Chairman of the Transition Committee instituted by President Muhammadu Buhari to interface with former President, Goodluck Jonathan’s team for smooth takeover of government, Malam Ahmed Joda has advised Nigerians to be ready of effect of corruption perpetrated by previous administrations as the scourge is highly pervasive in the system, Daily Trust reports. He noted in an exclusive interview that “There is no department, no ministry that can be said to be free of corruption. There is nowhere that fraud does not take place on a daily basis. It has become embedded in the minds of the people because the rule books have been thrown away and everybody is doing what they like. Nobody follows the rules anymore”.
Wondering what would have been the fate of Nigerian had President Goodluck Jonathan won the March 28 election, he said, “It would have been more difficult for them to face the challenge because they had been telling people that everything was good; the roads are good. They were not talking about the absence of light in the house, but they were talking about the capacity to produce electricity is 12,000 megawatts out of which only 5,000 could be released.
“But even out of this 5,000 at the time they were doing the handing over notes only 1,300 megawatts were being generated, but they were talking about 35,000 kilometers of distribution lines and so on, but nobody told us the real problem – that there is no gas, or there is no capacity to transmit the electricity that could be generated; that even when it is delivered at the point of distribution the distribution system is so weak that it can’t take it. I personally didn’t know that until I got into this exercise”.Giving further insight into some of thingshis team experienced in the course of the assignment, Joda, who earlier served as chairman of the 1979 transition committee of Shagari, said “We were told at the beginning of the exercise that the government was in deficit of at least N1.3 trillion and by the end people were talking about N7 trillion; everything is in a state of collapse. The civil service is bloated and the military and police, if you are a Nigerian, you know what they have been facing for a long time; everywhere is in a mess and these things have to be fixed. “Now back to your question about the delay of appointment of ministers and other key officials. These are large numbers of people; in my experience as a civil servant one of the most difficult tasks is to get a list of names to appoint to existing appointments. Buhari, as a politician, knows a large number of people but not intimately.
“They have come and joined the political party in which there is Buhari and his knowledge of them can only be superficial. The only people he will know intimately are his friends, his relations and colleagues at work. But when you are forming a cabinet the Constitution says the entire country must
be represented,” he said.
