On May 29,
Muhammadu Buhari will take office as President of Nigeria. Expectations
are high as most Nigerians expect the coming government to wave a magic
wand and make all their problems disappear. The Buhari campaign which
ran on a ‘CHANGE’ mantra made numerous promises to Nigerians during the
campaign. Buhari’s campaign promises as presented by Vanguard
On Politics and Governance:
I, Muhammadu Buhari, believe that our politics is broken. Our nation
urgently needs fundamental political reform and improvement in
governance more transparency and accountable. If you nominate me in
December, 2014 and elect me in February 2015, my administration will:
1. Initiate action to amend the Nigerian Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties, and responsibilitie
2. Strengthen INEC to reduce, if possible, eliminate electoral malpractices in Nigerian’s political life;
3. Attract the best and brightest of our sons and daughters into our
politics and public service by aggressive recruitment of private sector
people, academics, and professionals within
Nigeria and in the
Diaspora through internships, fellowships, executive appointments, and
special nomination to contest elective offices;
4. Prevent the abuse and misuse of Executive, Legislative and Public offices, through greater accountability,
5. Amend the Constitution to remove immunity from prosecution for elected officers in criminal cases;
6. Restructure governance for a leaner, more efficient, and adequately
compensated public service sector, while promoting effective
participation of the private sector for more robust job creation
programmes to employ the teaming youth.;
7. Require full
disclosure in media outlets, of all government contracts over N100m
prior to award and during implementation at regular intervals;
8. Reform and Strengthen the Justice System for efficient administration
and dispensation of justice with the creation of special courts for
accelerated hearing of corruption, drug trafficking, terrorism and
similar cases of national importance;
9. Fully enforce the
Freedom of Information Act l so that government held data sets can be
requested and used by the public and then such data sets be publish on
regular basis;
10. Amend the Constitution to require Local
governments to publish their meeting minutes, service performance data,
and items of spending over N10M.
Security and Conflict Resolution
On National Security and Defence:
I will urgently secure the territorial integrity of the nation. I will
never leave the defence of the nation in the hands of Hunters, Children,
and Civilian JTF through the following:
1. Urgently address
capacity building mechanisms of law enforcement agents in terms of
quantity and quality as this is critical in safeguarding the sanctity of
lives and property;
2. Establish a well trained, adequately
equipped and goals driven Serious Crime Squad to combat insurgencies,
kidnapping, armed robbery, ethno-religious
3. Consult and amend the Constitution to enable States and Local
Governments to create city, Local government and State Policing systems,
base on the resources available at each levels, to address the peculiar
needs of each community. I will therefore work with the National
Assembly to set and revised, when needed, boundaries of operations, for
Federal, State, and Local government policing units, through new
Criminal Justice legislation to replace the Criminal Code, the Penal
Code and the Police Act.
4. I will push for more robust support
in the Security and Economic stability of the West-African sub-region
and African Continent as a whole. I will seek and maintain close and
frank relationship with ALL of West Africa; Special relationship with
South Africa and its Sub-region; UK, USA, Canada, EU, Asia, and the
Middle East .
On Conflict Resolution, National Unity, And Social Harmony:
I will;
1. Establish a Conflict Resolution Commission to help prevent, mitigate, and resolve civil conflicts within the polity;
2. Bring permanent peace and solution to the insurgency issues in the
North-East; the Niger Delta; and other conflict prone states and areas
such as Plateau, Benue, Bauchi, Borno, Abia, Taraba, Yobe, and Kaduna in
order to engender national unity and social harmony;
3.
Initiate policies to ensure that Nigerians are free to live and work in
any part of the country by removing state of origin, tribe, ethnic and
religious affiliations from documentation requirements in our
identification of citizens and replace these with State of Residence and
fashion out the appropriate minimal qualification for obtaining such a
state of residency, nation-wide.
On Foreign Policy:
I will;
1. Make regional integration a priority within ECOWAS including free
trade with a view to ensuring that common tariff currency are in use by
the end of my term in office, under Nigeria’s guidance and leadership,
base on the size of its market force;
2. Maintain a strong,
close and frank relationship within the Gulf of Guinea, the
Commonwealth, South Africa and the rest of the world.
3. Establish a
special relationship with the leading emerging markets like Brazil;
Russia, India and China (BRIC) and other strategic partners around the
world.
