An All Progressives Congress (APC) starlwart in Plateau State, Dr Nentawe Yilwatda, has called for the entrenchment of strong government institutions, and appropriate deployment of national and sub-national assets for overall national development.
Yilwatda made the call while fielding questions from journalists on the state of the nation on Friday in Abuja.
He particularly identified weak institutions, and duplication of items in annual budgets across board as bane of development and a burden on the government more than the much-talked-about budget size of the National Assembly.
The APC governorship candidate in Plateau State in the 2023 general election countered the claims of some proponents of the Unicameral legislature, saying that the government spends so much on duplicated budget items annually, pointing out that the current bicameral National Assembly was not the problem of Nigeria.
“We have very weak institutions and strong institutions are more important than the debate about bicameral legislature, because the leakages we have due to weak institutions outweigh the money we spend on the National Assembly.
“The first thing is strengthening our institutions to ensure that we reduce the leakages, reduce the wastages that we have,’’ he said.
He recalled visiting South Africa to understudy its electoral process, and observed that they engaged in a budget system that was very transparent, digitised and operated in real-time basis.
According to him, if Nigeria could be transparent through its institutions, billions of Naira would be saved from the nation’s budgeting process.
He further said that the government has lots of national and state assets that had gone moribund, which could be resuscitated and deployed accordingly for national development.
“Let me just take the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), through which we have launched five satellites in the orbit.
“The satellites can address issues of communication, internet services, national security, environmental monitoring, earth observation and agricultural purposes.
“These are assets we can apply for our military intervention, we can digitise our borders for digital monitoring of migration.
“The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) come on television every day to forecast weather, how much of that have we applied to governance,’’ he queried.
He said that the database of farmers could be generated, whereby they receive text messages daily on weather condition and early warnings.
According to him, Nigeria can aggregate the data from local governments, state governments, and other government institutions and host them locally for lots of benefits.
“We have spent so much money on launching satellites and almost all the institutions of government buy data outside, leading to proliferation of data.
“If we value the billions we spend on hosting our data internationally and on resources we have, then you’ll know that we are not serious as a people,’’ Yilwatda said.
He, therefore, concluded that strong government institutions will ensure policies were harmonised and implemented for national development.
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