(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2618253/ForumPhotos/Bashorun%20Dele%20Momodu.jpg) These are the electoral promises of Bashorun Dele Momodu if elected into power in the upcoming April 2011 presidential election in Nigeria. The manifesto is tagged "Spotlight on the Issues" with attention on the following areas:
• Corruption
• Infrastructure
• Education
• National Security
• Niger Delta/Resource Control
• Economy
• Foreign Policy
• Agriculture
Read it and share your comments.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2618253/ForumPhotos/Dele%20Momodu%202011_quote-dele.jpg)
INFRASTRUCTURE
We shall go all out to fix our poor infrastructure, power, roads, transport, water, etc. The solution to this is to maintain fiscal discipline. The culture of waste we currently experience must be reversed immediately. No politician would be allowed to earn the type of atrocious salaries and allowances we read about these days. We shall spend our resources on the people and not a few greedy citizens. We shall mobilise our best brains from all over the world to support the difficult task of restoring our infrastructure to its original glory.
CORRUPTION
The first thing I'll do is to win the trust of the Nigerian people by demonstrating transparency and accountability. I will declare my assets publicly and compel other public servants to do the same. Corruption will be drastically reduced because I will not be corrupt myself. One of the ways to reduce corruption is to ensure that the citizens are not over-burdened with issues such as paying two years rent in advance, and paying cash down for their cars. We will encourage our banks to set up mortgage departments with attractive interests. This will reduce the pressure of looking for personal cash to build or rent homes. Car loans will be made available for those who have secure jobs. What is mostly required is the political will on the part of the leader to do that which is right.
EDUCATION
Education is one of our key priorities. A nation of illiterates will never make any progress. The people will never know and demand their rights. They will never find good employment or attain the competencies that can help them create employment, and even when they get the jobs, will fail to deliver competently. We currently have double tragedies to tackle, the burden of unemployed youths as well as that of unemployable ones. Both must be vigorously handled if our nation must join the comity of other nations in their march towards socio-political and economic emancipation. It is not an impossible mission as we have found elsewhere. We have all it takes to fix most of our problems as long as we can block the drain-pipes that were installed by our politicians.
NATIONAL SECURITY
National security is of utmost importance. No nation can be respected if it cannot defend itself against internal and external aggression. A situation where our air force cannot fly and our navy cannot sail will no longer be accepted. Our police will be powerfully equipped to deal with criminals no matter how influential. We will also embark on an extensive re-orientation process for the police in our quest to deal with the burden of corruption which has deeply affected the efficiency of the force.
Our government will no longer tolerate the filthy corruption that has reduced our armed forces to toothless bull-dogs. It shall be our priority to bring our military up to world standards. They will earn good salaries and carry modern weapons of war. A nation must be able to defend herself against both internal and external aggression. We need to invest heavily in the secret service where people can pass on information and they cannot be detected. Because of our extended family system, it is really very easy for police officers to be compromised, so it is important that people can easily phone in under anonymous names and say "I suspect my neighbour; two days ago he didn't have a dime, today he's driving a brand new car."
NIGER DELTA/RESOURCE CONTROL
The problem of South-South is not just about resource control. The problem is underdevelopment, gross underdevelopment. If you drive from Port Harcourt to Bayelsa today, you will cry. This is supposed to be one of the richest areas in the South-South and yet the poorest. The roads are very bad, the schools are bad, there's no water, no electricity. One of the things that we must do is clean up our environment; it is so bad. If you go to other oil-producing nations, if you go to Dubai where Nigerians all love to go these days, you will cry and wonder how they turned Dubai, a desert, into a paradise on earth.
I do not agree with people who say we don't have the resources. We have the resources but it is just that the resources go to a few people and their cronies, the God-fathers. Everybody is fighting to be the chairman or MD of NDDC but they won't tell us what they are going to do for their people. That is why you need a leader who has run his own business, who understands the nature of business. When you have a problem you must tackle it head-on. What we do in Nigeria is to give palliatives; anytime the boys complain, they'll go and carry 'Ghana must go' and give money to them. That would never solve the problem. So it's not about resource control, it's about making sure that the resources of the people are used for the betterment of the people. Until we do that, we are going nowhere.
