Former British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, yesterday identified the rot in the oil sector especially the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and corruption, as the major challenges facing the country, urging the incoming All Progressives Congress (APC) government to take urgent steps in addressing them.
He stated this on Wednesday in Abuja in a keynote address to unveil the APC policy direction organised by the Directorate of Policy, Research and Strategy of the APC presidential campaign council.
Blair, while speaking at the two-day policy workshop urged the incoming Buhari-led government to crack the oil sector in his first 100 days in office and tackle corruption.
He also urged the president-elect to concentrate on specific policies.
While appealing to the incoming government not to discriminate against those who did not vote for the party in the last election based on ethnicity and religion, he urged the party leaders to always communicate regularly with the electorates as they need their votes for future elections.
Blair, who was represented by Peter Benjamin Mandelson, a former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry under his government, advised the Buhari-led administration to first address difficult issues from the early stage of governance, citing the Indonesian example.
Blair said: “The issue is like this; for a country that has extraordinary resources of oil and has the amazing privilege of sources of energy, yet power generation was not a happy issue, people are having to wait for hours, queuing to get fuel and ended up buying it elsewhere, I think it needs to be recaptured and reorganised, and revenues put to good use so that they can be invested to a long term use of the country, in infrastructure, in fundamental human capital, education, the skill of the people that they need to work with in future. This is where the money should be going to.”
He further stated that; “The other thing I want to come back to is priority. You need priority in what you want to deliver to your country, but here is the challenge. Every day, there is one fresh
crisis, some media events, some scandals or some personnel problems to contend with. A whole sack of things will get in the way of getting the real thing done. What happens to your priority if you are not careful is that the wall will close on you and before you know where you are, you are spending the whole time dancing from one place to another, putting out one fire in different parts of the forest without pursuing what you were put in government to do which was to being about that change and that reform.
“That is why you need to create that mechanism that remains focused on your priorities. That is why you need certain policy delivery mechanism that you can control, that which you have people working in under your guidance and political will even though you have to deal with the oil scandal.
“One other piece of advice drawn from our experience is that you will have more goodwill and more authority to do the difficult things at the beginning of your term than at the end. Let me give you an example of another emerging economy that I have spent time with more recently.
“President of Indonesia was elected last year with huge public support. As a foremost businessman without link to the political elite, he was hailed as a leader who could transform Indonesia. One of the things he did after being inaugurated last October was to slash Indonesia’s hugely expensive and inefficient, but yet popular fuel subsidy, a policy decision which had toppled previous administrations and consistently brought people out into the streets. He decided to do it straight away. He had that goodwill and had that authority and that was the time to move. Obviously, when there was a low price of oil, it made it less painful, but it was well timed.
“On one part, the new president has demonstrated to his people and the international market that he was serious about economic reform and that he was no longer to be underestimated and the protests on the streets ended up being minimal, compared to previous times.
“As you know, addiction to fuel subsidy is not limited to Indonesia. I am saying take advantage of that goodwill of being elected to take difficult decisions that may inflict immediate pains, but are in the long term of interest to the country and the government.
“What you do in the first 100 days is important and symbolic and can also have tremendously positive repercussion for the government and the country. You have a limited window of opportunity to make an impact as a government. Looking at Nigeria, I would say your vulnerability is corruption and that is not new to you, particularly around the oil sector. People in this country seem to be able to do things with impunity and beyond the reach of the rule of law or proper accountability and the judicial system. You can crack the NNPC nut or you can make a start on it in the first 100 days, and if you do so, you would have built a very strong foundation for what you have to do in the next four years and beyond.
“I think that ensuring that all government revenue goes into a single government account will be a good start; those revenues from your natural resource are so vital for the country and for your future. I think that will send a very strong message. We did the same thing when we came in in 1997, when we gave the Bank of England its independence and that gave us an instant reputation for fiscal prudence.
“It is quite courageous for a government to give power away to another entity. There were people who voted for the others, mostly in the south and the east of the country. You need to show the people who didn’t vote for you that you represent their interest as much as the people who voted for you. This was what we called big tent politics during Tony Blair era,” he added.
Source:Leadership
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