The Economy & Infrastructure Base On the Economy:
I will;
1. Maintain sound Micro and macro-economic policy environment, and run
an efficient government and preserve the independence of the Central
Bank;
2. Restore financial confidence in the citizens and the world,
by putting in place a more robust monitoring, supervising, and
regulating of the financial institutions;
3. Make our economy
one of the fastest growing emerging economies in the world with a real
GDP growth averaging at least 10-12% annually
4. As at 1999,
Nigerian rate of unemployment stood at about 8%, today it is estimated
from official statistics to be close to 30%. I will embark on vocational
training, entrepreneurial
5. Integrate the informal economy into the
mainstream and prioritize the full implementation of the National
Identification Scheme to generate the relevant data;
6. Expand domestic demand and will undertake associated public works programmes to achieve this goal;
7. Embark on export and production diversification
8. Make Information Technology, Manufacturing, Agriculture and
Entertainment key drivers of our economy, by reviewing the present
reward system, which is based on certification, to that based on skills,
competencies, and performances;
9. Balance the Nigerian
economy across regions by the creation of 6 Regional Economic
Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as sub-regional hubs in order to
promote healthy regional competitiveness
Put in place a N300bn Regional Growth Fund with an average of N50bn in
each geo-political region; to be managed by the REDAs, to encourage
private sector enterprise and to support places currently reliant on
only on the public sector, to migrate to a private sector reality;
Amend the Constitution and the:
10. Land Use Act to create freehold/
11. Create an additional middle-class of at least 4 million new home
owners by 2019 by enacting a national mortgage single digit interest
rates for purchase of owner occupier houses as well as review the
collateral qualification to make funding for home ownership easier, with
a 15 to 30 year mortgage terms. This will equally help our banking
system migrate from short to long term perspective of their role in
sustaining the economy.
12. Create a Social Welfare Program of
at least Five Thousand Naira (N5000) that will cater for the 25 million
poorest and most vulnerable citizens upon the demonstration of
children’s enrolment in school and evidence of immunisation to help
promote family stability.
13. Provide allowances to the
discharged but unemployed Youth Corps members for Twelve (12) months
while in the skills and entrepreneurial
14. Equate N1.00 to $1.00
On Agriculture:
I will;
1. Modernize the sector and change Nigeria from being a country of self-subsistenc
2. Create a nationwide food inspectorate division with a view to improving nutrition and eliminating food-borne hazards
3. Inject sufficient funds to the Agricultural sector to create more
agro-allied jobs by way of loans at nominal interest rates for capital
investment on medium and commercial scale cash crops;
4.
Guarantee a minimum price for all cash crops and facilitate storage of
agricultural products to overcome seasonal shortages of selected food
crops.
5. Move the nation to an all year round small, medium, and
commercial farming through a coordinated integrative irrigation of our
existing dams as well as creation of more dam to collect the over
flooding waters, nationwide.
6. Revive our Agricultural Research Institutes that are in a state of comatose;
7. Review and strengthened Veterinary practices nationwide.
On Infrastructure:
I will;
1. Review the Public Private Partnership (PPP) enabling environment
with a view to addressing the legal, regulatory and operational
bottlenecks, challenging the effective administration of the system, by
introducing enabling legislation. In addition, I will create a National
Infrastructural
2. Generate, transmit and distribute electricity on a 24/7 basis whilst simultaneously ensuring the development of sustainable/
3. Embark on a National Infrastructural
(a) ensure 5,000km of Superhighway including service trunks and
(b) building of up to 6,800km of modern railway completed by 2019;
4. Enact new legal and regulatory frameworks to establish independent
regulation and incentives to accelerate public and private sector
investment in seaports, railways, and inland waterways;
5. Embark on
PPP schemes that will ensure every one of the 36 states has one
functional airport, with all 21st Century safety tools for effective
commercial air travel.
On the Oil and Gas Industry:
I will:
1. Revive and reactivate our minimally performing Refineries to optimum capacity;
2. Make the industry and Nigeria one of the world leading/
3. Fully develop the
sector’s capacity to absorb more of the nation’s new graduate in the
labour market. The sector will be funded to produce more home-grown, but
world class engineers, scientists, technologist, etc.;
4. Modernise
the NNPC and make it the national energy champion. I will consider
breaking it up into more efficient, commercially driven units; and may
strip it of its regulatory powers, so as to enable it tap into
international capital market;
5. Enforce the government master
plan for oil companies to end flaring that pollutes the air and damages
the communities and people’s health and ensure that they sell at least
half of their gas produced within Nigeria;
6. Speedily pass the much-delayed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and ensure that local content issues are fully addressed
