trillville: .

Very correct!

Sometimes I look back and wished the Abdusalam military govt inserted such a clause ("ALL OF NIGERIA'S INCOME FROMNATURAL RESOURCES SHOULD BE SPENT ON CAPITAL PROJECTS AND SAVINGS ONLY" in the 1999 constitution it handed to the civillians govt. Such clause, as simple as that, would have made alot of difference both in curbing corruption and causing accelerated development.

Abdusalam had ALL the powers in world to give us a workable constitution but failed because of one sentiment or the other.

Unfortunately, SIMPLE things that would have made all the difference, at one point or the other in our history, are often not done in Nigeria

As it's done in China, "Death by hanging" will be the only solution to corruption. All we need in this country is strict discipline. Things will fall back to shape.

trillville: .

Very correct!

Sometimes I look back and wished the Abdusalam military govt inserted such a clause in the 1999 constitution it handed to the civillians govt. Such clause, as simple as that, would have made alot of difference both in curbing corruption and causing accelerated development.

Abdusalam had ALL the powers in world to give us a workable constitution but failed because of one sentiment or the other.

Unfortunately, SIMPLE things that would have made all the difference, at one point or the other in our history, are often not done in Nigeria. The question is why?

Under a democratic dispensation, it will be near impossible to insert such a clause in the constitution.

[size=16pt]very easy.. you can curb corruption right after you fetch water with a basket and carry it to SilverBird Galleria. If you can do this, then, you can curb corruption. easy. [/size]

first of all let me start by saying its only the RAWLINGS way that this feat can be achieved with the following addendum - let the group of persons who wants to curb corruption in Nigeria be ready to ELIMINATE (kill)our fathers and mothers because they have all FAILED us completely, its someone fathers/mothers that are currently messing up the affairs of these country, its someone's FATHERS/MOTHERS that is an office holders, politicians,military and para military personnel's/ leaders who has lost focus of there call to service, God fathers,fraud stars, Local, state and federal government workers looting the treasury, lobbyist,private, heads of parastatals and agencies set up solely to loot the people of there rights, persons who are political thugs, robbers, kidnappers, militants, Islamic fundamentalist,pastors/imams(CLERGY'S) fleecing there folks day in day out with the hope and false delusions of given them a better life, with cases piling up in our judiciaries "as the law is blind" because our lawyers and judges all have a price tag on the chest, every common nigerian within the ages of 15-90 who is fighting corruption on the large scale and has not fought the corruption within his/her wits and finally including the poster and me replying to his post should be eliminated.
then they should pick up every citizen in Nigerian between the ages of 1-10 years only to another island or resettlement outside African shore where they will be rehabilitated and taught norms of a free generation for another 10-15 years so that when they attain the ages of 30-35 they will bring them back and start a new Nigerian all over. i hold the opinion that we are born corrupt in Nigerian and its the corrupt system that both the low,middle and high class operates. if these feat is feasible which is NOT, then and only then can we talk about a CORRUPT FREE NIGERIAN.

N O T H I N G

Sincere 9gerian:
Very correct!

Sometimes I look back and wished the Abdusalam military govt inserted such a clause in the 1999 constitution it handed to the civillians govt. Such clause, as simple as that, would have made alot of difference both in curbing corruption and causing accelerated development.

Abdusalam had ALL the powers in world to give us a workable constitution but failed because of one sentiment or the other.

Unfortunately, SIMPLE things that would have made all the difference, at one point or the other in our history, are often not done in Nigeria. The question is why?

Under a democratic dispensation, it will be near impossible to insert such a clause in the constitution.

I am actually planning on writing an article to prove my point that is why I removed my quote.

It is amazing that We can agree on issues, yet I feel gej is probably the worst thing that could have happened to Nigeria at this time.

May God almighty guide this nation through this extremely troubling times.

Click and read through The Truth Behind Corruption Exposed

We can only curb corruption in Nigeria when
1. We stop celebrating our corrupt leaders
2. We stop putting money first in all our dealings
3. Our judiciary system stop favouring the rich
4. Materialism is discouraged with heavy taxation
5. We all stop looking for immediate gratification
6. We all obey the laws and orders of the land
7. We discourage politicians/sponsors with questionable characters
8. We demand accountability from our leaders and voting out those with questionable characters
9. We truly dream and work to see a great Nigeria
10.We ensure stern punishment for all corrupt practices

So, it starts from YOU!

