Bakare open up on CBN, NSA and State Policing

Bakare, who is one of the conveners of the Save Nigeria Group, in a an annual state of the nation broadcast held in his church headquarters in Lagos, said the CBN is currently causing the nation more harm than good.
He said, “To the discerning, the CBN currently contributes negatively to the Nigerian state in more ways than one. Firstly, the CBN has become a conduit for politicians to drain the nation. Otherwise, how can a letter of barely two paragraphs addressed to the current CBN governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, by the then national security adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), become the Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) leading to cash flow of $47 million and several millions of euros?“In decent climes, the CBN governor cannot continue in office while the NSA is accounting for his alleged misdeeds.
”The clergyman man, who tasked the President Muhammadu Buhari administration on its promise of change to Nigerians, said the change can only be realized if the citizenry keys into the vision of the government.“The buzzword in our nation today is “change”. It was perhaps the key word and message that brought President Muhammadu Buhari to power as he campaigned all over the country on APC’s platform.“Now that the election is over, it is incumbent upon us all, citizens and government, to do all in our collective power to ensure that we are not short-changed by the change we so desired and voted for.
“We the people, and those we put in power to serve our collective interests, must be willing to die to our inglorious past. We must expect and accept a clearly defined pathway to what we collectively desire to become. We must turn our backs on what used to be if we are ever to become something new. That is the secret to successful change. To settle for less that this is to short-change ourselves.“Let me state clearly here that I firmly believe that change is possible. And, much more, I am fully persuaded that Nigeria can and will change for the better.
“We need to change our governance structure. The present system is severely wasteful. Left as is, it will continue to generate as well as perpetuate a syndicate of scams and profligacy at all levels of government“ We need to change our ground norm by creating a true federal system of government while making the welfare and security of our people the raison d’être of government.
We need to change our cash and carry judicial and legislative systems.“Thus, in order to obtain the new, we must release a decaying system that has arrested our development and growth as well as created a very wide gulf between the opportunistic elitist rich and unfortunate poor among our citizens,” he said.
On national security, Bakare noted that though government is doing all within its power to combat terrorism, the task would have been easier if the country decentralized its security system.“Considering regional, geographical and cultural peculiarities, why not allow zonal coalitions of states to design and implement regional security strategies in conjunction with the federal government? “Why have we bought into the deceptive notion that the security of our nation will be hampered if we introduce policing at federal, regional, state and community levels?
He pointed to the successes recorded by the use of the Civilian JTF in the fight against Boko Haram as an instance.“The earlier we remove the legal bottlenecks in the way of achieving the maximisation of our local resources in this regard, the better our chances of defeating insurgents and terrorists in record time,” he said.