ECONOMY
We must begin to respect industrious people in our nation. Because of our experience with the military, what we had in the past was for bullies to come to power and they take on the businessmen. I learnt something again in Great Britain under Tony Blair. Tony Blair would fly to Europe, and go and look for investors to bring to Britain. But there are even local entrepreneurs in Nigeria, we have the Samuel Adedoyins, the Razaq Okoyas who are industrialists, but most of them got crippled, because we don't give incentives to them,since it's cheaper to import from China or India. So what we need to do is to make sure that, one - we give them incentives, two - we work very quickly on some of our infrastructure, because if you are going to set up even a printing press in Nigeria today, your first investment will be about 30 to 40 million naira on generating electricity.
There'll be no water, the roads are bad, and then you can't import because the ports are congested. So we must look specifically at the problems that they have on ground and help them to tackle it. We must treat them as kings. We have a situation where you have a president that will simply criminalize a business man before you even investigate or prosecute him, and then later when the person is free he's already a criminal. We will not allow that to happen in Nigeria again. Because what happens is that any time you criminalize one businessman the news goes around and then every other businessman is looked at as a criminal outside.
I have worked in over 60 countries and I know that the biggest problem that we have in Nigeria is the issue of people trusting our businessmen. They believe we are fraudsters, but that is also the mistake of the government because if you say because you want to catch a few rats you now set fire to an entire village then there's no way all of us will not suffer in that process.
It is more expensive to produce locally and I have told you specifically, the number one problem is the issue of power. If you talk to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) today, they will tell you that if you can tackle the issue of power you'd have rescued our businessmen from a useless expenditure. Once you do that, the second thing is our banking system. I have a specific plan to make sure that our banks are not just for credit. Our banks must be able to invest not just in trading but also in production. In industrialization, in mortgage systems, one of the biggest reasons why people have to steal money in Nigeria today is that they have to spend what they don't have. No man, no Nigerian can live on his salary. if you want to rent a house today in Nigeria you have to pay two three years rent in advance, whereas elsewhere, for example in Accra or Cotonou, you can pay every month, you can pay every quarter, so if anybody is able to pay three years rent in advance are going to collect your salaries in advance? So there must be corruption somewhere. The house I live in now in London is on a mortgage. If I want to buy the same house in Nigeria, I have to pay cash down. That is why I don't have a house.
Under my plan, the banks would be encouraged to urgently set up mortgage facilities. Young students, young school leavers in Ghana, once they have a job, they can go to a bank and get a car loan. You can't do that in Nigeria. Number two, in terms of transportation, the only way to get to work now would be by Okada or you go on a Molue or buy your own car. I see no reason why a nation as big as Nigeria cannot even have light rail. We must also build new cities out of Ogun state urgently, like they've done in Britain with Milton Keynes. Everybody goes to Lagos, however, you cannot travel by rail, you cannot travel on the sea, and we are all facing the same direction so it's a lot of mess on ground there. I can assure you that all these things will be adequately tackled.
FOREIGN POLICY
Foreign policy is one of my very serious areas, because fortunately for me I'm one of those Nigerians who have traversed the whole world and everywhere I go I try to visit our embassies and it is such a shame that they are no properly funded. There was a time the property we were occupying in Ghana was totally owned by Senegal. Can you believe that Senegal would own a property and actually throw us out of the place? We found another place, within a year we were kicked out, and then where we are now is just one dingy corner of Accra. That to me is unacceptable. I have interacted with some of the African leaders and everywhere I go what they tell me is, "Mr. Momodu if Nigeria gets it right all of us we will get it right." We play Father Christmas to these places but we don't get anything out of it. America will never go anywhere fight the war and walk away. Our objective is reciprocity. People must reciprocate our kind gestures. We can't just be playing Father Christmas all over the place when our own people are suffering. I have visited our troops in my private capacity in Liberia, in Sierra Leone, and I was always very sad when they tell me how they've been abandoned in the bush. Nobody asks after their welfare, some people collect contracts for their food, for their weapons and everything, that is it, but nobody talks to them to find out how they're faring in those places and because of my personal interaction with them I've been able to learn a lot about how our foreign policy has not being the best.
AGRICULTURE
We shall seek urgent alternatives to our over-dependence on oil for revenue. Agriculture is one of such potentials that must be pursued with sense of responsibility. Youth Corp members who show interest in agriculture will receive incentives that will enable them pursue agricultural investments on their own.
Source: The Official Dele Momodu 2011 Presidential Campaign Website! (http://www.delemomodu2011.com/dm2011/issues.php)