Former head of state and presidential
flag-bearer of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the April
general election General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) has attributed the country’s current woes to the elite who, he said, should be held responsible for whatever goes wrong.
Speaking yesterday in Abuja at a one-day conference on “Development from Global Perspectives: Agriculture Versus Oil and Gas” organised by Muregi Associates and the LEADERSHIP Newspaper Group, Buhari said that strong institutions in the country have been destroyed by strong people.
He said: “Nothing is working in Nigeria
today because of irresponsible elite. We have to talk to the elite. They
are responsible for the sharing of the national cake. If anything
happens they are to be held responsible.
“It was the strong people that destroyed
the strong institutions we inherited from the British. They left us
with accountability. We need strong people to retake these institutions
to make them work.”
In his remarks on the occasion, the minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, said that military intrusion into the nation’s governance in 1966 destroyed the emergence of a national elite.
“In Nigeria, people believe more in the regions, instead of the centre. We need a new movement for the integration of the country,” the Information minister said.
On the belief that Nigerians are
corrupt, the minister said that there is a co-relation between the
so-called corrupt Nigerians and the trans-Atlantic companies that aid
the act.
Corroborating the views of the minister, one-time national chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Audu Ogbeh, said that some expatriate companies operating in the country aided corruption.
Ogbeh cited the construction of the second runway at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja that was quoted to cost N64 billion by an expatriate construction company, an amount that could build four brand new airports.
“So, when we are called corrupt, we accept guilty as charged. How about those who aid this corruption?” Ogbeh queried.
In his lead paper entitled “Corruption,
Governance and Development”, Professor Francis Fukuyama identified weak
state, high degree of ethnic/ religious fragmentation and petro-state liabilities as the sources of Nigeria’s institutional underperformance.
Fukuyama, who lectures at the Centre on
Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Stanford University,
California, in the United States of America, also described Nigeria as a
“limited access order” as politics is a route to wealth instead of
entrepreneurship.
He said that there is the need to diversify from energy, noting that oil has been a curse.
A panacea, according to him, is investing in electricity and infrastructure.
Fukuyama, the renowned author of The End
of History and the last man, said that the accounting system requires
transparency and disciplining mechanisms and the need to implement
Freedom of Information law.
He added that agencies should publish
flow of funds on a monthly basis, while grassroots monitoring should be a
possibility through technology.
In his paper entitled “Agriculture and oil and gas: A synergy for economic transformation in Nigeria”, Chief Audu Ogbeh said that the country failed to use the black gold to develop the green gold, namely, agriculture
“So, we turn to imports, which is where
the calamity comes. We expend at least $10 billion on food imports
annually. On wheat - $4.23 billion; rice - $2.32 billion; milk - $1.5
billion, not to mention cookies and biscuits, fruit juice concentrates,
tomato paste, salt, palm oil, starch, ice cream powder, vegetable oils.
The list is endless.
The question is: how long can we survive this onslaught of imports?” Ogbeh asked.
The occasion, also had in attendance
other eminent personalities including the United Nations
under-secretary, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, former vice chancellor of the University of Abuja Professor Nuhu Yaqub, former minister of FCT Dr. Modibbo Umar, and former minister of sports Barrister A. H. Gimba.
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