The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) on Friday listed
what it termed some shortcomings of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s
administration in the last five years.
While berating Buhari, CDD lamented on the President's failure to
implement anti-corruption programme and his alleged tendency to condone
corruption within his own administration and party, the All Progressives
Congress, APC.
In a report by its Director, Idayat Hassan, the body claimed Buhari
has consistently turned blind eyes to allegations against some of his
appointees.
The report reads: “Consequently, the assessment knocks the
President for his tendency to condone corruption within his own
administration and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party. In
this regard, President Buhari gets the flak over accusations that he
consistently turned a blind eye to malfeasance by some of his own
appointees and resisted independent oversight of Nigeria’s most
scandal-ridden agencies.”
“The report notes the untenable situation wherein the “Buhari
cabinet includes several individuals tainted by accusations of
corruption. It went on to document that in the five years under review,
the APC nominated, while the President personally campaigned for many
notorious kleptocrats.”
On the vexed issue of opaque use of security votes, CDD berated Buhari’s administration for using corruption-prone slush funds.
CDD knocked the President for failure to curb defence and security corruption.
It said: “The assessment asserts that expenditures in the
defence and security sector continue to escape public and legislative
scrutiny, and mostly occur under emergency procurement processes that
lack basic.
anti-corruption safeguards. The government was similarly called
out over the continued the practice of awarding crude oil lifting
contracts to middlemen firms, including those implicated in the 2010
fuel subsidy fraud scandal.”
Another shortcoming identified by the five year assessment of CDD
was the failure of the government to achieve the required reforms in the
petroleum sector.
“President Buhari who doubles as the Minister of Petroleum
Resources, the assessment avers bears personal responsibility for his
government’s failure to undertake basic, and long overdue, reforms to
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
“Widely seen as one of the most corrupt and mismanaged national
oil companies in the world, the NNPC continues to conceal illicit
financial outflows from public or legislative scrutiny, inflate internal
administrative budgets and withhold oil revenues from the national
treasury,” the report said.
Added to the other shortcomings outlined in the assessment, is the
issue of declining fiscal transparency on the watch of the President.
The assessment noted that “the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN,
exemplifies this shortcoming as it has become less transparent and more
vulnerable to political influence on fiscal and monetary policy.”
It bemoaned the situation wherein “the bank’s oversight role
has diminished and the relationship between it and the nation’s
commercial banks has become too cozy. Since 2015, sales of discounted
foreign exchange to privileged recipients have become more opaque than
ever before.”
Among other recommendations, the report called on the government to
take practical steps to improve transparency and accountability in the
budgeting, expenditure and contracting processes.
The body recommended that government officials and ruling party
politicians exerting pressure on anti-corruption agencies and judiciary
over corruption cases involving them, be decisively sanctioned.
0 comments:
Post a Comment