Nigeria must step up war against corruption — Nnamani, others

Nigeria must step up war against
corruption — Nnamani, others
on december 06, 2013 at 2:35 am in politics
We’re doing well in economic governance, others
We must educate Nigerians to hold govt
accountable
BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE & Kelechi Azubuke
Members of the National Steering Committee of the
African Peer Review Mechanism led by former
Senate President, Senator Ken Nnamani visited
Vanguard Media’s head office, Lagos, recently, and
interacted with  senior editors on the mileage
Nigeria has recorded in human index compared to
her 36 peers on the African continent. The team had
Professor Adele Jinadu, Professor Ben Amgbe, Mrs
Yemisi Ransome-Kuti and Dr Fidelis Ugbo among
others as members. With a mandate to carry out an
unbiased all-inclusive evaluation and self
assessment of Nigeria’s democracy and political
governance, socio-economic development and
corporate governance, the team, which has been on
the job for five years said it is not all thumbs down
for Nigeria.
Speaking on why the team visited Vanguard and the
need for the media to back the APRM process,
Nnamani said the mechanism is aimed at enhancing
and entrenching good governance in the continent
by reviewing four thematic areas: democracy and
political governance, economic governance and
management, Socio economic development and
Corporate Governance.
His words: “Those are the four areas constituting
the acceptable standard for evaluating how well our
democracy is moving and how well the people are
benefiting from the dividends of democracy and
intangible things like elections, freedom of speech
and while you (Vanguard) are here, nobody is
coming to shut your doors because of what you
have said in the papers as long as it is within the
ambit of the law.
“So those four thematic areas are the areas being
used to evaluate good governance in Nigeria and
our role as members of the National Steering
Committee is to oversee or supervise the process.
One of the elements is household opinion survey.
The committee’s mandate is to make sure that we
carry out an unbiased all inclusive evaluation, self
assessment of our democracy and other four areas
I already mentioned.”
There’s cause for cheer — Nnamani
On comments that there is nothing to review in the
country because infrastructure is poor and the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) crisis in which the
G-7 governors were not allowed to meet was
hurting freedom of association, Senator Nnamani
said he was not going to hold brief for the Inspector
General of Police on the issue of not allowing people
to meet. However, he noted that people should not
overstretch the issue of freedom. ”My fear is that
if we excessively talk about freedom will we allow
people commit suicide because they are free to
take rope and tie around their neck and kill
themselves?
We must be very careful how we try to make it
sound like Nigeria is now a police state because I
am not aware that Nigerians are been barred from
holding meetings unless you have a specific case.
There is freedom of speech and association as long
as you have a level playing field and you are given
equal chance to make your point; that is my own
understanding of justice.”
He continued: “On the issue of your saying that you
don’t see what the people are coming to peer-
review, ‘peer’ means they are equals. As heads of
state, if they come they have something to talk
about. In Nigeria, everybody now enjoys
communication (phone). It might not be efficient
because at times if you are talking the thing goes
off, there is no perfection and perfection is an
unrealistic standard by which you can judge. It is
not proper if we say there is nothing to peer-review
and that they are coming to do nothing.
If you go to other African countries and some other
countries even outside the African continent you’ll
find out that Nigeria while we have enormous
problems there is no question about that, we are
doing well in certain areas.
“On freedom of speech, yes our act is not
functioning properly but the fact that you are writing
and expressing your opinion on daily basis, no
person charges you to court, no person tells you
why must you write this or come and lock up your
gate is part of dividends of democracy that we are
enjoying. There are not many places you can enjoy
that. There are some areas where we have made
progress even though I agree with you to a large
extent that in some areas we have shown
retrogression, we have not gone forward at all. But
regardless of what you are doing you still gather
together to talk and look at events and say maybe
we should have gone this way, we should have
gone the other way, that is what peer-review is
about.
Why APRM is necessary —Jinadu
Professor Jinadu gave the context the APRM arose,
which he traced to the legacy of military rule, one
party rule, single dominant party rule, etc since
African countries gained independence in the 1960s
and various international covenants on democracy
and human rights.
In reacting to that, he said, the African Union said
there was need to define the principles of
governance away from political centralization and to
improve on the means of managing diversity.
