Skip to main content

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo-Nigeria's Situation Requires Common Efforts

             Nigerian Former President Olusegun Obasanjo

Nigeria’s situation beyond party politics – Obasanjo. Mr Obasanjo said Nigeria has lost direction in nation-building and solutions cannot be provided by any individual except common efforts.

According to the Premium Times, Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday said the nation’s current degenerating situation is “beyond party politics and requires all hands to be on deck”.

He said the country has lost direction in nation building, insisting that: “As long as we don’t get it right in nation building, we cannot get anything right in this country”.

Mr Obasanjo made the remarks as the special guest of honour at Babcock University’s 20th undergraduate and 11th postgraduate convocation lecture.

The guest lecturer, Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor of the CBN, spoke on the theme; “Knowledge, Vision, Passion and Innovation in the Context of Nigeria’s Development.”

                           Kingsley Moghalu

The event was held at the university’s amphitheatre in Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State.

Mr Obasanjo noted that the situation in Nigeria has become so precarious that “no individual can say he or she has a solution to the problems.”

Moghalu harps on innovation

During his lecture, Mr Moghalu noted that the solution to Nigeria’s dire economic situation and foreign exchange crisis is to scale up innovation. He said such intervention can “break the Nigerian economy’s structural dependency as an import- and consumer-driven one.”

He said: “Innovation-driven economies remain competitive, adapting to the needs of the future, while natural resource-dependent economies such as ours risk being left behind by global and market trends and thus condemning our citizens to poverty.

"Nigeria has a national policy in science, technology, and innovation. The federal government has several technology and innovation-related agencies, but these public sector efforts have not yielded any innovation-driven impact on Nigeria’s economy.”

Mr Moghalu, who is now the President of the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation (IGET), spoke on his presidential campaign in the 2019 election, and how he proposed the establishment of a N500 billion initial capital fund for innovation and start-up businesses, to be managed by the private sector.

“For an innovation-powered economy to rise in Nigeria, we must create a social consensus. Innovation and its practical applications in society must be popularised, and specific conscious awareness of it as a prime path to Nigeria’s development,” he added.

Knowledge society

Mr Moghalu also explained that “to secure our future as a country, Nigeria must increasingly become a knowledge society.”

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says that knowledge societies are those with the capability to identify, produce, process, transform, disseminate, and use the information to build and apply knowledge for human development.

Speaking further, Mr Moghalu said the wealthiest countries in the world such as Japan, Switzerland, and South Korea, have no natural resources but they have the 

knowledge to import Nigeria’s natural resources to produce sophisticated products.

He explained that the countries have built a knowledge economy, defined “as one in which intellectual property – knowledge and information systems that drive an ever-increasing pace of scientific and technological advances – is the basis of production and services.”

Mr Moghalu also suggested restructuring as a solution to Nigeria’s economic development because the institutional arrangement where the majority of states depend on the federal government for allocations from natural resource revenues to pay workers’ salaries and provide basic services has had profoundly negative implications for Nigeria’s economy.

News Source: Premium Times


Comments

Post a Comment

Type your comments here

Popular posts from this blog

23 children and 54 Others Camped In A Church, In Ondo State, Rescued By The Police

The Ondo State Police Command said a total of 77 people were found locked in the basement of a church; Whole Bible Deliverance Church located at Valentino Area of Ondo town, Ondo State, reports the Punch News. The police said that the victims comprised 23 kids and 54 others including teenagers and adults, males and females. It was alleged that the victims were kidnapped and kept in the underground apartment of the church for over six months before they were rescued. The church’s pastor and some other members are currently in the custody of the command while the police had begun investigation into the matter In a one-minute, 40 seconds video, a voice was heard saying, “There are kidnapped children found in the underground cell of a church in Valentino Area of Ondo. The pastor and some members of the church have been arrested and were also in the police patrol van.’’ One of the parents of the rescued victims, Mr Michael Olorunyomi, said that he left the church because of alleged wrong Bi...

Britain-ASDA Slashes Prices On Rice, Pasta And Baked Beans

Asda slashes prices on pasta, rice and baked beans to help ‘millions’ of Britain’s poorest families. Following a successful campaign by anti-poverty blogger and budget chef Jack Monroe, Asda has slashed the prices of hundreds of kitchen staples, helping "millions" of Brits. Last month Monroe, a former food bank user, urged supermarkets to make their cheapest food ranges more widely available after highlighting the inflation in key products such as rice and the removal of value ranges from the shelves in her local Asda in Essex. Her Twitter thread warning that official inflation figures "grossly underestimated" the impact of the current cost of living crisis on Britain's poorest families went viral and generated a media storm. In response, on Monday (February 7) Asda committed to stocking its full Smart Price and Farm Stores ranges in all of its stores and online. On Saturday (February 12), three and a half weeks after her viral Tweets, the campaigner, who has be...

INEC-N305bn Required To Conduct 2023 Elections

On Monday 20th December, 2021, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), through its Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu says the commission will require N305 billion to conduct the 2023 general elections. The INEC Boss, made this known in a statement during a meeting with the Senate Committee on Appropriation at the National Assembly. This amount will facilitate the electoral process by aiding the commission to prepare for the election. It will go a long way to assist in the purchase of all the election materials needed and also cover several bye-elections across the country. The INEC Chairman noted however that the commission has already received N100 billion out of the required amount for the elections. The National Assembly is yet to receive a letter from President Muhammad Buhari on his decision to give or withdraw his assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill. The 30-day deadline stipulated by the constitution for the President to respond to the bill expired on Sunday...