By Igbotako Nowinta
How do we really explain this terrible quagmire, this destructive agent of accelerated national cohesive development? How do we continue to explain to the civilized world that political spoils in our land are being mindlessly shared and cornered by some university drop outs, social misfits and monsters who are using the togas of civilian governorship to steal public funds; where good mannered Nigerians, ideologically clearheaded, mentally balanced, spiritually considerate are being blocked from salvaging the rotten Augean stable in the country? Now, coming to the vexed issue of security vote running into billions of naira being pocketed monthly in a country , where the national minimum wage is ridiculously about the lowest in the entire world, where junior and senior citizens are battling to cope with living, where poverty has sentenced a chunk of the populace to virtually begging and borrowing to pay school fees and other bills, thereby creating a master – slave situation.
Recently, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Tukur Buratai and the sitting Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, who equally is the current presiding Chairman of the Governors Forum of Nigeria, (GFN) met during the Second Quarterly Anti-Corruption Policy Dialogue on Accountability.
The forum which was held at the Independent Corrupt Practices & Other Offences Commission (ICPC) headquarters in Abuja, was organized by the ICPC Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, with the theme: National Security-The Accountability Imperative, saw General Buratai and Governor Fayemi unconsciously at each other’s throat, over the controversial issue of ‘security votes’ for State Governors.
In hammering his position, not minding whose ox was being gored within the federation of Nigeria, General Tukur Buratai, who has been holding forte as the number one citizen of the Nigerian Army since 2015, declared that the security vote is unconstitutional and should be subjected to audit.
He noted that there are statutory budgets for security bodies like the Army, Police, and other security forces in Nigeria, that the immunity clause being enjoyed by sitting Governors is grossly abused, to swell their pockets and other private sundry purposes.
In his stout defense of the security votes being enjoyed by sitting Governors in Nigeria, since the commencement of this democratic dispensation in 1999, Dr. Kayode Fayemi posited that security vote is not illegal.
He argued that it is being used to support the security apparatus within the States like the Police, the Army, Navy, Airforce, etc., to battle insecurity etc., in their domains.
Coming at this unique and crucial junction in the affairs of our country, where responsible citizens
(yours sincerely inclusive) have been stridently raising the issue of criminal jumbo pay and entitlements being collected ravenously by the members of the National Assembly, in utter disregard for the welfare of millions of sincere and hardworking Nigerians, who have been deliberately impoverished by evil conspiracy hatched by the nation’s elite.
This timely debate is an idea which time has come really. How do we say that in a country of more than a hundred millions, blessed with incredible human capital and endless natural resources; that only a tiny fraction of the entire population has been having marvelous, unhindered access to our collective commonwealth and patrimony, using demonic political manipulations cum occultic mechanism to hold the rest of the people down perpetually?
How do we really explain this terrible quagmire, this destructive agent of accelerated national cohesive development?
How do we continue to explain to the civilized world that political spoils in our land are being mindlessly shared and cornered by some university drop outs, social misfits and monsters who are using the togas of civilian governorship to steal public funds; where good mannered Nigerians, ideologically clearheaded, mentally balanced, spiritually considerate are being blocked from salvaging the rotten Augean stable in the country?
Now, coming to the vexed issue of security vote running into billions of naira being pocketed monthly in a country , where the national minimum wage is ridiculously about the lowest in the entire world, where junior and senior citizens are battling to cope with living, where poverty has sentenced a chunk of the populace to virtually begging and borrowing to pay school fees and other bills, thereby creating a master – slave situation.
This scenario is abnormal, ugly, and it is not acceptable and should no longer be tolerated in our clime. How can there be a security vote for security forces and another one for sitting Governors; this duplication within a single system is a sin against the masses of Nigeria?
This satanic circumstance must be revisited, those who smuggled this wicked statutory proviso into the 1999 Constitution are genuine enemies of the Nigerian people. No wonder our political climate are saturated with do or die politicians who are ready to kill, maim and surrender their souls to the devil in order to grab elected political office or appointment?
Those who stole the blind man’s walking sticks yesterday are scheming to rule us today, dreaming to use the tantalizing security vote to rise to political stardom! In Malta law makers and other categories of politicians engage their jobs on part time basis with meagre financial implications.
What is wrong if we take a cue from Malta and other European countries that are not spoiling their politicians with tax payer’s money?
It is true that in our country, those who were genuine failures, unable to eke a living, known beggars of yesterday, have suddenly become super billionaires, by using the ‘security vote’ as a conduit pipe to grab public funds, to better their lots and generations yet unborn.
These are facts that cannot be contested, because we see them every day in our neighborhood, right from the local government structure.
All hands must be on deck to make political office here unattractive, a revisit of the 1999 Constitution is much expedient.
The National Salaries, Income & Wages Commission, Revenue Mobilization & Fiscal Commission,
(RMFC) etc., must be made to do the needful.
A call for a national mass peaceful protests to be anchored by dye-in-the-wool civil society activists to force a reversal of the evil of ‘security vote’ is not out of fashion in this regard, to correct this demonic clauses that have turned many Nigerians into sub humans and fourth class citizens, in the midst of God’s given abundance.
President Muhammadu Buhari should do something in this regard, to forever write his name in the golden letters , using his current anti-corruption mantra.
Nowinta wrote: Where we are – A call for democratic revolution in Nigeria.
