By Laide Akinboade
President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and Arch- Bishop of Catholic Church, Abuja Diocese, Arch-Bishop John Onaiyekan, has advised President Umaru Yar’Adua to prune the administration’s seven-point agenda to one.

Arch-Bishop Onaiyekan, who gave the advise during his visit yesterday to the Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, said the administration only needed to work on one point agenda which, according to him, is good governance.

He said, ”you cannot talk to a rural dweller about seven-point agenda, he will tell you that he is hungry but once there is good governance, the less-privileged will be happy.”
He noted that, though he had great hope for the future of Nigeria a lot still needed to be done.

I have high hopes for this country and my hopes are yet to be realised in this country.
“The seven-point agenda, some states even have 12 points agenda, but for me the agenda is very simple ‘good governance”.

One point agenda is enough and how this can be expressed in different ways is another matter.
“A government has to have a programme, that was why seven-point agenda was put in place, but at the end of the day, we are back to the same point.

“How do we rule this country in a way that the people of this country are looked after and the future generations are secured and today we can move around in peace and tranquility?

“How the government work the seven-point or 12 points,  for me, all these are just grammar. Most people in the village do not really understand what it means, but what everybody is asking for is simple daily means,” he stresed

On the Road Safety Marshal who returned N10 million he found on an accident victim, he said it was a normal thing for one to see money on accident victim and return such to the appropriate quarters though good things must be visible celebrated, just as those who are caught stealing should be publicly disgraced and punished.

According to him, “We have reached a stage where somebody does a right thing it becomes an issue, it is  nothing when you find money on an accident victim; you are supposed to return it.

“What is important is that this person must be visible be celebrated.”
Commending the Minister of Information and Communications for her rebranding campaign, he argued that the project was not that of the Federal Government alone but that of every Nigerian.

Akunyili commended Onaiyekan for his support for the rebranding campaign. She said stealing is an imported product, saying that it is not in the Nigerian tradition.

Said she: “I want you to know that stealing is not a tradition in Nigeria,  stealing, corruption, and 419, were  imported, it just that Nigerians are too smart, so they overtook those people that brought these vices into the country.”

But, in a traditional Igbo tribe stealing and embezzlement is a taboo in fact no matter how small the money you have stolen but the level of civilization has affected all these things.”