If this new ADC coalition wants Nigerians to take it seriously, it should publish a policy document which looks something like this with a promise to implement all these ideas within four years if elected

Ayo Akinfe

[1] With effect from October 1 2025, we will begin the process of dismantling the federal allocation regime and begin the process of returning to the agreement reached at the 1958 London Constitutional Conference. Resource distribution will end up looking like this by 2050: States - 50%, federal government - 20%, geo-political zone - 15%, common fund - 15%

[2] We will immediately scrap government subsidies on all religious pilgrimages. If you want to go to Saudi Arabia or Israel, you are on your own

[3] We will scrap all government payments to traditional rulers. If any community wants a monarch, they must find ways to fund it themselves

[4] We will give the evangelical churches an annual investment target of $50bn. They are sitting on a Pentecostal Pot of Gold and must invest that money in infrastructure, job creation and manufacturing. If they do not, we will tax that money at an 80% rate and invest it as a government

[5] Muslim clergymen will be told they must match whatever investment the pentecostal movement comes up with. If the evangelicals invest $60bn in the Nigerian economy, by law, the imams will also be compelled to also invest $60bn worth of Islamic Finance invested in our economy

[6] Our agricultural boards will be given production targets for cash and food crops like cocoa, rubber, palm oil, cashews, coconuts, groundnuts, ginger, shea nuts, kolanuts, bananas, pineapples, yam, cassava, millet, sorghum, gum arabic, papaya, coco yams, etc. In all these areas, we must become the world’s undisputed number one producer. At the moment, the only area where we are that dominant is in yam as we control 70% of world production

[7] Our government will refuse to import products from industrialised countries that refuse to invest at least $5bn a year in Nigeria. For too long, we have been a dumping ground for their finished products

[8] We will send a bill to the National Assembly to introduce laws making it compulsory for every state contract with a foreign company to carry a caveat that they open a production facility in Nigeria to produce the goods they are selling us

[9] We will send a bill to the National Assembly on fair wages. This would link the pay of all politicians to a grade in the civil service and under it, no public servant will earn more than four times the minimum wage

[10] We will also send a value added bill to the National Assembly under which it will be illegal to export raw and primary commodities. Everything we sell must have at least 50% value added to it before it is exported

ayoakinfe@gmail.com