![NG-[A_BA[COMP_TABL_ALLC]:TABLETS_160x600](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tcOhGLAz49-fGWTDYNnN9C5hfIdm1DZoJ9CU_UgWBT2YSeckallfDz2BFGpvYnOtIXhf-vMPvlRZk6tvAhHz9CVw8Ay8mUWZUN_Dfq2Ag5ZCSHa6dZnGkJZ8Qy4WGDppGcn9BYlGDFyRWcBwxPazTFmSKlZ6cbfBsDAxx29ecUvZpS_UgJuQ=s0-d)
President
Muhammadu Buhari has said Nigerians have no business with poverty given the
enormous resources the country has.
To this end, he has promised to take
appropriate measures to stamp out corruption and reposition Nigeria as a
prosperous nation that can adequately cater for its citizens.
The President
made the assertion, yesterday, at the opening of the 45th Annual Conference of
the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, in Abuja.
President
Muhammadu Buhari chairs the meeting of the Peace and Security Council at the
25th AU Summit in Johannesburg on Saturday The President, who was represented
by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Anastasia Nwaobia, blamed
the poverty in the land on mis-governance and lack of transparency.
Meanwhile,
former Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Remi Babalola, has recommended
compulsory assets declaration for all principal officers in the executive arm
of government as a means of checking the menace of corruption.
President Buhari
said the nation’s ability to create wealth had increasingly been hampered by
lack of good governance and accountability in the management of public
resources at all levels in the past. Buhari said: “As blessed as we are as a
nation, Nigerians have no business being classified as poor. Yet, through the
greed of some unpatriotic few, our commonwealth has been badly pillaged in the
name of public service.
“Our ability as a nation to create wealth has
increasingly been hampered by the lack of prudence, transparency and honesty in
the management of public resources by some of those entrusted with the duty of
governance at all levels in the past, so much that in the midst of plenty,
Nigerians are now suffering great deprivation.
“This should not be allowed to
continue. The project called Nigeria must be given our all. The nation ought
and must leave the throes of poverty and underdevelop-ment because I believe we
are naturally destined for greatness.’’
While calling for a collective effort
in fighting the cankerworm, he expressed optimism of a glorious future, and
urged Nigerians not to thrive on the illusion that the battle for enthronement
of the right values will be easy as according to him, ‘corruption will
certainly fight back’.
But he said his administration is resolute in its desire
to effect a change in the nation’s value system. ‘‘To achieve this, we must
collectively resolve to build today for a blissful tomorrow. I am optimistic
that the glorious dawn we all hope for will not be long in coming. “But we are
resolute in our commitment to effect change in our value system. We will give
the battle our all to guarantee victory,’’ he said.
Buhari said he would lead
by example by making effort to live above board, and promised to overhaul the
bureaucracy of the public sector to further engender transparency and improve
productivity in public governance.
Similarly, the President assured that his
administration would strengthen the anti-corruption war by reinvigorating the
Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices
and other Related, ICPC to reinforce accountability in public governance.
Earlier in his welcome address, the President of the Institute, Otumba Deru,
said that ICAN had made remarkable progress in reforming the accounting
profession in its 50 years of existence. According to him, the professional
body had trained and certified over 40,000 world-class chartered accountants
who are adding value in various sectors of the national and international
economy.
The former minister, who is the Chairman/Chief Strategist of
Alternative Capital Partners Limited (ACAP), attributed the alarming rate of
corruption in the system to the culture of impunity that had existed in the
country. He therefore advised that all principal officers of the government,
including the ministers, permanent secretaries, director-generals and heads of
government must declare their assets publicly before and after leaving office.
He said, “Our culture of impunity is the bane of the entrenched corruption in
our society.
The value destruction and corruption undermine any economic
development or social change we may aspire for our nation.
“Mismanagement and
misallocation of resources, coupled with an unprecedented level of corruption
have been at their highest in the history of our nation in the last six years.
“Performance or success in public space was measured by the conversion rate of
public funds into private accounts. It looks as if democracy has been
substituted with kleptocracy.” Babalola, who chaired the Federation Account
Allocation Committee (FAAC) between 2007 and 2010, urged the new Administration
to confront the endemic corruption whole-heartedly in order to resolve the
country’s mal-functionality.
He consequently recommended the expansion of the
whistle-blowing and fraud protocol by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission to include the payment of 10 percent of the forfeited undeclared
assets to whistle blowers/informants if successfully prosecuted.
The former
minister, who decried the absence of transparency in the oil sector and the
NNPC, regretted that the NNPC’s core competence had been reduced to importing
refined products and paying subsidies to bogus companies.
He wondered why it
was difficult for the NNPC to compete with the likes of PETROBRAS of Brazil and
PETRONAS of Malaysia. “It is counter intuitive that we deliberately ensure that
receipts and proceeds into the nation’s treasury are not accounted for.
Such
has been our contempt for transparency that an incumbent governor of an
operationally and legally independent central bank, who publicly alerted the
nation, was forced out of a fixed tenure.
“Of course given its systemic
importance to the economy, there is no justification for the state-owned oil
sector monopoly (the NNPC) not to publicly publish its audited accounts and
even quarterly accounts like all listed companies on the stock exchange,” said
Babalola, who is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.
He recalled drawing the attention of the nation to the parlous state of the
NNPC’s accounts five years ago, adding that many sympathisers feared for his
life as it amounted to “stepping on a snake”.
He affirmed, “I was unperturbed
and unruffled but ready and willing to take a walk as a statement of intent
that if they wanted to continue in that decadence of resource mismanagement, I
was not going to be a part of it.”
He explained that the Nigerian dream was
about prosperity, dignity and hope for all, and not poverty, violence,
corruption and destructive leadership which bankrupted the nation.
0 comments:
Post a Comment