Former Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, yesterday told governors and other leaders in the country to quit the stage for new breed leaders who can lead the country to the promised land, if they have nothing to offer.
Sultan Dasuki blamed the insecurity ravaging the country on injustice and bad governance, and said government at all levels must employ justice in all their endeavours? for Nigeria to overcome the challenges of the Boko Haram insurgency.
The father of the National Security Adviser, who stated this during in an interactive session with journalists in his Kaduna residence, said the country was in a mess today because the present crop of leader had failed the people, adding that leadership was all about fairness, equity and justice.
“How we came about the Boko Haram, I don’t know. But we are in a mess today. Dialogue (with Boko Haram sect) is very important because no one knows who they are,” Dasuki said.
The deposed Sultan said injustice, lack of fairness and dishonesty, coupled with high level corruption by leaders in the country, were responsible for the security currently challenges bedevilling the nation.
While lamenting Nigeria’s level of decay, the Sultan called for the reformation of the Nigerian civil service to enable civil servants to serve as accounting officers in their various ministries and parastatals as was the tradition in the past, instead of elected politicians.
He said: “Greatness is not achieved by proclamation but by hard work, honesty and transparency. The leaders and whole society need to be honest, just and fair for the country to develop.”? and for its people to grow. Let the government from the local government to the presidency declare justice and everything would be all right, the insecurity would be resolved, the bombing would stop and corruption would end.
“The country is full of richness but there are many poor people in the society. Mismanagement and injustice have led us to where we are, and unless everybody contributed his part and we learn to coexist with each other, we may not resolve the problems facing the country. In our days as civil servants we can tell our ministers what is wrong and what is right. If we disagree with our minister, we can go to the federal executive council as permanent secretaries to defend our position. But the civil service is no longer civil. We used to be accounting officers as civil servants but today the governors are the accounting officers. The justice which we had then is lacking today.”
?Dasuki, who wondered why Nigerian leaders only related in trillion without recourse to the poor in the society, said state police would not help resolve the security challenges even as he accused the judiciary of corruption.??
“I didn’t know what a trillion was until I asked somebody to write it for me and he wrote 12 zeros. The average Nigerian is earning $1 per day with all the wealth that we have. Yet somebody collected some people stole N2 billion pension fund. The oil subsidy money which is in billion, is also gone. We don’t have our own airline; now we are a sleeping giant,” he lamented.
Dasuki also lament on the menace of first lady’s offices, saying “It is only in Nigeria that offices of first ladies were accorded allowances drawn on public funds.”
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