To curb incompetence, underperformance, and corruption among public servants in Nigeria, a transport expert and Managing Director/CEO of Widescope Limited, Dr. Segun Musa, has emphasised the need for deterrents.
Musa, who was speaking in an interactive session with JustNet News, in his office in Lagos, recently, advocated for short-term and long-term goals with consequences for failure, such as voluntary resignation or imprisonment, to ensure public servants show uprightness and commitment to their responsibilities in the office.
Passionate about the development and growth of the sector, Musa believes that deterrents will ensure accountability and prevent corruption in government offices.
Musa also decried the rate of non-technocrats in sensitive sectors of the economy saying that these lead to unhealthy policies that collapse the system. He described these as nothing but political compensations.
He stressed that technocrats should lead technical industries, particularly in the transport sector, which the economy because the economy is hinged on it.
In his words: “We have to set a target for whoever is going to superintend. We must have a short-term target and we must set a long-term target. If you fail the short-term target, you’ll be advised to resign. But probably they now give you the long-term target and you now fail, you go to jail.
“There must be deterrents in place. So when anybody is announced as a minister, people won’t start jubilating, because they know the implication. So if you’re appointed and people that want to come and influence you to cut corners; to do all kinds of unethical conduct, you’ll be able to tell them that, look, there’s a deterrent in place.
“If I fail to achieve this, and you people, you are around me, trying to tell me to do otherwise, I’m the one that will face the music. So if there is a deterrent factor in place, people will be able to stay tight. And if they don’t know if they are honest, they won’t even bother to take up the appointment.
“So what I’m I saying? “You have a target, you have a deterrent, and you are looking at the deterrent, you are looking at your target, and you know you can’t meet this target, you just resign immediately”.
Policy consistency and national interest are crucial in policy-making, according to Musa, as he highlighted the negative impact of policy somersaults on investments and emphasised the need for guarantees to protect investments from arbitrary government actions.
He was of the opinion that most of the policies designed in the country failed because they did not attend to our national interest, explaining that “the first thing to do, is to look at your national interest within the circumference of that particular sector.
“You look at where the foreign actors can participate. You look at where the indigenous actors, that we call local content, where they can participate. So there won’t be a conflict of interest.
“So you know the nationalities and the local content interests have been protected. Once you’re able to do that, and the policy drive is able to address that, everybody will know their limits. And investors will have confidence that once I take a loan, or I muscle my resources together and invest, the government will not come and truncate all my investment and rubbish everything”.
“And when there is no sustainable policy in place that will protect my investments, whatever I have to invest, I will divert it into something that will yield income for me immediately because I know another government will come and say, look, I’m not interested in this, go and cancel this, or go and do this. Because most of the projects that we do in the transport sector, we don’t have what we call agreement on favourable terms.
“So if there’s no agreement on favourable terms, it will be difficult for either indigenous or foreign investors to come and invest”, he explained further citing that somebody invested hugely in anchorage, safety and security and the minister came up and said who approved it?
“Something that has passed through legislation, the Presidency has approved, but because the President has left, another president has come in place, he just jettisoned it and cancelled it.
“And the investor has put a lot of resources into it. Do you think the foreign investors are looking at such an unorganised system? Will come and put his investment in such an environment where there’s no consistency in policy?
“So for us to have a sustainable system in place, we must have understanding with the state actors, with more of the civil servants and the government that look, if we’re investing, what guarantees safety and security of our investments? I will invest my future in an environment where the government will come tomorrow and say, look; that is the agreement with the last government because the government should be continuum.
“I’m not a politician; I’m not consulting with what the past government has done. I’m a business person; I’ve invested my future in this investment. So why must you come and truncate it at no fault of mine?