Friday 15 February 2013

Hold Elite Responsible For Nigeria’s Woes — Buhari

CHUKS OHUEGBE

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.
 Leadership

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