Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to urgently set up a judicial panel of inquiry that will investigate the cost of governance since 2009 when late President Umar Yar’Adua took ill.
The group, in a statement signed by its National Chairman, Olawale Oshun, argued that the ongoing investigation into procurement of armoured vehicles by the aviation ministry ought to be extended to other ministries, departments, and agencies of government, including the presidency and legislature.
“We are convinced that the revelations coming out of our aviation ministry represent only a tip of the iceberg, a fraction of the widespread disregard for probity and budget-based administration in our public service,” Oshun said in the statement.
The group described the media frenzy about the #Stellagate controversy as “undue focus” and stated that such would only serve to “cover up similar abuses in other Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies, and also the legislative house in Abuja. Our suspicion is that many other ministers and top government officials are beneficiaries of similar unusual gifts.”
“Just recently, the House Committee Chairman on Public Accounts cried out that budgetary performance of capital expenditure stands currently at 28 per cent; that of recurrent expenditure stands at 72 per cent; while that of the N1.6tn Service Wide Vote, a nebulously defined allocation spent at the President’s discretion, stands at 90 per cent.
“We must not, as a country, fail to extend the ongoing investigation into other MDAs, going by the recent revelation that 2013 budget performance is less than 40 percent and the disclosure of Comptroller-General of Nigerian Customs Service, Abdullahi Dikko Inde, before the Joint Senate Committee on Finance and Appropriation that Nigeria has lost N603.2bn to waivers and exemptions between January and September alone. Waivers were even granted for importation of petroleum products to the tune of N263.8bn.
“We suspect that profligacy of the worst degree since 1999 is staring us in the face and it serves no nationalistic purpose to devote national resources in the presidency and legislature to probe a mere fraction of the problem. What the country needs now is a holistic probe, the type that can engender a comprehensive reform in cost of governance.”
Oshun said a judicial inquiry is necessary to “enable the introduction of proper reforms that would prevent Oduahgate in future.”
“To mindlessly concentrate on the Oduah issue without externalising the inquiry would only short change the country and our search for probity. We urge Nigerians not to wait for another shocking revelation of corruption but to demand for holistic reform of governance,” the statement read.