Can I suggest we open a black book for corrupt Nigerians(especially those that have been questioned and left off the hook and still holding positions),Since the govt has refused to do anything about corruption...it might not make much difference but let's name and shame them...we put up pictures and accusations against them e.g Bode george(now a member of BOT pdp, Dimeji Bankole, peter Odili, lucky igbinedion, present minister of aviation, present petroleum minister, farouk lawal, pension fund thieves, all members of national assembly, patience Goodluck, hajia Turari yaradua, iyabo obasanjo, ibori, uduaghan, nasarawa state governor, former governor of zamfara....

It is al about leaders. If our leaders will do well to be sincere in all they do and also have the fear of God in them, i think corruption in our great country Nigeria will be aliminated.

ndu_chucks:

Did you read the post you responded to, at all? I said, "We can start by replacing the most corrupt party and government in Nigeria's history, PDP and GEJ's government respectively, come 2015." It would be a very good start which if followed by responsible leadership will help curb corruption. What allegation am I supposed to prove, abi na schnapp you drink this morning instead of coffee or tea ni?

I drank the same thing as you. Palm wine mixed with ogogoroh !

I asked how you manage to come up with your fantasy theory about GEJ being the most corrupt party in history. In my opinion, its a valid question.

Many people cannot deal with a challenge to their comment. They take it personally and start sending abuses.

Sure you guys have heard of Utilitarian Maximization, if not then know that it is a tenet of classic liberalism. In short, it argues human-beings always want what is best for them at the expense of what they perceive as bad for them. It is a bit like the social equivalent of opportunity cost.

In this therefor is the seed for all corruption. At one time or another, all humans will act corrupt or seem to be corrupt from the perspective of another human being. In the long march to today's Western Democracies, the founding fathers understood that you could never rely on the "goodness!" or honesty of peoples' hearts but on mechanisms, checks and balances to secure good governance. Even the constitution of America was born out of the liberal belief that one cannot trust government.

So it is not so much that Nigerians are inordinately more corrupt than other human-beings (an overemotional and idiotic notion) but that they inhabit an environment in which they are absolutely free to exploit the system. Given opportunity humans will exploit.

Dear Nigerians the only way to stop corruption in Nigeria is that the lawmakers should enact laws that will stop the selling of our crude oil with dollars, pound serling, euros etc etc since the crude oil is our natural resources, any country that needs it should bring its own natural resources for an equivalent excahange be it technology name them whatsoever you have as your resources if you need our my own crude oil then bring your own technology, you will see those one that has technology will come and give us thier technology and there will jobs opportunities for young fresh graduate,so with this you will see there will no embezzling and missed appropriating of public fund like in the case of Mr.----------- of $66,000,000.00 plz fill in the name of that man I forget. I raised my case.

For Nigeria to experience
transformational change, we need to ban things like PDP,
MONOPOLY (Dangote), FOREIGN AID, GOD FATHERIZM, 5 YRS
XPERIENCE, BLACK MARKETERS, etc
Then we need to introduce things like PLP (Peoples Libration
Party), Open Market, National Aid etc Finally let all the police be trained to join the Army, Prison
Warder etc while a new set of God fearing youth be recruited as the new Nigeria Police, their
mindset should be that of a Corp and not a Force. No public office holder or his children should be
allowed to school or hospitalized abroad. Teaching should be the most lucrative profession and convensional/vocational schools should be built rampartly.

jadakiss213: could u share a link to this?? thanks

Friday, March 07, 2008

PDP and the future of Nigerian politics
By Reuben Abati

NIGERIANS ought to be deeply concerned about what is currently going on in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the name of party congresses and convention. The PDP is the most dominant political party in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. It controls majority of the political positions at all levels of government. Between 2003 and 2007 for example, the party held 223 seats out of 360 seats in the House of Representatives, 76 out of 109 seats in the Senate, and after the 2007 elections, it has further maintained this majority status.

