria should be made mandatory and compulsory at least up to secondary school level. There is no doubt that illiteracy shares some propinquity with poverty in Nigeria and the two are sustained by ignorance and backwardness. Hence, popular education especially in the northern part of the country will help to free people from primitiveness and backwardness and imbue them with sufficient degree of awareness and consciousness – which will in turn enable them to deal with the vicissitudes of life. Everyone is equipped with sufficient capacity to deal with the vicissitudes of life. A well-educated person is less susceptible to manipulation of diverse sorts compared to an uneducated or ill-educated person. Government should view this in terms of and in the interest of national security, ethnic harmony and religious tolerance. Some of these problems are fuelled by illiteracy, ignorance and backwardness. The level of poverty in Nigeria today is outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable for a country that produces oil and is richly blessed with abundant natural resources like Nigeria. Again, this scourge of poverty has some intrinsic propinquity with systemic corruption plaguing Nigeria as a country. We strongly suggest that your government should create or establish a ministry responsible for poverty alleviation in Nigeria which can as well be subsumed into any other ministry so as to cut the cost of governance. This ministry must effectively design, innovate and implement policies to alleviate the level of poverty in the nation. The funds to be recovered from those kleptoparasitic corrupt persons, who siphoned the treasury and national resources, will go a long way in ameliorating the plight of Nigeria’s less privileged citizens.

Your Excellency, Mr. President, we are also morbidly disturbed by the level of insecurity in Nigeria. This insecurity does not only relate to the sinister and gruesome campaign of insurgency being waged against the Nigerian state and her neighbours by the Jamma’ Atul Ahlis Sunnah Liddawa’ ati wul-Jihad (the so-called Boko Haram) but also extends to the general level of insecurity pervading in the entire nation ranging from armed robbery, ethnic militancy, thuggery, brigandage, police brutality, incessant harassment by other security and state agencies etc. We are of the view that the so- called Boko Haram insurgency is a well armed and well financed insurgency being orchestrated by some eminent Nigerians first as a politically protected insurgency serving some narrow interests and subsequently as an all out unbridled, indiscriminate terror campaign against Nigeria which was further extended to a region –wide insurgency engulfing the other states of the West African Sub-region like Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin republic.

Since your Excellency’s assumption of office as the Executive President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Commander – in - Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, the group seems to have intensified their sanguinary campaign with greater impunity and lethality. We do not wish to advice a former senior military officer who is highly trained in the art of war, we just wish to remind your Excellency that wars are fought at three levels

4

(i) the tactical level (ii) the operational level and (iii) the strategic level. We have only recently been impressed with the Nigerian Army at the tactical level however, and we suggest that our military up their game at the operational and strategic levels. Mr. President, you seemed to have appreciated some of our concerns when shortly after assuming office and power as Nigeria’s President and the Commander in Chief of her Armed Forces, you ordered the Command Control Aspects of Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations to immediately relocate to the frontline of the insurgency in Maiduguri, Bornu state. This is a brilliant move at strategic, operational and tactical level of Nigeria’s counter-insurgency measures. Everyone with an iota of knowledge of military science and strategy perfectly understands your ingenuity as an ex military person and why you did that. We at African Views Organisation (AVO) welcome this move as a brilliant step in the right direction on the part of the new Nigeria’s trusted and patriotic President.

Your Excellency, Mr President, on the issue of the appointment of personnel to man different Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government in Nigeria, African Views Organisation (AVO) holds the strong position that this matter must not be politicised. Please, Mr President, we strongly adjure and implore you to totally disregard this tendentious and sanctimonious clamour among some Nigerians urging you ‘to reflect federal character’ in your appointments. Our apposite question in this regard is; what does it profit an ordinary Nigerian from Ebonyi state or Taraba state or Yobe state, Osun state or Bayelsa state for instance, if his kinsman who is pathologically corrupt is appointed as head of a government, ministry or department of agency in Nigeria? Generally speaking, Nigerians with their armoured conscience do not really care about their fellow human beings and as such this spurious clamour/cacophony for ethnic geo-political balancing in governmental appointments is an utter balderdash and a bunch of baloney. We urge you, Mr President, to seek out competent people with moral rectitude from anywhere in Nigeria and appoint them to offices to handle affairs of these ministries, departments and agencies of government in the interest of transparency, accountability and probity irrespective of where they come from. We humbly plead, Mr. President, if you find these persons from one local government in Taraba state or Akwa Ibom state or Ogun state or Imo state, please do not hesitate to appoint them to man these government positions. Nigeria at this critical point in time needs people who can perform and deliver irrespective of where they come from.

