By Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, OFR
End Guesswork and Governance in the Dark: Target to complete the biometric capture, identification and registration of every Nigerian citizen, his address, occupation, etc., to raise more tax revenues, enable development planning, ease security management and ensure socio-economic targeting is more accurate.
Internal Security Imperative: Restore internal security and strengthen national defence – comprehensively defeat the insurgents and bandits. Socio-economic activities nationwide will sooner or later be grounded unless this is done within the shortest possible time.
Entrench True Federalism: Reinstate the Elite Consensus of 1951 – become a true federation of 36 states and FCT, as per the APC True Federalism Committee Report of 2018:
i. Rule of Law
ii. Common citizenship and Respect for Diversity
iii. Meritocracy
iv. Devolution of Powers – move the following items from the Exclusive List to the Concurrent List in the 1999 Constitution:
a. Police: decentralise it for effectiveness
b. Oil and Gas (other than offshore in the Continental Shelf and Extended Economic Zone)
c. Mines and Minerals (other than offshore in the Continental Shelf and Extended Economic Zone)
d. Railwayse. Prisons
f. Fingerprint and criminal identification records
g. Stamp Dutiesh. Registration of 0 Namesi. Food, Drugs and Poisons (other than Narcotics)
j. Decentralisation of the Judiciaryk. Minimum Wagel. Democratic Local Government system that is flexible recognising contextual differences, history, culture and other peculiarities.
Imperative for Economic Planning and Industrial Strategy: Develop a national economic strategy to 2050, with five year development plans, subnational strategies and plans incorporating national priorities in a sound industrial policy.
Oil and Gas is not the Future: Make wise and hard choices about the investment of revenues from this resource before oil and gas become irrelevant in the global energy marketplace.
Subsidies, Targeting and Prioritization: Abolish unaffordable subsidies and direct resources to areas of national priority. Spending four times our national roads budget on subsidizing fuel, or N1.6 trillion to bail out a privatized electric power sector needs urgent reconsideration.
Financing Physical Infrastructure Deficits: Address the physical infrastructure deficits in electric power, roads and rail, aviation, etc., by issuing bonds for bankable projects to be subscribed by Pension Fund Administrators.
Human Capital and ICT Development: Prioritize investment in soft infrastructure – ICT, broadband, higher education, secondary and tertiary healthcare.
Finally, adopt a national consensus to “Stop any more Conferences and Seminars” on many aspects of our national development. All our policy problems have been studied to death. We should simply resolve to end the analysis-paralysis. Just focus on implementation of agreed policies and programmes.
– Mallam Nasir El-Rufai is the Governor of Kaduna State.