Twenty-seven out of the country’s 36 states are under the control of the PDP in addition to 260 seats in the House of Representatives and 85 in the Senate. In moments of self-praise, members of the PDP flatter themselves by referring to their party, as “the largest political party in Africa”., “the wealthiest party in Africa”, and “the most formidable” Perhaps it is, on account of population size and spread.

But the PDP is also the most disorganised political party in Africa, fractious, inchoate and uninspiring. The crises that characterise Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and the continuing putative nature of party politics in Nigeria’s post-military season are directly linked to the lack of internal democracy and cohesion within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party. Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate once pointed to the existence within the PDP of a “nest of killers”. It is a party of strange bed-fellows, a centrist collection of former soldiers, gun-runners, contractors, certificate forgers, unemployed persons all united by a common goal: access to a share of Nigeria’s oil wealth and a place in the sun. The sad news is that the hapless people of Nigeria are the obvious victims in the hands of a PDP behemoth whose manifesto is not clearly known to the people.

Out of frustration, Nigerians have since invented a number of instructive aliases for the PDP including – People Deceiving People, Papa Deceive Pickin, People Destroying People etc. Since 1999, Nigerians have experimented with democracy and this has entailed necessarily, a process of stock-taking, with the hope that mistakes can be identified, lessons learnt, and changes for the sake of national development and the purification of our politics, effected. If the latter objective had been realised in any way, it should be obvious in the way the PDP conducts its affairs. But this has not happened, a pointer to the larger, enduring crisis that we all face and the collateral damage that we continue to suffer.

Nothing has given louder advertisement to the incorrigibility of the PDP and its members than the run-up to its National Convention which is scheduled to hold tomorrow in Abuja, the nation’s capital. The Convention and the Congresses before it would be the first since the April 2007 elections, and perhaps the first attempt by the PDP to reorganise itself after President Olusegun Obasanjo’s exit. The two events are taking place against the background of the stunning revelations from various Election Petition Tribunals that in the 2007 elections, there were irregularities and malpractices, outright subversion of the law also, which were mostly perpetrated by members of the PDP and their agents. Significantly, most of the judgements by the election petition tribunals and the courts have amounted to an indictment of the PDP and the PDP government.

In Rivers State, the Supreme Court noted that it was wrong to have purported to exclude Rotimi Amaechi from the Gubernatorial elections, when he was the duly elected party candidate for that event. Party elders did not like Amaechi’s face, so they decided to shut him out. The Supreme Court more or less, declared this an indecent act and went as far as appointing Amaechi, the Governor of Rivers State. In Anambra, Kogi, Adamawa etc, the story is similarly illustrative of the recklessness of the PDP.

At the time of the 2007 elections, the PDP had been under siege, arising from internal wrangling and the crass authoritarianism of then President Olusegun Obasanjo who chose to dictate party processes. President Obasanjo not only took over the party, he alienated anyone who dared to question his authority. Shortly before his departure as President, he also got himself installed as Chairman of the Board of Trustees through a contrived amendment of the party’s Constitution and a voice vote. A properly organised political party would have taken its cue from the direct and indirect bashing it has received from the courts in the post-2007 election process. But PDP politicians have shown an absolute lack of capacity to learn.

The state congresses ahead of tomorrow’s convention were set apart by their lack of democracy. The election of party leaders and delegates in the states bore all the features of the same discredited April 2007 elections. PDP politicians shamelessly confirmed what the tribunals had denounced and what local and international monitors in the 2007 elections documented. The indication is as follows: it seems the on-going process of election petitions and tribunal/court rulings have had no impact whatsoever on political behaviour in the short – or long term. In the various states, there were reports of the theft of registration and voting materials, wilful disenfrachisement of party members, imposition of candidates, violence and acrimony and the spread of factional politics. The Nigerian people watched helplessly as the same political party that is managing their affairs failed to organise its own internal affairs according to all known rules of decorum and transparency.

