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Protocols
50 years ago, the founding fathers of our
great nation secured independence for us and
laid the foundations for a united Nigeria.
They had unwavering faith in the people of
this country; that when the fetters of
colonization were removed they would be able
to transform their lives for the better.
They firmly believed that Nigerians would
create the systems and enduring processes
that would deliver economic growth and
stability, egalitarian development, improved
living conditions and quality of life for
the people.
They built schools and universities;
they established banks and other financial
institutions, farm settlements, and various
industries as precursors of a vibrant
economy with a small, but enterprising
private sector.
They tried to nurture a fledgling democracy.
Their aspirations were abruptly terminated
by a military coup in January 1966. After
the long years of military rule and several
half-hearted attempts to return the country
to democratic governance, the people’s right
to freely elect their leaders and
representatives was restored in May 1999.
The restoration brought high expectations,
the hopes and promises encapsulated in
freedom. Those expectations have not been
met; the promises remain unfulfilled.
Today we are on the threshold of another
general election, the fourth since the
restoration of democracy. I believe this is
an opportunity for change, to orientate our
shared values into restoring the foundations
of our nation. I believe it is possible to
build a united Nigeria devoid of ethnic or
religious conflicts; a Nigeria where the
well-being of the people is of paramount
importance; a Nigeria that inspires the
highest level of patriotism in her citizens.
I believe that it is possible to ensure
justice for the people, to ensure the
security of lives and property, and the
peace and stability that would engender
growth and development.
I know that you also believe that it is
possible. And that is why, standing with you
on this faith in our nation’s capacity to
transform into a NEW NIGERIA, I declare my
intention to run for the office of President
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
I learnt the true meaning of public service
from my late father, Mallam Ahmadu Ribadu,
who was a minister in the First Republic.
Growing up in Yola, I watched and listened
as my father and his colleagues, drawn from
all parts of the country, selflessly
grappled with the challenges of their time.
I understood that public service meant
putting the interest of the people first. It
meant working with them, and consistently
doing those things that would ultimately
improve their lives and empower them to
contribute to the development of the
country.
I chose to study law at university because
it had become clear to me from events in the
nascent Nigeria that the rule of law was
vital to national stability and progress. I
started my working life in Lagos, one of our
great cities, where all of our people,
Muslims and Christians, poor and privileged
come together in their daily struggle to
earn a living. I chose Lagos because I
learnt as a child, from the example of my
father’s compound, that a good way to
understand a nation with such diversity as
ours is to leave your own comfort zone and
dwell among its people where their various
energies complement each other.
I chose to join the Nigeria Police Force
because to be a policeman is to serve your
nation, putting your very life on the line.
My career as a police officer culminated in
my being chosen to head the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. If you
spend your entire life preparing for public
service, you cannot but achieve results when
you are given the opportunity to serve with
the right team. The efforts of my colleagues
and I, in turning this government
institution into one of the most reputable
crime-fighting agencies in the world, in the
short space of four years, was not a fluke.
Our modest achievement at the EFCC was not a
miracle.
But when you fight corruption, corruption
fights back. Our lives and the lives of our
families were threatened. Twice I escaped
the assassin’s bullets and was forced to
leave this country I love so dearly; to
leave my wife and young children and go into
exile in 2008. My public service career was
abruptly terminated. In spite of these
ordeals, it never crossed my mind to give up
the hope of a better Nigeria.
The time has come to turn a new page.
If
you, fellow Nigerians, elect me as your next
president, competence will be the hallmark
of policy formulation and execution. I shall
bring into public service very capable
individuals to ensure the Nigerian taxpayers
get value for their investment in
government.
Nigerians now have an opportunity to lead
the quest for change in terms of political
and socio-economic development. Together, we
will set the stage for a NEW NIGERIA, a
dynamic society that will be the vanguard of
the efficient and effective utilization of
the huge endowment of natural and human
resources of the African continent for rapid
economic growth and development.
The first port of call in this vision of
restructuring our economy for growth and
development is the simple challenge of
returning humility to government. Last year
alone, while our country earned about N86
Billion in revenue, at least half went on
imports that includes some of the most
exotic vanities a developing country should
encourage. This is not the path to progress.
