Your Excellency Sir: Let me quickly jump in front of the oncoming bandwagon in
offering my congratulations. I know you do not have too much time for niceties
because much has been left on the Augean Stables for you to clean up. Let me
be one of the first to offer my two kobo on how you should begin the art (for, in
Nigeria, it is indeed an art) of governing us for the next four years. My advice is
neither in chronological order nor even in any order of preference. But most of it
stems from lessons learned in the huge fall from grace to grass of your
immediate predecessor, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan.

(Declaration of Assets) Even before your official swearing in ceremony scheduled
for May 29th, go ahead and declare your assets as you promised. Do it publicly.
In fact, find some money and buy space in a few national dailies and online
media outlets and declare your assets. I am sure your Vice, Professor Yemi
Osinbajo, will follow suit. Nigerians know both of you are not stupendously rich,
so no need to worry about having to explain how you came about your assets.
Then go ahead and make it (in private, of course) a requirement for all your
ministerial, judicial and heads of MDA appointees, to also declare their assets.
(Appointments) Please look beyond the APC for a combination of brains and
brawn. Make deliberate efforts to find talents in other parties (believe it or not,
there are good people even in the PDP) and appoint them to, not just
inconsequential positions, but key positions that will task their intellect and
vigor. Look beyond active politicians for skilled people because many of them
want to serve and can serve very well but for myriad reasons, could not
participate in politics. Spread your appointments across the nation as fairly as
possible. I know the southwest practically elected you (the north had always
been with you) and you will be pulled by those of us from the southwest to
reward us and not marginalize us like Jonathan did. But you are president for
the whole country. Beam your searchlight on the east, south-south and all over
the country and look for talents. If you try hard, you will find talents in the
states that voted against you. You will find talents among Nigerians living
abroad. You have to demonstrate the level of maturity that Jonathan lacked and
show the world that you are not vindictive. How nice would it be if you could
ask Nuhu Ribadu to be Minister of Interior, in charge of the Police,
Immigrations, Prisons, Civil Defense and Customs? These are parastatals that
have become cesspools of corruption and need someone of Ribadu’s
incorruptibility, energy, patriotism and attention-to-detail to lead. How about
Raji Fashola for Ministry of Works or Ministry of Justice? You get my drift?
(Corruption) Nigerians trust you and to some degree, trust Osinbajo. But that is
not the same and will, of course, not be the same for your appointees. You
cannot single-handedly eradicate corruption in Nigeria. In fact, no one can
eradicate corruption from any country. You can only do your best to reduce it to
the bare minimum. To this end, you must return transparency and independence
to the EFCC and ICPC. Once nominated by the President and confirmed by the
Senate to serve for a specified term, the chairpersons of both organizations
should only be removable by (a simple majority) legislative impeachment. This
removes the EFCC from Executive control and allows every political party to
have a say in how it does its job. Please ask your political appointees to sign
an undated Resignation Letter before you appoint them. This will serve you well
in the future if they misbehave and you need to sack them. All you would need
to do is put a date on their Resignation Letter and ACCEPT their resignation.
This letter serves to keep them on their toes. I have heard other members of
your party (and specifically Prof. Osinbajo) promise to not go after those who
have perpetrated corruption before your election. I hope that is not true.
Nigerians expect you to go after those who stole the future of their children. No,
you should not allow this to consume you and detract from more important
things. Nonetheless, we cannot afford to let them go scot-free. They must pay,
if only to serve as deterrence to future thieves.
(Judiciary) You must overhaul the judiciary as a matter of urgency. The process
of litigation in Nigeria is too long, too tedious, too expensive and too prone to
abuse that justice is often delayed and thus often denied. Please embark on
the construction of more courtrooms, upgrade the infrastructures of the existing
ones, improve the welfare of judiciary workers and build more prisons to house
those convicted in your new, expedited process.
(Federal Budget) This is too fat. You have to demonstrate to Nigerians that you
are going to live by example. All those billions of naira usually allocated for
food in Aso Rock need to be drastically cut down. Everybody working in or
visiting Aso Rock is already being paid handsomely. They can pay for their own
food. Make the cafeteria in Aso Rock a pay-for-your-own-food establishment
for everybody. Cut down on the number of people traveling out of town and out
of country who collect estacodes and allowances for doing practically nothing
on such trips. Then invite the Senate leader and the Speaker of the House of
Representatives and ask them to lead their respective legislatures in taking
drastic cuts both in salaries and in other emoluments. Nigerians find it
unconscionable that a Senator earns more than the President of the United
States. Your predecessor was too compromised to have the moral authority to
ask the legislators to take a pay cut. You do not have such a problem. They -
the legislators - are looking for motivation, direction and purpose. You must
provide that leadership.
(NNPC) I don’t need to tell you that this is the nation’s jugular. Fortunately,
you are probably the most knowledgeable about this sector out of all who have
governed Nigeria. So, there is very little anybody can tell you about this that
you do not already know. You must appoint persons of absolutely
unquestionable character to head this Ministry and the various parastatals that
support our oil industry. Your Minister of Petroleum must believe in refining our
oil within our country. And so that person must commence the construction of
new refineries and the repair of old ones. If you have to borrow money to do
anything, this is one sector you must get going almost right away. By the time
your party comes to ask for our votes in 2019, we must be paying far less at
the pumps than we are currently paying and exporting finished oil products to
neighboring countries.
(Transportation) I take you at your word that you will revive the moribund
Nigeria Airways by first deploying most of the aircraft in the currently bloated
Presidential fleet to the national carrier. It has been a national embarrassment
that the Giant of Africa has been unable to manage its airline. Remember that