Your Excellency, Mr President, Please be advised that federal character reflection in governmental appointments in Nigeria is a normative virtue or rather policy to be pursued in so far as ‘it is reasonably expedient’. It is not a constitutionally-enshrined imperative. Professor Sagay and Mr Femi Falana can advise you on this. Given the magnitude of the problem besetting this great nation, Nigeria, we would also suggest that you suspend the Constitution of Nigeria for a while in the spirit of exigency and vigorously tackle these motley of problems and challenges facing Nigeria, after all, our so-called present constitution is a mere textual simulacrum. Nigeria and her government must acutely remember that her present unfortunate circumstances of mis-governance and their inevitable consequences have created a hydra-headed problem that is quite extra-ordinary in nature and scope, thus requiring and necessitating extra-ordinary solution and panacea.

5

We urge you, your Excellency, Mr. President, in the interest of prudent resources management, to cut down the cost of governance in Nigeria which virtually swallows and gulps up the meagre available resources – leaving nothing for vital capital projects in the country. We want Mr. President to scale down the cost of governance now in Nigeria. We are aware that under previous governments, some of these ministries, departments and agencies (MDA) were set up as means of dispensing political favours and patronages to some privileged Nigerians who used phoney institutional structures and vehicles to enrich themselves and their cronies to the detriment of their fellow Nigerians. Your Excellency, Mr President, your government must put an end to this economically-exsanguinating and enervating charade. It is not constitutionally mandatory that the federal government of Nigeria must have 36 ministries/ministers and each from one state. You can merge, fuse and amalgamate some of these ministries, departments and agencies in the interest of saving costs for capital development projects for the country. In this respect, it is our opinion that twenty one ministries are sufficient to govern Nigeria and their respective ministers can come from anywhere in the country provided they are real people with critical sense of probity and moral rectitude and not ‘typical Nigerians’ with their inherent characteristic pathological armoured conscience.

In the interest of Nigeria, we in the African Views Organisation (AVO), solemnly urge you, Mr President, to vindicate the popular trust and united confidence reposed in you by the overwhelming majority of Nigerians as demonstrated in the popular mandate they willingly gave you in the last presidential election. We earnestly urge you, Mr President, not to squander this mandate and disappoint them because history will not forgive you. We in the African Views Organisation (AVO) are of the firm view that you are a man with tremendous reputational capital and political good will and also a man of enormous integrity. We profoundly appreciate the fact that just as the international community also noted that you have clearly shown so much faith in the democratic process, and owing to your tenacity and perseverance, you have indeed refused to be frustrated even in the face of massively rigged elections and judicial shenanigans and skulduggery. It has been emphasised that you willingly and patriotically submitted to the judicial process and even when that was manifestly and rapaciously subverted and callously compromised, that you never gave up.

The so-called international community have clearly pledged their support for you and your government as they seemingly found in you a man Nigeria needs at this hour of her hydra-headed travails. We in the African Views Organisation (AVO) are convinced just as the international community are, that your Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari is the one that Nigeria needs at this time of her travails to regain its leadership of the African continent and the third world. We in the African Views Organisation (AVO) are particularly interested in Nigeria assuming its rightful position and role in West African sub region and the African continent. Mr. President, you have no excuse whatsoever for non-performance or poor performance. While your immediate predecessor might be said to be a ‘’president only in office’’ but not ‘’in power’’, you, President Buhari, are a president both in office and in power and as such, we adjure you to use the popular mandate conferred on you by the Nigerian electorate to govern effectively and genuinely seek to improve their lot i.e. their

6

material living condition. We urge you to use the instrumentalities of the state’s coercive apparatus to checkmate these kleptoparasitic Nigerians with armoured conscience, whose corruption has undermined Nigeria’s development and advancement in addition to impoverishing Nigerian people; because what has been destroying the country and splurging her resources is corruption which must be aggressively tackled at every level – the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the academia, the business sector, the Police, the bureaucracy etc.

