Fmr NBA 2nd VP Monday Ubani, Sets Agenda For The New Ministers Of The Fed. Republic Of Nigeria. – TheNigerialawyer

Former second Vice President of the Nigerian Bar Association and
a human rights activist, Monday Ubani bares his mind to ADE
ADESOMOJU on key sectors President Muhammadu Buhari and his
new cabinet must find solution to in his second and last
tenure.

What do you think should be the priority area for
President Muhammadu Buhari and his new cabinet that is to be
inaugurated this week?

The next four years is the last tenure of President Muhammadu
Buhari and this is what we call the legacy tenure. So, it is either
he leaves a legacy of having achieved something that is positive
and that Nigerians we remember him for, or he leaves a legacy of
failure.

There are some areas specifically where Nigerians will want the
President and the new cabinet to address. One of the most important
areas that Nigerians will want some sort of lasting solution to is
power. If the President, within the next four years, cannot provide
solution to power, he will be rated as President that has not
impacted our lives. And that is the truth.

He should give whoever is going to oversee power the marching
order to find at least 80 per cent solution to the power problems.
As things stand now, we are neither here nor there with regards to
power. We do not know what we are generating or what we have done
to even say that from now on, we are going to be having incremental
generation of power. We do not even know whether we are going
backwards. Nothing has been consistent with regards to power as we
have been fluctuating between 3,000, 2,000 and 5,000 megawatts. For
now, there is nothing we have found solution to about power. We
have not found any solution to generation; we have not found any
solution to transmission; we have not found any solution to
distribution – and these are the three key areas.

So, in the next four years, President Buhari should be able to
give us solutions with regards to these three key areas. What are
we generating and what are we going to do to increase our level of
generation? What are we going to do to provide efficient
transmission and distribution of power? Is it only the Federal
Government that should continue to generate power, or it should be
spread to all state governments? We have found out that
distribution companies have not been efficient in the distribution
of power. Are we going to remain with them or take it away from
them and give it to those who will be efficient?

 With your emphasis on power and infrastructure,
would you still recommend that Works and Power should still be
merged under a minister?

I will not want such thing to happen again. That was a grave
mistake that was made in the last dispensation. One of the
ministries is big enough for any human being. Each of them should
be given to a minister so that they can be better rated based on
their performance.

What about the anti-corruption fight?

We need to prop up this anti-corruption fight. We need to
re-define what we call anti-corruption and how we want to tackle
it. The President should once again gather egg heads to look at the
issue of corruption which has been our perennial problem. We are
now in a quagmire. A lot of people who want to invest in Nigeria
are afraid because of the way we are going about the
anti-corruption fight. The method of the fight is also discouraging
people who would have brought investments into the country. There
are a lot of inputs that the President should gather from
intellectuals in order to get a total victory over corruption.

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