Nigeria's 2011 Elections: Let The Real Debate Begin

Looking forward to Nigeria's elections Charles Soludo contends that:

....we need answers to is how the candidates hope to reconstruct our public finance and put it back on the path of sustainability. How can they rein-in the obtuse and rapacious federal bureaucracy in particular, and the state bureaucracies, balance our budget during this period of oil boom, and yet spend at least 40% of the budget on capital expenditure as required by the Fiscal Responsibility Act? Personally, I am not convinced that we need more than 10 ministries and 10 ministers at the Federal level. They should explain to us their contingency plans in case oil price crashes tomorrow. Candidates should also let us know their views on, and framework for, borrowing (when to borrow, for what, and how it will be paid back?). Without clarity on these issues, much of the talk about government providing power/electricity and infrastructure on a sustainable basis will remain a joke as funding will always remain a binding constraint. In other words, candidates should tell us their plans to shrink the domain of the public sector to free resources to enlarge the domain of the private sector— to truly have a private sector-led, market economy. For example, I have always believed that company profit tax rate should not be more than 10% (down from the current 30% plus education tax of another 2%) especially at a period of oil price boom, and where the businesses provide their own infrastructure. For businesses to expand and create jobs, the tax rate needs to go down significantly. We need to debate this.