Former Imo State Governor, Senator Rochas Okoroacha has charged President Muhammadu Buhari to do away with incompetent aides by adopting the “hire and fire” mechanism to governance to move the nation forward and deliver the much needed dividends of democracy.
He said the wheel of progress of the country could be better enhanced when competent and qualified Nigerians are made to man strategic positions.
The lawmaker who represent Imo West Senatorial District spoke while hosting members of the Integrity Group of the Non- National Working Committee of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in his office at Abuja.
According to him: “I must say here that what works in most developed countries is hire and fire which brings discipline in the system.
“There is nothing as bad as persons who occupy government positions and are not working but are kept for sentiment basis.
“They should be fired to create room for those who can perform. There is nobody on earth who is Alpha and Omega, if you can’t do the job, be sure that someone can do it.
“But when you know you can’t be fired if you messed up, you tend to mess up the more. So, I suggest that our party should begin the issue of hire and fire. That is why I commend the decision to remove the leadership of APC.
“That is how it should go, if you can’t do the job we show you the way out. I will urge our party, the APC, under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari imbibe the spirit and fire so that people can sit up and do the right thing.”
Okoroacha also called on the leadership of the party to, as a matter of urgency, return the party to how things were at the formation stage.
He lamented the continuous loss of APC traditional states to the opposition – Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) especially with the recent loss of Edo should not be allowed to continue.
The lawmaker also frowned at the complete absence of the party in the South South zone, blaming this on the leadership of the party for neglecting founding fathers of the party.
“We no longer have what I term as collective responsibility, rather we have selfish responsibility where leaders are busy thinking the next election and what positions they can occupy instead of thinking about the dividends of democracy as it should affect the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“We therefore come back to the root of the problem in our party because the very people who worked for the success of the party, are the ones that have been neglected, rather, those who came yesterday have taken over. This is why there is so much anger from the ward level to the national.
“Those who have been empowered, have refused to empower others from the ward to the national level. The issue of empowerment is empower one person so that he can empower others but those who have been empowered now have new friends and neglected the foot soldiers and at the end of the day, it is President Muhammadu Buhari that takes the brunt.
‘”This is why I advise that we go back to the drawing board and some of this laudable projects should be extended to the party, I do not see any ward chairman and his 26 members who cannot farm under the anchor-borrower program. So, policies of our government are just hanging and do not get to the grassroot. Owners of our party are not participating in the running of the party.”
