PRESS STATEMENT: DEMOCRACY DAY CELEBRATION AND THE NEED TO ACCELERATE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

PRESS STATEMENT: DEMOCRACY DAY CELEBRATION AND THE NEED TO ACCELERATE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Wednesday 19^th June, 2019

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Election Monitor congratulates Nigeria and His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR on the successful Democracy Day celebration held on June 12^th 2019. This is a positive step towards nation building and will certainly deepen democracy in Nigeria. Election Monitor also wishes to congratulate His Excellency, Dr Ahmad Lawan on his emergence as President of the Nigerian Senate and Distinguished Senator Ovie Omo-Agege on his election as Deputy Senate President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Election Monitor also commends Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila on his emergence as Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives and Hon. Ahmed Idris Wase as deputy speaker. It is important for all arms of government to synergise to advance Nigeria sustainably. Many Nigerians are eagerly waiting and expecting the government to urgently develop the nation so as to improve the livelihood of all Nigerians. As a result of this Election Monitor in its bid to promote good governance in Nigeria and beyond would encourage government to ensure all steps are taken to achieve its goals and objectives.

Election Monitor has made some recommendations for the kind consideration of President Muhammadu Buhari which can be seen in the table below.

Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

Nigeria shall prevail!

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

Signed

Abiodun Ajijola

National Coordinator

S/No	Tasks	Details	Time Frame	Indicators & means of verification
1	Appointment of the Secretary to the Federal Government (SGF) and Chief of Staff (CoS) to the President.	There is an urgent need to appoint the SGF & CoS for the new administration to ensure effective running of the government.	On or before Friday 21st June 2019	Official announcement made and appointment letter given.
2	Appointment of Ministers for the Federal Cabinet.	Appointment of ministers is urgent and strong consideration should be given to gender. This needs to be done in good time before the National Assembly resumes in early July 2019	Before the 30th June 2019	Public communication of the appointments.
3	Accelerated screening of ministers	The National Assembly needs to fast-track ministerial screening to ensure quick commencement of government programmes.	Completed on or before 12th July 2019	Confirmation of ministerial appointees by the National Assembly.
4	Maiden Federal Executive Council (FEC) Meeting	The administration needs to commence cabinet meetings urgently.	17th July 2019	Minutes from first FEC meeting.
5	Cabinet Retreat	The federal cabinet should embark on a 3 day retreat to prepare the team for the agenda of the government. Suggestions of some areas to be discussed could include: Background of government's accomplishments from 2015 to 2019; What is government's agenda (goals and objectives) for the second term of the administration?;  Each ministry’s role in achieving government agenda; Eliminating bottlenecks and increasing productivity of government agencies; Using technology to enhance government; Driving government's anticorruption agenda in ministries; Improving citizen communication techniques; Strategic leadership; Cost-effective administrative techniques; Enhancing employee welfare; General brainstorming sessions (at least one session of 30 minutes each of the three days) etc	18th to 20th July 2019	Retreat report to be documented.
6	Prepare Ministerial Agenda Documents	Each minister will be required to prepare a vision document supported by a measureable action plan and timeframe for their ministries. This document will be required to have short-term, medium-term and long-terrm, specific objectives as well as verifiable indicators to assess their success. Each minister will be assessed by this document (KPIs).	These documents should be submitted to Mr. President on or before 7th August 2019	Receipt of the Ministerial Agenda Document for each ministry.
7	Set up a Ministerial Performance Tracking Unit (MPTU)	Mr. President may kindly consider hiring one young assistant for every ministry. The essence of this appointee is to liaise with the minster and/or his/her aides to track achievements of each ministry and report to the President (via a single coordinator). These personnel are not in anyway interfering with the ministries activities. Their job is simply to collect the data of achievements of each ministry each week (with the assistance of a custom built mobile application). Perhaps they could get this information from aides to the ministers. These young assistants to the president compile the data into summaries and prepare a document for Mr. President in presentation and document format (each ministry has a maximum of one page) showing the activities carried out by each ministry in the previous week. Due to the very busy schedule of Mr. President it would also increase efficiency to digitise the weekly reports of the ministries. To this end, the MPTU could also have an inbuilt multimedia expertise to turn these presentations into a short documentary of no more than two hours covering all the ministries weekly. This way Mr. President can spend two hours each Saturday afternoon for example watching the video summary of the activities in each ministry over the past week. This will make it easier to prepare for subsequent Federal Executive Council meetings. If a one week time frame is seen as too frequent, two weeks or maximum one month could also be considered. However if having an appointee of the president accessing the data from the ministries is perceived as micromanaging, then the ministers could just be given the mobile application and trained on how they or their aides can use it. In this case the MPTU will only analyse and document data received from the ministries through the mobile apps. The MPTU is not the same as the Ministry of Budget and National Planning’s Department of Monitoring and Evaluation (which evaluates government at national and sub-national levels, its policies etc) but this is primarily focused at tracking the progress of ministers compared to the indicators in the Ministerial Agenda Documents.
8	Preparation of the 2020 budget	Public reports indicate that actions on the 2020 budget have already commenced. In order to take Nigeria to a predictable (January to December) budget cycle it is important for the 2020 Appropriation Bill to be laid on the floor of the National Assembly in good time to allow the NASS carry out their statutory functions of Appropriation.	The 2020 budget should be laid at NASS on or before 28th August 2019	Receipt of 2020 budget by the National Assembly.
9	Review of the 2020 budget	The Senate President, His Excellency Distinguished Senator (Dr) Ahmad Lawan stated when running for the office of Senate President that the National Assembly would work on annual budgets within three months on receiving them from the executive. The National Assembly is strongly urged to commit to this to improve overall productivity of government.	The 2020 Appropriation Bill should be passed by both houses of the National Assembly on or before the 28th November 2019.	Passage of the 2020 Budget by NASS
10	Signing of the 2020 budget	His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari should sign the 2020 Appropriation Bill into law this year to enable it run commencing January 2020.	The 2020 budget should be signed into law on or before 20th December 2019	Signed and gazetted 2020 Budget.
11	Fundign the Anti-Corruption Campaign	Mr President should consider increasing the funding for the anti-corruption campaign by offering better wages to prosecutors and investing more in tracking corruption through technology amongst other areas.	This should be done immediately if budgetary provisions for 2019 allow it, otherwise this should be factored into the 2020 budget	Increase in budgetary allocation for anti-corruption agencies.
12	Social Investment Programme	Government should ensure that every naira invested to develop the economy should be put the best use. For this reason government should carefully and cautiously consider whether to expand its Social Investment Programme or not. For a recuperating economy, with oil prices currently not too encouraging, it is important to ask whether investing in the SIP more will drive the economy faster or investing in growth areas such as SMEs, technology and industries. The challenge with the SIP is that any day government is unable to continue the programme, the beneficiaries fall back into poverty. However when these funds are invested into enterpise development the sustainable businesses continue to create wealth long after government's intervention. While it is not a bad idea to have a social safety net, government should consider what will be best for the Nigerian economy in the long-term. Election Monitor commends the recent release of 30 billion Naira to Oil Palm farmers which is encouraging. However more should be done in terms of supporting these farmers (technical and policy wise) to ensure that Nigeria becomes a major force in oil palm production globally. This sort of intervention has greater economic impact and government should give thorough consideration to this.	Government should put this into consideration when working on the 2020 budget.	Amount budgeted for Social Investment Scheme