By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has rejected the proposed one-off retirement package for federal civil servants above 50 years of age made by the state governors under the aegis of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF).
While describing the proposal as unrealistic and lopsided, CISLAC also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to take drastic steps to reduce the growing cost of governance in the country.
CISLAC’s Executive Director, Auwal Rafsanjani in a statement issued on Sunday, said the measure is a deceitful approach that may increase the existing socio-economic burden, suffering and inequalities among the Nigerian masses.
“While such proposal was tendered in view of reducing overbearing cost of governance that has hitherto rendered Nigeria financially incapacitated to adequately finance the ailing critical sector of the economy, they cannot conceal the fact that it mirrors lop-sidedness, insincerity and lack of readiness by all levels of government to holistically address the contending issues backpedalling country’s socio-economic development,” he said.
He drew the attention of all levels of government to various neglected issues that aggravate high cost of governance and socio-economic inequalities in Nigeria like the systemic mismanagement of nation’s treasury and institutionalised spending of whopping sums on irrelevant activities that continued unabated at national and sub-national levels.
According to him, this includes poor transparency and accountability, paving way for the inherent incompetence and abuse of public funds amounting to trillions of naira by successive administrations at all levels.
“We call on President Muhammad Buhari to take appreciable and drastic step to reduce the growing cost of governance in the country through targeted efforts to addressing institutionalized mismanagement, systemic embezzlement, inflated budget, procurement corruption, revenue loopholes, among others, to allow adequate resource allocation to finance critical sector and eradicate poverty at all levels.
“We also call on the Governments to institutionalise sustainable measures to block existing revenue leakages including those deliberately supported for more transparency, accountability and efficient management of resources,” CISLAC added.
The Human Rights Activist further demanded prompt removal of what he called the needless subsidies on petroleum, to enable adequate financing for critical sectors, boost job creation, infrastructural development and poverty eradication in Nigeria.
“We recall that some non-existent projects worth N4 billion was reportedly discovered in the 2020 budget proposal of the National Inland Waterways Agency (NIWA); Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) allegedly spent over N65 billion for the silting and clearing of water hyacinth against the 2.5 billion budgeted for the activity; the over-priced budget-line attributed to the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC)’s budget proposal with the code ERGP10140070, named “purchase of one 500KVA soundproof generator for Lagos office”, and priced at N26,930,992. This menace is not uncommon among other Ministries, Departments and Agencies as well as the State Governments, where billions of naira are appropriated to non-existent and over-priced projects annually,” the statement added.
