If Nigeria must be better, we must immediately begin to do the following:

1. Immediate amendment of the 1999 Constitution to abolish the bicameral legislature and introduce a unicameral legislature. There should be only one House of the National Assembly, with each state producing the same number of legislators just like the present Senate, and, in any event, not more than ten legislators for each state. Nigeria does not need two houses of the National Assembly; it is a waste of our scarce resources. Also, the salaries and allowances of members of the National Assembly will be at par with the salaries and allowances of federal permanent secretaries or university professors. There shall be an end to the humongous salaries and allowances the legislators enjoy at the expense of the poor Nigerians. If this is done, the money saved therefrom will immensely contribute to fixing our moribund refineries and take many Nigerians out of poverty.

2. There should be no more pensions for former vice presidents, governors, and deputy governors. Only former presidents should be entitled to pensions, and the pension should only cover the current salaries and allowances of a sitting president. There should be no more allowances for houses, cars, medical treatments abroad, and domestic staff, among others, for former presidents. Former vice presidents, governors, and deputy governors should be excluded from receiving pensions because whilst former vice presidents often contest to become president, former governors and deputy governors almost always vie to occupy other public or political offices, including becoming members of the Senate or federal ministers, where they also receive humongous salaries and allowances in addition to the out-of-the-world pensions they enjoy as former executives. Those not elected or appointed after leaving office will still be able to sustain themselves for the rest of their lives without public pensions. Again, the money to be saved from this will help in developing the various state and local governments as well as take many citizens out of poverty.

3. Immediate amendment of the 1999 Constitution to establish state police and grant powers to states to establish local government and community police structures. The centralisation of the Police is one of the causes of insecurity in Nigeria. When policing is decentralised and localised, it will immensely address the insecurity bedevilling Nigeria.

4. The four refineries in Nigeria must be fixed to start immediately refining crude oil locally. There must be the political will to ensure that at least one refinery is fixed each year so that within a period of four years, the entire refineries must all be fixed. The government should also grant more licenses to operators of modular refineries. This will help local production and automatically put an end to the importation of refined products to Nigeria, as our crude oil will be refined locally in our local refineries.

5. Immediate amendment of the 1999 Constitution to ensure true financial autonomy and independence of the local government councils in Nigeria and payment of their monthly allocations from the federation account direct to the local government accounts to be managed by the local government chairmen under the supervision of the state legislature. The state-local government joint allocation accounts should be immediately abolished. The governors should be completely removed from interfering with the finances of the local government councils.

6. Every form of official corruption or stealing of public funds or resources by any public officer or political office holder should attract capital punishment. Money laundering, criminal breach of trust, contracts inflation, padding of budgets, conversion of public funds or resources by public officials, and other similar offences are mere political baptismal names and have the same effects as murder, kidnapping, and treason. If some former presidents, vice Presidents, governors, deputy governors, legislators, or other senior public officials are convicted, sentenced, and immediately executed in line with the judgments of the courts, other or subsequent occupants of these offices will become very careful about the way and manner they use public funds and resources.

7. No serving public official or political office holder should travel abroad for medical services. Similarly, no children or wards of a serving public official or political office holder should travel abroad for studies unless where it is established that such children or wards are beneficiaries of fully funded scholarships or fellowships awarded by external bodies or foreign governments. It is not compulsory to serve as a public official, and if one must be willing to take any public service, they must be prepared to suffer the burden as they also enjoy the benefits. When this is achieved, it will lead to proper attention being paid to the public schools and hospitals in Nigeria, and, in no distant time, Nigeria will be proud to have some of the best public schools and hospitals in the world.

8. The executive should completely be removed from exercising any powers or playing any roles in the appointment of judges and other judicial officers, especially heads of courts. There should be no more appointment of heads of courts in acting capacities. This is one of the means employed by the executive to control the judiciary. When there is a vacancy in the office of the head of any court, the next senior to the last occupier of the office shall become the next head of that court, notwithstanding how many months or years are left for him or her to retire.

