April 9, 2015 – President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, (rtd) is under pressure to scrap avoidable expenses in the Presidency and outrageous allowance of lawmakers.
The latest pressure is coming from the Medical and Dental Consultants Association which has called on him to scrap outrageous allocations for meals and diesel consumed by public office holders in Nigeria, including the Presidency since the President of the USA pays for his meals.
It also called for downward review of salaries and allowances of lawmakers who are said to earn more than President Barack Obama of US.
MDCAN is also demanding a comprehensive reform of the political structure of the country from the Presidency down to the Local Governments to restore sanity to governance.
President of the MDCAN, Dr. Steven Oluwole who made the demands advised Buhari to bring his tested integrity to bear by implementing his campaign promises on corruption, security and revamping the economy.
“The questionable and possibly ill-motivated drive to privatize tertiary healthcare should be resisted. Teaching hospitals should not be converted to-profit Institutions.
“Such conversion will limit the number and category of patients that can receive teaching hospital services to those who have resources to pay. They will be robbed of their traditional values and hindered from effective teaching, research, and development of medical services”, MDCAN reiterated.
“There must be complete reform from the Presidency to all tiers of government. A fleet of 11 Aircrafts for Nigerian President, if indeed true, is inexplicable and outrageous when the President of the USA officially has one, and the Prime Minister of UK has none. The outrageous allocations for meals, diesel and sundries should be scrapped because the President of the USA pays for his meals.
“The phenomenon of the campaign, which centered on the tested integrity of the President-elect, should not be political device to win election, but the very instrument to govern and truly reform the culture of ‘government money in government house’, graft, reckless spending and impunity of public office holders.
“The incoming government should transform the political landscape and curb the rot in Nigeria, where Senators’ annual take-home pay is more than that of President Barack Obama of the United States. Governors’ security votes, which make mockery of sanity, should be streamlined to reality.”
The association also advised the incoming Buhari led- government not to change in totality all the policies put in place by outgoing government .
“Change must not be wholesale rejection of the past and present. There must be systematic appraisal of the entire system, which should lead to retention of the good, upgrade of the deficient and replacement of the repugnant”, Oluwole stressed.
The MDCAN, however cautioned Buhari to resist the idea of privatizing tertiary healthcare in the country saying it will deprive the poor from assessing affordable, qualitative and sophisticated healthcare services.
Speaking on the Presidential elections, Oluwole said it “produced a seismic shift of the political structure and alignments.”
“The outcome of the election says a lot about the vision and expectation of Nigerians for their country. The voting, which was for an ideal, was not a gift to a party to proceed on triumphal procession, but to get to work and fix a crumbling nation. The territorial integrity of the country, which did not disintegrate as predicted, must be preserved”, MDCAN suggested.
