President Jonathan’s determination to serve Nigeria
“Arise, O compatriots, Nigeria's call obey , To serve our fatherland, With love and strength and faith, The labour of our heroes past, Shall never be in vain, To serve with heart and might, One nation bound in freedom, peace and unity.”
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The above is the first stanza of Nigeria’s national anthem which I have deliberately quoted to challenge Nigerians leaving abroad to rise to the call by the country’s heroes past, a call to service to the fatherland, a call for accountable and purposeful leadership in Nigeria and a call for a progressive and visionary Nigeria.
It must be observed that as long as Nigerians in the Diaspora stay in the shadows of Nigeria’s politics, the more they pretend to be comfortable in foreign lands and the more they banish their generation and generations yet unborn to a permanent Nigerians in the Diaspora status.
It is time Nigerians in this category arise and take their place in history, as well as take their position in the political space in Nigeria because they are major stakeholders and contributors to the growth and development of the country. If Nigeria were to be a corporate entity, Nigerians in the Diaspora would have had over 75 per cent shares, while Nigerians back home with all the industries and refineries would have less than 25 per cent shares. This was revealed in the World Bank Migration and Remittance Unit report of 2012.
The report stated that Nigerians living abroad remitted $21 billion (N3.27 trillion) home in 2012, ranking among citizens of the top five countries that remitted about $530 billion to their countries in 2012, almost a 100 per cent increase above N1.65 trillion ($10.6 billion) recorded in 2011. These flows were expected to rise to 8 per cent in 2013 and 10 per cent in 2014, the report said.
During the same year (2012), the entire Nigerian budget was N4.87 trillion, just N1.6 trillion more than the N3.27 trillion officially recorded monies remitted back home by Nigerians in the Diaspora.
The Head of the World Bank Migration and Remittance Unit, Dilip Ratha, was also quoted to have said there was a likelihood of billions of dollars of remittances not documented as migrants might have channelled or transferred these funds through non-official means to avoid documentation.
These are monies sent home to help build the country to ensure the survival of loved ones in Nigeria and to contribute to the development of the country. $21 billion is a lot of money. It is bigger than the GDP of 91 independent countries. $21 billion is higher than the GDP of 38 African countries.
In recognition of the importance of Diaspora groups, President Goodluck Jonathan, on inception of office, formulated policies that would identify, mobilise and integrate the human/capital/material resources and expertise of these groups into the general development of Nigeria. Some of these policies and their benefits I will discuss in subsequent publications.
The Jonathan administration is constantly engaging the Diaspora groups, and this is evident in the Seventh Nigeria Diaspora Day celebration held in July, 2013 at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja where government sent a high-powered delegation headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, and the Chairperson, House Committee on Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, among others. The theme for discussion was Diaspora Nigerians: Agents of Investment and Development.
Nigerians, home and abroad, will agree with me that there has been improvement in social, economic and infrastructure development in Nigeria. This was made possible by President Jonathan’s deliberate engagement of technocrats in his government to design sustainable policies and reforms to channel his comprehensive no-nonsense and ‘no-paddy, paddy’ transformation agenda.
For his determination “To serve our fatherland, With love and strength and faith,” President Jonathan put his political career and relationship with the self-styled godfathers at risk to implement his historic reforms. We are all witnesses of the remarkable achievements of these reforms, parts of which I enunciate therein:
Pension reforms
Before the Jonathan administration came on board, the pension funds administration regime was one of the major channels through which public funds running into hundreds of billions of naira were misappropriated by corrupt officials. Problems associated with the pension management system included embezzlement, falsification of records, ghost pensioners, obsolete administrative structure and denial of pensioners their due entitlements. This was what necessitated the setting up of the presidential pension reform task team. The activities of this important task force resulted in the following:
Detection and deletion of over 73,000 ghost/fake pensioners from the Head of Service/Police Pension Office, stoppage of the monthly theft of over N4 billion from the national treasury and saving a monthly sum of over N1 billion from the monthly police pension releases.
The others are the discovery of over 50,000 unpaid pensioners and immediate payment of their entitlement, uncovering of over N2.7 billion fraud by the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, seizure of about 200 properties, including hotels and cash worth billions of naira from corrupt public officials.
The rest include the arrest and ongoing prosecution of pension fraud suspects by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and introduction of a more efficient tamper-proof pension funds management system.
Electoral reforms
It was in President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration that this important process was sanitised in a manner unprecedented in Nigeria’s political history.
The reform carried out in this sector is responsible for the conduct of elections which were judged by local and international observers as credible, free and fair. He has given the nation’s electoral body a free hand to carry out its statutory duties without any form of direct or indirect manipulation.
It takes a man who is committed to eradicating political corruption to do this in view of the apparent desperation of some politicians to capture power at all cost.
Legal and judicial reforms
The Jonathan administration has since its inception been concerned about securing convictions for suspects accused of economic crimes within a reasonable time frame.
On the occasion of the swearing in of Nigeria first female justice of Nigeria, Justice Miriam Aloma Mukhtar, as Chief Judge (CJ) of the Federation in July, 2012, President Jonathan admonished the new CJ to consider the creation of special courts and designation of special judges to adjudicate on corruption cases.
In addition, the President as the head of the executive arm of government has also initiated a reform of the criminal justice system as a means of plugging loop holes often exploited by counsels to delay the trial of persons accused of corruption, while there is a crusade for a reform of the judicial system by taking steps to weed out judges whose act of omission and commission are subverting the delivery of justice.
Ports reforms
Opportunities for bribery, forgery of documents and other ‘sharp practices’ at Nigerian ports have been substantially removed through a number of measures introduced by both the ministries of Finance and that of Transport.
A presidential committee on ports reform and monitoring has worked assiduously to reduce congestion at the ports, with the ultimate goal of a 48-hour goods clearing policy. The reforms in this sector are helping to improve efficiency and transparency at the ports’ operations and management, reduce charges and promote competition, facilitate the development of the transport sector, eliminate ports congestion and reduce government’s financial burden.
The writer is a Social/Political Commentator
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