9. There is a need to decentralise the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Each region of Nigeria should have a regional supreme court, where cases from that region should end on appeal. Only constitutional matters from the regional supreme courts and presidential electoral appeals from the Court of Appeal should proceed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will continue to exercise original jurisdiction over disputes between regions or states and the federal government. This will reduce the burden on the Supreme Court of Nigeria. 

10. The guidelines for the appointment of judges should be revisited. All qualified applicants should be subjected to written assessments or tests comprising hypothetical cases and questions with legal resources made available to them to write the written assessments or tests. Thereafter, the successful applicants will undergo face-to-face oral interviews before independent panels specifically constituted for the purpose. The current situation whereby retired, retiring, or serving senior judges favour their children and relatives in judicial appointments and almost make it look hereditary must be checkmated and stopped forthwith.

11. The Independent National Electoral Commission should be made to be totally independent. The appointment, by the president, of the chairman, secretary, national commissioners, and state resident electoral commissioners of the commission must be stopped forthwith. Instead, they should be appointed in line with the recommendations of the Justice Uwais-led panel or by any other widely acceptable independent mode.

12. The Electoral Act 2022 should be amended before the 2027 general elections to ensure immediate electronic transmission of declared votes direct from the polling units to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s IReV portal. There should be total abolition of the manual transfer of declared votes from the polling units to the ward, local government, and state collation centres. Electoral manipulations of declared election results are usually perpetrated at the local government collation centres, where the ruling parties in those states reign supreme.

13. Electoral disputes must be completed before winners are sworn in. If paragraph 12 above is achieved, electoral disputes can be determined at the trial tribunal or court within 14 days from the date of announcement of election results and on appeal, within one month from the date of such appeal. This is because what a petitioner will need to prove his case before the election petition tribunal or court are the numbers of accredited voters in the BVAS and the certified true copies of the results uploaded on the INEC’S IReV portal. This will put an end to the calling of so many witnesses and tendering of numerous bundles of documents.

14. All elections in Nigeria, including the local government council elections, should be conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission. There should be no more state electoral bodies because they are mere political stooges of the state governors, and the ‘elections’ they conduct are mere charades.

15. All public officials or political office holders should be entitled to only locally manufactured vehicles as their official vehicles. When former governors and deputy governors become ministers or members of the National Assembly, they should not be entitled to official vehicles because, as deputy governors and governors (especially), they already have fleets of cars. Similarly, re-elected members of the legislature (state and federal) should not be entitled to new cars again. Many legislators who have stayed for long in the legislative houses have acquired many official vehicles at the expense of taxpayers.

16. When retired senior public officials like permanent secretaries, among others, who already enjoy pensions get elected or appointed into other public or political offices, they should cease to enjoy pensions during the period they occupy such public or political offices. This is aimed at stopping double emoluments at the expense of taxpayers.

17. No other persons in Nigeria other than those statutorily entitled to it, namely, the president, vice president, governors, deputy governors, heads of legislative bodies, judicial officers, and chairmen of local government councils, should be entitled to police protection. All other persons who need police protection should employ the services of private security guards.

18. There must be an immediate end to the security votes given to presidents and governors. Instead, these funds should be utilised to fund our law enforcement, security, and intelligence agencies.

19. No governor shall appoint more than 20 special advisers, special assistants, or by whatever name called. Some governors have now turned these political appointments into civil service recruitments. It has become a political joke as some governors now appoint thousands and hundreds of persons as special advisers or assistants, and this does not augur well for our polity.

20. Finally, and most importantly, it is time for Nigeria to enact a true people’s Constitution that will reflect the true wishes and aspirations of Nigerians so that the “We, the people of Nigeria” in the 1999 Constitution will be truly “We, the people of Nigeria”. We need to discard this present 1999 Constitution foisted on us by the Military.

The author, a lawyer and Hubert H. Humphrey fellow, can be reached at: cjosisioma@gmail.com