Nigerians Want Buhari to Focus on Oil and Gas, Police, Power
Iyobosa Uwugiaren
Nigerians across the country want President Muhammadu Buhari to focus his attention on five federal government agencies: the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Ministry of Health, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the Nigeria Police Force and Ministry of Power, in his anti-corruption crusade.
The vast majority of Nigerians (95 per cent) have also expressed their support for the president’s current campaign to fight corruption.
These are contained in a polling result conducted by NOIPolls Limited, a foremost organisation in Nigeria--offering polling services in the country, and in West Africa as a whole.
The group conducts periodic opinion polls and studies on various socio-economic and political issues in Nigeria.
The poll showed that Nigerians’ support for anti-corruption fight cut across gender, age and geographical divides of the respondents surveyed. In the same vein, a significant proportion of Nigerians (86 per cent) also want the president’s campaign against corruption to be channelled towards the public sector, most especially the oil and gas sector.
“As part of the procedures for the president’s anti-corruption campaign, some Nigerians (32 per cent) suggest the government should invest the recovered funds on job creation, with the majority of respondents in this category aged between 25-30 years (38 per cent),’’ the polling result released in Abuja yesterday.
“This comes as no surprise, considering the high rate of youth unemployment and underemployment in the country, which currently stands at 26.5 per cent for Q2 2015 as provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). In addition, 20 per cent of respondents were of the view that the recovered funds be invested in education, while 14 per cent suggested investments in agriculture amongst other sectors of the economy.’’
NOIPolls’ findings also revealed that Majority of Nigerians want life imprisonment as punitive measure for corrupt officials and individuals; even though some Nigerians believe due process should be taken to convict corrupt individuals and allowed to be punished according to the law, while steps should be taken to recover monies from corrupt individuals.