One of the major highlights of the PDP exercise has been the report that former President Olusegun Obasanjo has been going round the country trying to impose his own candidates and that he has endorsed a candidate for the position of party chairman (former Governor of Ebonyi state, Dr. Sam Egwu) and another, for the position of Secretary-General of the party (Senator Tunde Ogbeha). Rather than a required focus on issues and the future of the party, stopping Obasanjo from ruling the party and dictating to it has become the issue as the party holds its Convention in Abuja tomorrow. The only voice of reason in the raging confusion is that of President Yar’Adua. He has promised that he’d not interfere with the election of the Chairman and other national officers of the party. He has also urged that the process should be transparent and inclusive. But other party leaders are not so circumspect.

Ahmadu Ali, the outgoing chairman is boasting that it is he, and not the Adamu Ciroma-led electoral panel that is in charge. Before now, he had threatened members of the protesting G-21 faction within the party with expulsion. Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu, the Ibadan politician has also declared that it is whoever Obasanjo wants as Party Chairman that would win. Frustrated party members had gone to court to stop the Convention. Adedibu says no court can stop the PDP. Told that some state Governors are planning to wrestle the party from Obasanjo’s control, Adedibu shot back: “In fact it would be a no contest for Egwu”. He added: “where are the PDP Governors? I am supporting Obasanjo and you are saying some Governors are against him, who are the Governors, tell me, who are the Governors?”. Answer: who is Adedibu?

This is a measure of the hopelessness of the political party system in Nigeria. With the way the PDP runs its affairs, should we legitimately expect its members to run good government? The ripples from the party’s Convention in Abuja will determine not only the future of the party, but also, the future of Nigerian politics. If the anti-Obasanjo group succeeds in chek-mating the former President’s then we may find incumbent President Yar’Adua, in spite of his claims of neutrality, gradually taking charge of the party. But the PDP is bound to remain a divided party and a continuing source of distraction. Differences within a political party may seem inevitable, but in the PDP, disagreements are often corrosive and murderous. The buildings blocks for a weak electoral process in 2011 are already being put together in the PDP.

Sometimes, I wonder whether PDP leaders watch television. Because if they do, they would have been in a position to follow the Presidential primaries in the United States. The beauty of the primaries by the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is how it has given the ordinary American an opportunity to choose and shortlist candidates for the country’s Presidential election. In that process so far, has anybody heard of the party Chairman of the Democrats(Howard Dean) or the Chairman of the Republicans (Mike Duncan)? Has anyone seen the Secretary of either political party pontificating on television and giving orders to other party members? The PDP is simply a party of self-seekers.

Nigeria’s political party system needs to be overhauled. There are over 50 political parties, but apart from the PDP, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the Action Congress and possibly the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) the others are more or less narrow vehicles with limited appeal and almost without infrastructure. The political party system is in urgent need of reform. Our political parties must become truly representative and reflect the people’s choices. Through a reformed political party system, an enlightened class of future leaders may then emerge who will be patriots and not office-seekers.

One clear lesson from the current situation in the United States, is how ordinary citizens identify personally with political parties, and define themselves and their choices as such. This is a classical expression of the political party as an associational construct, and an aggregation of individuals with common interests seeking to promote the interest of the larger community. The alienation between Nigeria’s political parties and the people is palpable. Our political parties are made up of money-bags and their thugs, and the PDP is such a large party because after every election, the big men in other parties in order to gain access to state privileges, naturally dissolve into the ruling party. This is partly why General Muhammadu Buhari is so lonely today in the ANPP. Those who should stand by him are playing the politics of compromise with the PDP.

To reform our political parties, we must make them the parties of ordinary people and the parties of ideas. For now, the PDP has lost that opportunity for self-renewal. But if President Yar’Adua and those who genuinely want a new order in the PDP are serious about their objectives, they should begin by ensuring that no former President (Obasanjo) and no promoter of the politics of Baba-rism (Adedibu, for example) is allowed to impose their will on the party at tomorrow’s

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20080307060720zg/nigeria-watch/the-best-of-reuben-abatis-editorials/pdp-and-the-future-of-nigerian-politics-by-reuben-abati/

Ezogwu's coup was not totally successful has he was unable to achieve his aim, but such action in Ghana has a positive result Jerry Rawlings killed all the corrupt leaders and you can see Ghana today, a model country in Africa. Ghana is now a reference point of an ideal African setting.

Reminds me of the Mali - model African State hype.Yet Nigerians, the bogie men, are going there now to lay down their lives.