Tunde Bakare, serving overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly (LRA), has disagreed with those saying the Muhammadu Buhari administration lacks direction and strongly defends his longtime friend and running mate..
While giving a ‘The State of the Nation Address’ at LRA auditorium in Lagos on Sunday, the fiery pastor expressed belief that the government has a clear direction to tackle corruption, terrorism, and deal with unemployment by diversifying the economy.
Bakare, though, admitted that Buhari’s government had failed in communicating the direction of its change agenda to the Nigerian people.
“I have heard concerned citizens attribute Nigeria’s current challenges to a lack of direction by the present administration,” Bakare said.
“I beg to disagree with this opinion no matter how widely held. Right from his inaugural address, President Buhari outlined a three-point policy thrust that included combating insecurity, tackling corruption and dealing with unemployment through diversification.”
He then talks about the need to restructure while blaming past government of the ousted PDP..
Microsoft Word – State_of_the_Nation_Jan_2017_Bakare[1].doc
“For those who still question the need for restructuring, I have for you a simple analogy that may cause you to have a rethink. For sixteen years, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was the governing party in Nigeria. For about twelve years, as individual parties, the so-called opposition parties tried unsuccessfully to wrest power from the PDP. In 2003, the Action Congress (AC), dominant in the South West, the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP), dominant in parts of the North, and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), dominant in the South East, presented individual candidates for federal elections, particularly the presidential elections, and were overwhelmed by the PDP. The same scenario played out in 2007 despite the change in name by the Action Congress to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). In 2011, three parties, ACN, ANPP and a new party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), once again individually took on the PDP and were beaten as before by the power of incumbency. However, in 2015, following the merger of these major opposition parties to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), the PDP was finally defeated and today, we have an APC-led government in power.
Fellow Nigerians, this is a prime example of leveraging on relative strengths. As with those small preceding political parties, our 36 states, most of which generate insignificant internal revenue, are not viable enough to overcome our economic challenges and facilitate accelerated economic growth. These thirty-six states, overwhelmingly sustained by allocations from Abuja, cannot guarantee functional infrastructure such as world class roads, railways, airports, housing and urban development. These thirty-six states, largely unable to pay workers’ salaries, cannot guarantee standard educational and healthcare systems, or facilitate rural development. These thirty-six states should, in fact, become districts headed by Mayors within the framework of six geopolitical zones, because they will be stronger and more productive within a zonal structure.
As zonal structures, they can pool resources to build transportation infrastructure; as zonal structures, they will empower local governments to bring effective governance directly to the people. As zonal structures, they will efficiently coordinate socioeconomic policies for the benefit of every Nigerian – every Nigerian like Mama Blessing, whose petty- trading business will be expanded and transformed by vibrant regional agricultural and transportation policies; every Nigerian like Mazi Kelechi, whose electronics business can have a globally competitive made-in-Nigeria supply from regionally backed industrial clusters; every Nigerian now just selling suya who can build a whole range of businesses around hides and skins sourced from regionally coordinated ranching systems; every Nigerian like Baba Bukky, who will no longer rely on generating sets for power supply due to regional coordination of multimodal resources for efficient power generation, transmission and distribution.”
READ COMPLETE SPEECH HERE
