No Nigerian president ready for office, says Kukah

FORMER Military Head of State and presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 general elections, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari yesterday took a critical look at the state of the nation and declared that corruption and insecurity are fast undermining the future of Nigeria.

And tracing where and when Nigeria started getting it wrong, Buhari fingered the administrations of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, to the current President Goodluck Jonathan. He alleged that lack of sincerity on the part of leaders under the administrations of the trio caused the unimaginable level of corruption and insecurity in the country.

Buhari spoke as the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Dr. Matthew Hassan Kukah declared that no Nigerian president was ever prepared for the leadership of the country.

According to Buhari, the Federal Government, since the administration of Babangida to date, is responsible for the “high level of corruption and destruction” in the petroleum industry.

The former head of state spoke in Kaduna while receiving leaders and members of CPC led by House of Representatives member from Funtua/Dandume Federal Constituency of Katsina State, Dr. Mansur Abdulkadir, on a courtesy visit ahead of the forthcoming local council election in the state.

According to Buhari, for Nigeria to move forward and realise its quest for development, its people must come out with trusted leaders to steer the affairs of the nation. He lamented that “there is no country in the whole world where impunity strives as it is the case in Nigeria”.

He said: “The biggest challenge of Nigeria is for adequate security to be in place and ways in which we can protect the riches of this country and provide job opportunities for the youths is to build more industries as it was before.

“Inability of these industries to work has brought mistrust and corruption to Nigeria. Therefore, our leaders have to be sincere and lead with the fear of God and carry all along for Nigeria to be a better place.

“All leaders should stand and keep promises to the people. We cannot move forward if things that are supposed to be put in place are not provided. The money which was siphoned in the recent pension scam and the petroleum industry scam must all be brought back into the government’s coffer for good leadership.

“Therefore, all those that want the masses to vote and be voted for should go to the masses and get their mandate. The era of using money to bribe the masses or force to get political office is gone.

“A leader who wants to be a good leader must look at what the needs of the people are, the suffering, and the humiliation and proffer solution to those problems, and together we shall achieve greatness.”

Buhari insisted that corruption was institutionalised in the petroleum sector during the era of Babangida, Obasanjo and the present Jonathan administration because they allegedly had the mind of cheating and pauperising the masses.

He lamented the high level of suffering of the masses in the country, saying practical steps must be taken urgently to tackle the situation.

In his remarks, the leader of the delegation, Abdulkadir, said the purpose of their visit was to wish Buhari happy Eid-el-Fitri celebration and seek his blessing ahead of the polls.

He prayed that Nigeria be blessed with honest and committed leaders like Buhari to get the nation out of the woods.

Bishop Kukah declared that from Tafawa Balewa’s era to the present time, all Nigerian leaders who got into office achieved it by stroke of luck.

Delivering a keynote address at the on-going 52nd Annual General Conference of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Kukah called for the removal of Section 162 of the Constitution in the on-going Constitutional amendment if the nation must move forward.

His words: “No Nigerian president or head of state has ever been prepared for the leadership of the country. From the days of Tafawa Balewa, all Nigerian leaders had always got into office through good luck, as most of them were never prepared for leadership. The transition that took place had a terminal point, it was clearly known and nobody was left in doubt that everything was put in place to bring Obasanjo to power from prison, everybody that fought for the entrenchment of democracy is on the outside, from the annulment of the June 12 election till now Nigeria has had seven presidents.

“We cannot retain Section 162 of the Constitution if the nation must move forward. As long as the access to the resources of Nigeria is access to do as you like, we would continue to have violence in the country. Nigeria needs to be a bit creative and commit itself to human rights. Nigeria is a country with huge resources and unfortunately a country with a lot of poor people, one of the difficulties of this country. Anybody who is the president of Nigeria deserves our sympathy as the loyalty in Nigeria has been transferred to tribes and godfathers, and 30 years from now Nigeria will be ruled by people who have their loyalty to tribe and godfathers. Nigerians are looking for a messiah, a messiah is not going to come from another planet, the Nigerian messiah is among us, who the messiah is, is what we don’t know so let’s us try to treat one another with some respect.”

According to Kukah, “people will be ready to defend democracy if they see an appreciable increase in their well being. Nigeria is a nation that is flying without a black box, Nigeria is a country without history, I have not found a Nigerian that can talk about another tribe of the country without the obvious prejudices, what we face is country where even our heroes and heroines are largely contested.”

In his own remarks, the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mohamed Bello Adoke (SAN) stressed the need to reform the nation’s laws, governance processes and procedures, which have been adjudged by some investors to be archaic and unsuitable for driving economic growth if the country’s quest for economic development and the concerted efforts must be fruitful.

According to Adoke, “Nigeria’s endowment and potential as an emerging market is not in doubt. We must however realize that there are other equally endowed markets that are competing with us for the attraction of investments. On Criminal Justice Reforms, we have produced a Draft Administration of Criminal Justice Bill, Draft Code of Conduct for Public Prosecutors and Draft Prosecutorial Guidelines to address some of the challenges in the administration of criminal justice especially for the Federal Capital Territory and hope to recommend same as a good practice to states that are yet to enact similar legislation. These drafts are now undergoing stakeholder review.

“To boost our war against corruption, I wish to report that the Whistle Blower’s Bill, Stolen Asset Recovery and Management Bill and the Anti- Bribery Bill, are at advanced stages of completion. We have already submitted to the National Assembly, the Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, Genocide and Related Offences Bill 2012, to implement the ICC statute and criminalize ICC crimes in Nigeria in our effort to end impunity; the Terrorism (Prohibition) Bill 2012 to address identified weaknesses in our anti-terror laws and the Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill 2012 to curb the scourge of money laundering and specifically criminalize certain conducts, as well as, satisfy some of the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force.”

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=96988:buhari-blames-jonathan-obj-ibb-for-corruption-insecurity&catid=1:national&Itemid=559

I wonder why Abacha's name did not make his list? Is he saying that Abacha was not corrupt? I think that it is high time Nigerians started thinking about how to get new intelligent people to rule them instead of dealing on the same ol' same ol'.