what killed Nigeria Airways was corruption (from ticketing fraud to spare parts
fraud and) general poor maintenance record. Your new Nigeria Airways must be
peopled with crack professionals and technicians – people who take aviation
safety and customer service seriously. On the railways, you will agree with me
that the situation whereby people and merchandises heading from Abuja to
Ondo, Ile-Ife, Sokoto, Ado Ekiti, Birnin Kebbi, Akure, Benin City, Ogbomosho, Oyo,
Jalingo, Yola, Damaturu, Dutse, Calabar, and many more key towns cannot even
contemplate taking the train. Train tracks do not pass through these places!
And the tracks we have are single tracks that force trains to wait for each other
for hours at trains stations. These were the tracks betrothed to us by the
colonial masters and we are yet to improve on them. Please start building new
tracks and get rid of those archaic, used locomotives with which your
predecessor “transformed” us back to the Stone Age. Remember, a viable rail
system will ease the pressure on our roads as large goods such as petroleum
tanks and containers will find it cheaper and faster to use the railways.
(Defense) Like NNPC, this is another sector about which nobody can lecture
you. As the Boko Haram quagmire has shown us, there has been gross
corruption or negligence or incompetence of all of the foregoing in the Ministry
of Defense dating back to before your predecessor. Things just got past him
more because he knew next to nothing about this sector and he was too
incurious and too afraid to ask questions. Luckily for us, you know what is
going on and nobody can accuse you of being too afraid to ask questions. The
ranks of our military leadership, the officer corps, has been politicized and
bastardized to the point that they have lost credibility with Nigerians. The
respect and adulation normally enjoyed by the military has been erased and
replaced with scorn and derision. People now see the military as a bunch of
willing tools in the hands of politicians; a rag-tag bunch who will scamper off
the battlefield with tails tucked between their legs at the sound of Boko
Haram’s Hilux trucks. You have to restore the dignity of the Nigerian military.
Heads have to roll. In fact, heads that have left the service but responsible for
the rot in the military must be recalled and set rolling. You must set up a panel
of former military officers, aided by a crack team of accountants, to look into
the books of the military and find all the missing trillions – the reason our
military lacked weapons and other equipment when called up to defend the
country; the reason why thousands of our citizens were easily massacred by
terrorists; the reason why we lost parts of our country to a Boko Haram and the
reason why our country became the butt of jokes in international military
circles. You must reorient the military to the path of professionalism – training
for war in peacetime as if they are at war; training them in some of the best
countries in the world and with some of the best militaries in the world;
equipping them with the most modern war-fighting equipment; taking care of
their welfare and that of their family and building for them infrastructures that
befit the status we want them to occupy in the world. If you have to reduce the
size, please do so. Remember, size is not might. Most advanced nations have
moved away from large, slower military to smaller and more mobile, more
nimble forces. That is the direction we should be headed. We should be building
a smaller but more lethal force.
(Intelligence) There are too many unintelligent personnel parading themselves
as intelligence operatives in our country. Like the military, they too have been
co-opted into serving the whims and caprices of the government of the day.
And they do not know what they are doing. I make this last statement boldly,
confident that I know what I am talking about. Our intelligence organizations
should complement the efforts of the law enforcement agencies and the military.
In fact, they should be integral parts of those organizations and should not,
themselves, be exempted from being scrutinized. You need to infuse the DMI,
the NSA, the DSS and all the others with well-trained (internationally well-
trained) professionals who can teach basic and advance intelligence gathering,
packaging and dissemination to the end user. The gun-toting, sunglasses-
wearing and suit-decked so-called intelligence personnel are just collecting pay
checks. Where, for example, is the Boko Haram leader? Where are the Chibok
girls? How are weapons getting inside Nigeria – and I mean heavy weapons?
How are fighters getting inside Nigeria and how are they getting re-supplied?
You need to overhaul this sector.
(Medical) Please send a bill to the legislature prohibiting all government
officials from using government money to fund any aspect of medical care they
receive abroad. They can exercise their inalienable right of free movement, but
Nigeria should no longer pay for anybody to receive treatment abroad. In the
mean time and while the bill snakes through the legislature, use your executive
powers to deny requests for overseas medical travels that involve the use of
government funds.
Clearly, your biggest challenge is electricity. This is the giant killer that has
“killed” those before you. If you fail in everything above and succeed in
stabilizing electricity supply, increasing its generation and distributing it
effectively, your name will be written in gold. This will task your brain and sap
your energy the most. Every sinew of your being must be engaged when you
appoint people to solve this very huge problem. With the talents that abound
within our country and outside, with the resources at our disposal, you can
eradicate our dependence on all sorts of generators. With stable electricity, you
won’t need to create too many jobs as Nigerians will create jobs by
themselves.
Your Excellency, I know you have a full plate and you are no spring chicken.
That is why assembling a team of very qualified and able people from across
the country and the Diaspora will make your job easier. All you need to do is
provide the motivation, purpose and direction and they will execute. Begin, Sir,
by appointing a credible spokesperson who also has a strong background in the
media – a true professional. I think Reuben Abati has proved to us that ability
to churn out bombast-laden articles does not make an effective spokesperson.
You need someone who will command the professional respect of members of
his/her journalism constituency as well as be able to articulate your programs
and actions without being condescending and patronizing. Sir, please do not
appoint someone who will attack your political enemies. That job should go to
your party’s spokesperson.

Good luck (not Goodluck) Sir.Abiodun Ladepo

Oluyole2@yahoo.com

Ibadan, Oyo State.

source : http://saharareporters.com/2015/04/01/open-letter-president-elect-muhammadu-buhari

God please help him to make history positive one

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