7. Make Nigeria the world’s leading exporter of LNG through the creation of strategic partnerships.
8. Stabilise oil price
The Society & Human Capital Development On Education:
I will;
1. Fully review provisions of the Universal Basic Education Act with
emphasis on gender equity in primary, secondary school enrolment whilst
improving the quality and substance of our schools, through outcome
based education, that address the individual, family, and societal roles
in education; and the associative skills and competencies that go with
these responsibilitie
2. Targeting up to 20% of our annual budget for this critical sector
whilst making substantial investments in training quality teachers at
all levels of the educational system;
3. Implement a performance
based education, predicated on outcomes, skills, and competences as
against the current certificate based qualification. I will adjust the
reward system accordingly too. This way, exams malpractice and
certificate forgery will be resolved once and for all. Young men and
women interested in real liberal arts education, based on a true
understanding of scientific, the humanistic, and the social sciences
will fill our classrooms to be prepared for future leadership of the
nation;
4. Enhance teacher training and improve the competence
of teachers in the light of the 21st Century and beyond understanding of
the learner types, intelligence types, as the multiple assessment
types, in order to open up learning for all our children types. The era
of one student type will give way to an all learner type for our
children and young people as well as adults who want to return to the
classroom to sharpen their skills, competencies, and sensibilities. This
re-engineering of our education will be followed with a clearly thought
out and vigorous national inspection programmes;
5. Make
learning experiences more meaningful for children as the nation’s
education will no longer be a preparation for life, but life itself. Our
children will be democratised for education, rather than be educated
for democracy. This view of education will make educating our children
more cost-effective in the long run;
6. Provide One Meal a day for all elementary/
7. Develop and promote effective use of innovative teaching methods/
8. Ensure a greater proportion of expenditure on university education
is devoted to helping our youth to understand the juxtaposition of
Science, Technology, the Humanities and the Social Sciences.
9.
Establish at least six new universities of Science and Technology with
satellite campuses in various states. These six universities should be
fully equipped with ICT technologies in order to attract and encourage
small and medium scale ICT enterprises after their university education;
10. Establish technical colleges and vocational centres in each state of the federation;
11. Provide more conducive environment for private sector participation
in all levels of education. Re-authorised the NUC, TETFUN, JAMB, etc,
Acts to enable Private institutions of Higher learning to benefit from
research funds and programmes that will serve the national good;
12. Establish six centres of excellence to address the needs of special education;
On Healthcare:
I will;
1. Prioritise the reduction of the infant mortality rate substantially;
reduce maternal mortality rates to the levels acceptable by the World
Health Organisation; reduce HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases
drastically and improve life expectancy by an additional 10 years on
average through our National Healthy Living program;
2.
Increase the number of physicians from 19 per 1000 population to 50 per
1000 through deliberate medication education as epitomize by nations
such as Ghana. I will increase national health expenditure per person
per annum to about N50,000 (from the less than N10,000 currently);
3. Increase the quality of all federal government owned hospitals to world class standard by 2019;
4. Invest in cutting edge technology such as tele-medicine in all major
health centers in the country through partnership programmes with
communities and the private sector;
5. Provide free ante-natal
care for pregnant women; free health care for babies and children up to
school going age and for the aged; and free treatment for those
afflicted with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS;
6. Boost the local manufacture of pharmaceuticals
Set an effective prosecution and punishment systems, for those importing or adulterating drugs in the country.
7. The enhancement of the Epidemiological
8. Create an Insurance Policy for our Journalists as the nation faces
hard times and our Journalists face more dangers in the discharge of
their investigative work, to educate Nigerians in their rights and
responsibilitie
9. Ban medical tourism by our politicians from May 29, 2015.
On Youth, Sports and Culture:
I will;
1. Provide the opportunities such as setting up functional recreational
facilities, Library with e-services, Community Centers, in
collaboration with States, Local Government Authorities, Local
Development Areas, etc for youth to realize, harness, and develop their
potentials to the fullest, in order to facilitate the emergence of the
new generation of citizens, who will be committed to the sustenance of
good governance and service to the people and the country;
2.
Establish Zonal world-class sports academies and training institutes and
ensure that Nigeria occupies a place of pride in global sports and
athletics;
3. Revive and restructure the Nigerian Football League
and put incentives in place to make it as competitive as other national
leagues
4. Put in place measures to identify talents early and
ensure their participation in local and international games to enable
them to be true professionals;
5. Help as well as mandate schools and communities to create neighborhood playgrounds/
6.
Assist Nollywood to fully develop into world class movie industry that
can compete effectively with Hollywood and Bollywood in due course. I
will support the creative and performing arts with the necessary
environment where by our great entertainers do not end their lives in
abject poverty as is currently the case.
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FACEBOOK COMMENTS
Obioji Chinemerem Kosy and 7 others like this.
Amaechi Paulo Bienonwu
No be 4 mouth na action we need show us wat u can do
Ige James Babatope
Easier said than done. Pray God grant him the wisdom to implement all these...
Ugochukwu Michael
May God give him wisdom to implement all his promises and may his govt favour all of us.