BY Taye Obateru

Jos—Former Minister of State for Information and Communication under late President Umaru Yar’Adua, Alhaji Ibrahim Nakande, has said the excesses of state governors must be checked for democracy to take a firm root in the country.

He told Vanguard in an interview on the 13th anniversary of the return of democracy in the country that governors remained a major impediment to democratic culture permeating the grassroots, accusing them of theft of public funds.

Nakande said: “Governors are practically stealing from the electorate. Most of them do not have the moral high ground to be in the offices they are occupying because all the elections that we have had in this country were marred by various malpractices.

“They are not just stealing, but they are also practically turning the constitution of Nigeria upside down. They are tampering with local government funds, they are trampling on the rights of even members of the houses of assembly in their oversight functions.”

Nakande, who noted that corruption had eaten deep into the fabric of the nation’s ethos, urged the National Assembly to use the planned review of the constitution to address some of the problems besetting the polity.

He said: “I pray that the National Assembly will have the political will to do what is necessary. We need to look at the independence of the electoral process, especially at the local government level so that we can have an independent arbiter to conduct elections so the electorate can truly elect leaders of their choice.”

He said while it was okay to assess President Goodluck Jonathan’s first year in office, which he said was not very inspiring, “it’s not just about Jonathan but also the other tiers of government. Governors have majority of the people under them but we keep talking about the Federal Government alone. We need to beam the
searchlight more on the governors.”