A former Secretary to the State Government (SSG) in the administration of former Governor Peter Obi, Mr. Oseloka Obaze, on Tuesday said that reframing the governance principles in Nigeria as well as cutting the cost of governance will help to put the country in a new beginning aimed at getting it right.

Obaze in a statement issued in Awka, the Anambra State capital, said that the process should start with reframing the mindset of those elected or appointed to serve the country.

The statement further reads: “This is pertinently more so, with the ongoing national orientation mantra, ‘change begins with me’. For starters, our leaders should adopt the doctrinal imperative; “We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty.

“True leaders must consider the impact of their conduct and actions and account for what they have done, or failed to do.

“On Nigeria’s 56th Independence Anniversary, Obaze said, “It was certainly less boisterous and the celebration discernibly muted and benign. Even joy and celebration in Nigeria have been hit by the recession.”

According to the former United Nations (UN) staff, the vision of the founding fathers for Nigeria to be egalitarian have yet not manifested because of the choice of leaders leading the nation who ultimately lead dismally.

“But that long term vision, which will come, is for now, a dream deferred. In a doctrinal sense, Nigeria’s ascendancy vision is for its own time only: eager for its own fulfillment, it does not deceive; if it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail.

“If attaining the vision lingers awhile, which is likely, it is because governance has become a matter of deceit with a resultant widening distrust gap. Simply, Nigerians no longer trust their leaders. How can any reasonable person trust a leadership that routinely engages in doublespeak, policy obfuscation and half-truths? No serious leader can resort to billboards and newspaper advertorials or paid-for-awards to tell his people of his accomplishments. Benchmarked services and projects delivered timely are sufficiently credible criteria for measuring good governance,” he stated.

Obaze further noted that Nigeria is not a poor country in the real sense of the word, but simply a poorly managed country.

He maintained that every facet of the nationhood, bar none, has been mismanaged, adding that the fact that we got ourselves into a recession can be traced to certain realities; scarcity of foreign exchange, paucity of funds, and people being unable to buy and sell since the money in circulation has simply dried up, courtesy of the Single Treasury Account (TSA).

He observed that an average Nigerian, despite the biting recession wants the TSA to remain in place so as to have the assurance that the money is not being frittered away.

•Photo shows Ex-Anambra SSG Oseloka Obaze.

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