“It is in these contexts that a number of African
leaders notably our own ex president Olusegun
Obasanjo and Abdulahi Wade of Senegal Thambo
Mbeki of South Africa, etc conceived the idea of the
African Peer Review Mechanism as a voluntary
device which countries that feel like will be bound
by the principles and the process enunciated in the
APRM memorandum of understanding. Nigeria has
been very prominent, in fact  the memorandum was
signed in Abuja and as of now about 37 Africa
countries have acceded voluntarily to the APRM and
over 25 per cent of the population of Africa and 17 of
the 37 countries have been peer reviewed and what
that means is that they’ve gone through a series of
processes beginning with what is called country self
assessment in terms of the various indices in the
APRM MOU for corporate governance, socio
economic developments, economic management,
and democratic governance.
“The clear review dimension of it is really at the
level of the heads of state and government of the
member states of the APRM, which is called the
APRM forum. The forum meets twice a year on the
side lines of the African Union meetings to consider
reports from countries that have been peer
reviewed.
This is followed by a country review mission sent
from the APRM secretariat in Johannesburg to go
round the country to talk with stake holders about
the state of governance in the four areas.
“Now, the country review mission submits a report
to the APRM forum in terms of what their findings
and recommendations are. All the heads of state
meet as a group at this level and consider that
country’s report, make comments and advise the
country on how to move governance ahead.
The country responds and after every six months
the country is expected to report back to the APRM
forum on how far it had gone in meeting the
recommendations of the country review report and
the National Programme of Action. The national
programme of action is like a road map of what will
be done to improve governance in the country.
“So, the basic issue here is that the APRM tries to
redefine governance in terms of a partnership
between various stake holders and non- state
stakeholders like civil society
organizations, the private sector, community-based
organisations and individual citizens.
“Under the democracy and political governance
thematic area there are seven objectives namely:
human rights, constitutional government,
competitive politics, women rights, children rights,
youth rights, and rights of the physically disabled.
Under the socio economic development thematic
area we are looking at issues relating to the
millennium development goals basically provision of
infrastructures, human security issues, etc.  Nigeria
was peer reviewed in 2008 and it is supposed to be
done every four years, so it’s the next one now that
we are in.”
Why we do peer-review — Ugbo
Expatiating on the importance of APRM, Dr Fidelis
Ugbo said: “We peer-review because we believe
that they are best practices within African continent
which we do not need to go and look for elsewhere.
If we have best practices that are going on in any
African country, other African countries will like to
share, that is the essence of the peer review.
How it operates
“Key performance indicators are set which are like
guidelines which countries review in assessing
where they are in terms of security, economic
governance, human rights, etc.
If the country tells the entire African nations that
this is what we have achieved in terms of economic
governance, security, economic development,
infrastructure, etc, a team will be sent to verify all
the claims.
After the verification exercise we’ll begin to know
the best things that we can pick from every country
of Africa and recommend to other African countries
to apply in the process of implementing their own
programmes.
“Nigeria has made substantial progress in terms of
economic governance. Yes, we have security
challenges but it’s not only in Nigeria it is all over
other African countries but we are making good
efforts to put in place structures to check some of
these threats to our democracy.
So we believe that Nigeria is ready we have a lot of
best practices we can sell to other African
countries and we look forward that.
When the peer review team arrives Nigeria next
year they will be able to find a few things they can
tell other African countries. We might not be there
but we are making progress in terms of achieving
the targets set by the APRM council.
On the progress Nigeria has made since the 2008
review
He said Nigeria seems to have made substantial
progress in area of allowing people to make choice
on who will lead them. We have not done so well
fighting corruption it’s still one of the challenges
facing the country and I am sure there are other
areas where we have made substantial gains.
Contributing, Mrs Ransome-Kuti said: “Nigeria has
made some progress even though we feel
uncomfortable with the level of development
because we believe we should have done better
given our capacity, human resource and the
leadership role we play both in the continent and
outside.
So we don’t feel very comfortable saying we are
doing well in a lot of things but coming from where
we were during the military rule, we think we feel a
lot more comfortable that we are beginning to taste
the benefits of democracy in that we have the FOI
Act in place, we have more freedom of speech, we
have the elections and there has been a decree of
growth in economic activities not just with the GDP
but in terms of the privatization processes that we
have undergone.
“We are beginning to privatise electricity. I know
there may be contrary opinions on the process but
there is obvious improvement in power and some
other sectors and the SME sector is also beginning
to feel the impact of the reforms in the banking
sector. In all the socio and economic indicators, I
think we have done better than we were doing
before. However, we still have a long way to go.”
How we’re getting reliable data
On whether the reports of the APRM are reliable
giving the difficulty of getting accurate data in
Nigeria, the team said APRM was doing its best on
that score.
“That is a fair question; in many African countries
data are not up to date. But as researchers we have
other means of supplementing and certifying our
facts. There is also a qualitative dimension to this, it
is not just about figures, it is just about human
beings.