Hon. Ned Nwoko, Regina Daniels’ husband, has suggested things that must be put in place and well, ahead of the 2023 election. He was the guest lecturer at the 2021 Democracy Day lecture organized by the Correspondents’ Chapel of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Abuja.

The former House of Representatives member was at the National Assembly as the representative of Aniocha/Oshimili federal constituency, Delta State between 1999 and 2003.

The theme of the lecture is “Getting it Right ahead of 2023”. He points out that there are many things that need to be put in place ahead of 2023 election. He believes that they must be put in right perspective too.

He says there must be absolute autonomy for local government areas (LGAs) in the country. He condemns the current arrangement whereby states have joint accounts with their local governments and the LGAs receive less than their allocations from the federation account every month.

The second point he made is that state electoral bodies must be abolished because they are being controlled by the state governors.

He says that INEC must be given financial autonomy and be constituted by professional bodies like NBA, NUJ, NMA, etc. That is, these bodies should have representatives in the INEC. He suggests that tenures of such representatives should not be more than two years.

Hon. Nwoko suggests that there should be a national conference so that the people will be able to say how they want to be governed.

In conclusion he says multinational organization should stop paying their expatriate staff in foreign currency. And if they must be paid in foreign currency, it must be done through Nigerian banks and not in their countries. He also says that Nigerian senior staff of these companies should also be paid in foreign currency.

In his opening remarks at the event, the chairman of Correspondents’ Chapel, Philip Nyam thanks Hon. Nwoko for accepting to speak on the topic. He reminds journalist that Nwoko was among the team that negotiated debt forgiveness for Nigeria.