Already we are running a scandalously
shameful budget ratio where overheads and
recurrent expenditure is a staggering 75% of
annual spending; and where the 25% balance
is sure to disappear through the notorious
corruption chute.
The pervasive poverty in Nigeria can be
attributed to the inefficient utilization of
our abundant resources characterised by poor
leadership, gross mismanagement, nepotism,
and most insidiously, corruption.
Poverty reduction, therefore, will be
an underlying factor in addressing the
challenges of development in the 21st
century. The structures and institutions
that underpin economic prosperity will be
thoroughly overhauled starting with the
development of human capital. Knowledgeable,
healthy, creative, and hardworking people
will be the pivot for the new Nigeria.
The
health sector is critical to the welfare of
the entire citizenry, especially our women
and children who are exposed to the greatest
risks. Nigeria has one of the highest
maternal mortality rates in the world. The
mortality rates for infants and children
under the age of five years are also among
the highest in the world, a clear reflection
of the failure of the primary health care
system. It is totally unacceptable that
large numbers of Nigerian children are dying
of measles and other vaccine-preventable
diseases in the face of tremendous advances
in this area of health care.
We will work assiduously to establish an
effective primary health care system. We
will also develop facilities that will
ensure that the widest range of advanced
medical care is available to all our people
locally. To this end, six super specialist
hospitals namely, National Heart Hospital,
National Kidney Hospital, National Cancer
Hospital, National Children Hospital,
National Women Hospital and National
Neurosurgical Hospital, will be built across
the six geopolitical zones of the country.
Another issue that requires serious
attention in the health sector is the dearth
of skilled/qualified personnel especially in
the rural areas, and this is a major
contributor to high maternal and infant
mortality rates. Concerted effort will be
made to remedy this situation, and to also
encourage greater specialisation in various
fields of medicine for which personnel is
highly lacking. The pharmaceutical industry
will be supported to provide essential
drugs; and the issue of fake and
sub-standard drugs will be treated with the
urgency and national attention it requires.
Functional and qualitative education is
important for positive social
transformation, personal empowerment and
national development. Our education sector
faces huge challenges in terms of funding,
access, and quality assurance, among others.
We
shall significantly increase funding as a
step towards attaining the UNESCO
recommendation of 26% budgetary allocation
to the education sector. To improve access
at all levels namely, primary, secondary and
tertiary education, the Federal, State and
Local Governments will be encouraged to work
together to expand facilities and train
additional personnel; quality assurance at
all levels will also receive appropriate
attention. Adult literacy and non-formal
education programmes will be put in place to
enable all citizens to contribute
effectively to national development.
We will invest time, effort, and resources
in the economic empowerment of women and
improve their participation in politics and
decision-making. We will create a caring and
inclusive society where vulnerable
Nigerians, particularly the elderly, orphans
and vulnerable children, and the physically
challenged, will be covered by a social
security programme.
We will develop a secure and efficient
identity management system as a first step
towards establishing such a programme.
The key thrust of our economic policy will
be to create jobs and provide employment for
our people, especially the youth. We shall
budget within our means, reduce
over-spending, and plan for a steady and
attainable economic growth rate of 7-8% per
year for the next five years and 8-10% per
year for the years following that.
We will invest in infrastructure, in health
and education, and in creating the enabling
environment for thriving investment in all
key sources of growth and development,
namely agriculture, the extractive industry,
manufacturing, financial services,
information and communication technology
(ICT), arts and culture, as well as housing
and construction.
These sectors hold the true key
towards genuine economic recovery. To give
just an instance, while the current housing
crisis requires investment in 16 million
houses to resolve it, a smart annual
investment in one million houses could yield
30 million jobs.
These measures are impossible without
adequate supply of electricity. Therefore, I
emphasise that the perennial problem of
insufficient power will be quickly brought
to an end. Various sources of producing
electricity, namely water, gas, coal, wind,
and nuclear will be explored.
Indeed a nation with eleven idle coal
sites alone cannot advance a convincing
argument against investment in clean coal
technology to power its economy.
