Some Excerpts From My Manifesto: Padding of Budget and Prosecutorial Activism. November 23, 2022

ESAN AGENDA

(1) BUILDING A FORMIDABLE SENATORIAL SUPPORT TEAM

I am not an Agbazilo Senatorial Candidate and I am not an Okpebho Senatorial candidate, either. I am the Accord Party Senatorial Candidate, for the entire Esan tribal region, legally referred to as the Edo Central Senatorial District, Edo State, Nigeria.

Beginning on my first day in office, I will constitute a formidable team of Esan men and women, made up of the best Lawyers, Accountants, Administrators, Financial Analysts, Academics, and Linguists who are willing to accompany me to Abuja as my Partners and Advisers. Together, we will be engaging in serious research and strategizing, with a view to ensuring that Esan is not left out in the distribution of our national wealth and allocations of infrastructural facilities. For any bill or motion to garner my approval or support, it must have gone through a rigorous debate with my team. The overriding goal is how it can benefit my Esan folks at home. And similar to the American culture, I will be spending most of my weekends at home to evade the perversive Abuja disconnect that has turned members of the National Assembly into aliens in their community. I will establish my Senatorial headquarter at Uromi, being the central location of Esanland and easily accessible from any community in the Senatorial District.

(13) BUDGET PADDING

A few weeks ago, the Chairman of the ICPC, Barr Bolaji Awasonoye, told Nigerians how civil servants padded the 2021-2022 nation budget with N400B in duplicated projects. So, you can imagine the culture in the past twenty years. Mind you, the budget under reference and similar ones before it passed through a series of Senatorial vetting and hearings, but no detection on the record. And that’s where I come in.

In my introductory section, I alluded to building formidable Senatorial support staff and assembling and surrounding myself with some of the best brains Esan has and who are willing to work with me at Abuja. Assembling such a team is going to be my number one priority. That was Chief Obafemi Awolowo's approach to leadership. And it was the same approach by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. Borrowing a leaf from these two renowned leaders, I will, for the period of budget reading, assemble a team of astute and well-read Accountants, Sociologists, Financial Analysts, Lawyers, and Academics to assist my support staff to do a comprehensive review and auditing of every item in the budget to identify and eliminate duplicated projects.

Finally, every recurring or yearly repeated item in the National Budget must be subjected to a durability test. How often, for instance, does your mother changes her kitchen wares, like pots and plates? And how old is your current laptop, or your home office appliances? Also, if, for instance, the nation’s First Lady couldn't find Panadol in Aso Rock Clinic on her emergency visit, then, one is justified in demanding an explanation of how the previous budgetary allocations in the past three years were expended. If you are not buying laptops or changing your printers every, and if your Mama is not changing her cooking pots every year; therefore, the computers, printers in government offices, and the cooking pots at government houses shouldn’t be recurring items on our national budget.

These are just a few examples. I will work with my colleagues to put accountability and prudent management of our resources in place. Every budgetary allocation to all the MDAs in the previous or instant year must be accounted for and every head of the department must not only defend the proposed budget but must defend how and on what purpose the previous year's disbursement was expended. And absent comprehensive audit reports, there won’t be new allocation. I am not a social or political activist, I am a one-man riot squad. By the Grace of God, trust it shall come to pass as written.

(14) PROSECUTORIAL ACTIVISM

You've read my references to the ICPC boss's appearance before the Senate, revealing the atrocities of budget padding by MDAs staff, and you must also have followed the GDM of the NNPC, Mr. Mele Kyari, news conference, wherein he lamented how about 80% of our crude oil daily production cannot be accounted for – all going into the pockets of fraudulent Nigerians. What the two gentlemen didn't tell you or are yet to tell you is the percentage of those involved who have been indicted or presently serving jail teams. With me in the Senate, the questions of accountability and prudent judgment will not be discounted. Those who do the crime must serve time. If we are not prosecuting or sending swindlers to jail without trial as they did in Singapore, how can we create a deterrent factor? You cannot stem the tide of corruption in any nation without setting examples.

I will help to champion or put in place an appropriate prosecutorial framework that is sustainable and morally driven.

A few years ago, you have heard of a Magistrate at Abuja who awarded a fine of about N25k against a Pension Funds embezzler in cash amounts and landed properties running into billions of Naira. When the judgment came, the Magistrate, who is now late, was harshly vilified. But what they didn't tell you was that the Magistrate lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case or award a fine that exceeds what he awarded. And don't forget, a SAN was among the Lawyers who filed and argued the case on behalf of the EFCC. As a Lawyer, fully conversant with the proclivity of our lawyers in procedural legal mumbo-jumbo and abuse of interlocutory applications or injunctions, I will be on standby to ensure that Federal Government Cases are no longer compromised or poorly handled.