The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) on Thursday said the era of using governors as “punching bags’’ to score cheap political points in the country was over.
The Head, Media and Public Affairs at NGF Secretariat, Mr. Abulrazque Barkindo, stated this in a statement in Abuja.
He said the governors were signatories to an initiative, Open Governance Partnership (OGP), aimed at improving governance and promote transparency in governance.
Barkindo decried the “incessant attacks on state governors’’ by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, saying they were heating up the polity and raising concerns.
He recalled that Dogara recently tackled the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, where he challenged the governor to make public his salary and security votes “to which the governor obliged.”
“The governor had earlier demanded that the Speaker should come clean on the expenditures of the National Assembly but instead Dogara published N346.57 as his January take-home,’’ he added.
Barkindo said that it was obvious that the published amount was barely enough to fuel Dogara’s official motorcade for the period.
He cited another instance where the speaker also attacked the Governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Ibrahim, claiming that the state had no developmental projects to show for the governor’s two years of governance.
He said the governors wondered if Dogara was aware of the giant steps being taken by the current set of governors to improve the quality of governance and by implication the quality of life in Nigeria.
“Of course, governors are human and can therefore not be adjudged to be all perfect, but the governorship institution is an integral part of this democracy, just as the House of Representatives
“If the speaker continues in this path of disparaging governors, he may ultimately endanger this same democratic process that brought him national prominence.
“It may interest the speaker to note that at the last Governors’ Forum meeting of April 17, governors agreed to sign into the Open Governance Partnership (OGP).’’
“The key indices of the agreement include fiscal transparency, anti-corruption, access to information and citizen engagement,’’ Barkindo added.
NAN
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