We are not against you, Mr President, adopting revolutionary means and measures to address this systemic and insidious cancer ravaging the entire edifice of Nigeria as a state. At the present level of the rot plaguing the nation, Nigeria, Nigeria’s problems and challenges are not amenable and malleable to reform but needs a total revolution and massive reconstruction. We want you to govern Nigeria like Adolf Hitler (albeit being the most abhorrent and repellent figure of the twentieth century history) but utterly devoid of Anti-Semitism, or Joseph Stalin without mass-murdering propensity or even Sani Abacha without avaricious proclivity. In this sense, we merely mean to say that Nigeria in its presently damaged state needs a strong leader imbued with a strong sense of patriotism and nationalism who can move the nation ahead and disproportionately deal with the motley of problems facing the country just as our good friend, Dr. Fidel Castro did for Cuba and made his small island country a highly respected and efficient country in the entire Western hemisphere and ultimately got the United States to recognise the legitimacy of the Cuban revolution after more than 50 years of diplomatic embargo and economic blockade against Cuba.

Your Excellency, Mr President, please be aware that in every historical epoch, the socio-economic and political destiny and lot of any nation is determined by the kind of leadership it has. In the same vein, in every historical era, sometimes a nation will have to undergo through some topsy-turvy and unorthodox process or phase in order to rediscover herself, find herself more robustly emerge or re-emerge. Nigeria needs at this time a leader capable of overhauling and restructuring the entire socio-economic and political edifice/fabric of the country and then usher and trigger the nation into its Eldorado. Singapore, Cuba, China, Former USSR, Germany etc. have gone through some topsy-turvydom and upheavals but they came out better for it.

Finally, Mr President, let the core objectives of fighting corruption, restoring security, creating jobs and redistributing prosperity be your mantra in the governance of Nigeria of our present epoch and be informed that the people are with you – EL PUEBLO ESTA CONTIGO (the people are with you). The massive and criminal exsanguinations and splurge of this great country, Nigeria, must not be ignored or treated with floccinaucinihilipilification in the name of human rights and democratic ideals. It is our view that Nigeria as an emerging modern state cannot achieve anything if she seeks to subscribe to ‘the so-called western democratic and civilised standards’ at this point in time in our national development given the quantum of rot and decadence in Nigeria. To seek to do so in our opinion, will not only undermine your government’s clear intention to fight corruption and fix the nation but will be tantamount to endorsing corruption and allowing the rot unaddressed effectively. Nigeria

7

needs to deal with fundamental problems militating against her growth and development before seeking to subscribe to the so called democratic standards and civilized ideals.

It is absolutely inconceivable to hear for example, that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) withholdings totalled over $25 Billion US Dollars from domestic crude sales alone between 2010 and 2013. Ditto, for $15 Billion US Dollars budgeted for the power sector problem in Nigeria and nothing to show for it. Funds earmarked for different capital projects in different ministries and departments and agencies were riotously and unscrupulously embezzled by corrupt government officials to the detriment of Nigerians. Mr President, you should endeavour to improve the living condition of Nigerians while you are in office as the President of Nigeria.

Your Excellency, Mr President, we just want to remind you that at the end of the ‘Buharian’ era, (which many Nigerians are already seeing as the dawn of a new era and a golden era for Nigeria), Nigerians should be able to draw a sharp distinction between the previous era characterised by endemic massive corruption and inefficiency, poor quality in education and service delivery and insecurity on the one hand, and a people-oriented government characterised by zero-tolerance for corruption, genuine solicitude for the welfare of the people, improvement in the living condition and over-all well being of the nation. Time will tell. Our organisation, the African Views Organisation (AVO) will continue to monitor the unfolding events in Nigeria and we will continue to brainstorm on the overall socio-economic and political developments and happenings in Nigeria. We will continue to offer the Buhari government strategic advice and suggestions on the way forward. Tackling corruption is critical to Nigeria’s economic prosperity and even survival as a state. Corruption deters business and investments, harms service delivery and undermines trust in government. Mr. President, we believe that by the grace of God (insha allah) (swa), that you will succeed in this great project.

Dr Clement C. Chigbo, a multi-jurisdictional lawyer and a peripatetic lecturer in the UK, Nigeria and the Caribbean, is currently legal adviser (global), African Views Organisation (AVO). Comments and criticisms and suggestions can be sent via e-mail to clementchigbo@yahoo.com.

8