Andy Ekugo
24 January 2007
Abuja — The Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, yesterday called for the involvement of more professionals in Nigerian politics as a way of moving the country forward, stressing that most career politicians are not issue-driven.
Udoma made this call yesterday in Abuja during his lecture at the 13th John Wood Ekpenyong Memorial Lecture with the theme, 'The Role of Professionals in Improving the Quality of Governance in Nigeria" organised by the Nigerian Institution Of Real Estate Surveyors And Valuers.
Decrying the nonchallant attitude of most professionals in Nigeria towards politics, Udoma charged that unless people take "activist interest in politics and how we are governed", purposeful leadership would evade Nigeria as a nation because "governance is too important to be left fo professional politicians".
He described a professional as one with skills and expertise, possessing ethical values, independent and committed to public service, having proper education and legitimised authority.
According to him, "Any true professional possessing these qualities particularly, high ethical values, proper education as well as a habit of independent thinking, would have a useful role to play in politics". This, he said, is the particular case with Nigeria due to "very poor quality of governance" in the country.
Observing that good governance was imperative for economic development, he said that the World Bank, which proffered six indicators of quality governance, is of the view that when governance is improved by one standard deviation, income rise about three-fold and infant mortality declines by two thirds.
The indicators, he continued, include voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. He regretted however that in spite of the efforts of the present government at providing good governance, the latest worldwide governance indicators released by the World Bank in September 2006, ranked Nigeria below average for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in all categories of quality governance.
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