Many of our roads are in deplorable
conditions mainly because of the high volume
of heavy traffic on them and lack of
maintenance. We will partner with the
private sector in building and operating a
modern railway system in order to reduce the
burden on the roads and make them to last
longer. The crucial role of the private
sector in growing our economy and creating
employment cannot be over-emphasized.
We have a private sector that is capable of
great enterprise and we will encourage this
by streamlining the processes that tend to
escalate the cost of doing business in
Nigeria. We will also minimize the time
required to start a small business. Our
greatest asset is our large population of
young people, full of energy and ideas; and
it is the responsibility of both the
government and the private sector to provide
the opportunities that will enable our youth
unleash their creative energy in the
productive ways that will help to propel us
into the echelons of the largest global
economies.
In doing all these, we must be mindful of
the fact that governance is about the
people; it is about their well being. Our
conduct as both public officers and captains
of industry must be such as would support
the well being of our people, our nation. To
this end, we must fight every form of
corruption and ensure that our people enjoy
the full benefits of our national resources.
Our processes and transactions must be
transparent in order to inspire confidence
and we will empower the anti-corruption
agencies to effectively discharge their
mandates.
In setting an effective development agenda
for Nigeria, discipline, crime prevention
and law enforcement as well as overall
national security will be accorded the
highest priority. The appropriate penalties
must apply to infringements of rules and
regulations; and the penalties must
constitute enough deterrent to prevent
future misdemeanours. Non-enforcement or
partial enforcement of laws causes chaos and
encourages all manner of anti-social
behaviour and excesses bordering on
impunity.
The importance of discipline in the
development of any society cannot be
over-emphasized because the effects permeate
both individual and communal life and
contribute towards the proper organisation
and smooth running of any system.
Discipline, hard work, courage, and
perseverance were fundamental to the
philosophy or values of our founding
fathers. We also need to embrace these
values in order to build a safe, peaceful,
and stable Nigeria; a strong Nigeria that
will lead by example in the Gulf of Guinea
and the rest of Africa; and be a worthy
partner on the global scene.
To complement this, we shall give premium to
the welfare and competence of our security
forces, and the military, and attend to
decades of neglect in the military where
efforts to keep the world safe through peace
mission operations have created in our army
perhaps the largest global community of
neglected widows.
The issues I have raised are fundamental to
setting Nigeria on the path to greatness.
The outcome of any sound economic policy
depends wholly on the ability of the people
who run the system to faithfully implement
it and, basically, that implies an educated,
healthy, competent, and disciplined
workforce. The catalyst, however, is
leadership; a leadership with the commitment
and political will to follow through on
difficult, sometimes painful and tough
decisions. A leadership that is mature
enough not to jettison an idea or abandon an
on-going project that would be of tremendous
benefit to the nation simply because it was
initiated by someone else, or another
administration. I pledge, before you all
today, that I will provide the required
leadership. And in the spirit of
transparency and accountability, I promise
that our plans will be published so that
Nigerians can track our progress.
Much as I would like to talk about the
issues and challenges in every sector, I
will conclude with the Niger Delta. Nowhere
is the shame of our nation more visible than
in the Niger Delta. To say this is not to
claim that the other regions have been
symbol of excellence, but the burden we face
as a nation is the lack of gratitude to the
region that produces the bulk of our wealth.
There is no gainsaying that there are
critical issues that must be resolved in
this part of our beloved country - youth
militancy, oil spills and environmental
degradation, unemployment, and so on. These
are challenges that we will address with
empathy and resourcefulness.
Conclusion:
I wish to reiterate that
it
is possible to build a united Nigeria,
devoid of ethnic and religious conflicts; a
peaceful and stable Nigeria where lives and
property are secure; a place where law and
order reign; a beautiful, happy place that
we will all be proud to bequeath to our
children, and to generations yet unborn.
It is important for us to set the stage for
growth, peace and prosperity in these early
years of the 21st century. The
next few years are critical and there is
much work to be done. We have always had the
means but not the capacity to fulfil our
God-given potential as a nation. God
willing, we shall remedy this and enable
Nigeria to rise as a true Giant of Africa.
We, Nigerians, are a people of faith; may
the Almighty, Faithful God reward our faith.
A NEW NIGERIA IS POSSIBLE!
It is possible.
THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU ALL
GOD BLESS NIGERIA.
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