A former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, has said that it was wrong to blame President Muhammadu Buhari or any single person for the problems in the country, which he described as a result of cumulative years of leadership failure for which the entire political class is guilty.
Mr. Obi stated this in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, on Saturday during the 2017 Independence anniversary lecture at the Akanu-Ibiam International Conference Centre where he was a guest lecturer.
The former governor spoke on the topic, “Change and changing Nigeria through harnessing of investment potentials of Ebonyi State: yesterday, today and tomorrow”. He expressed regret that the countries with the same growth trajectory as Nigeria in the eighties have all overtaken the country in all indices of development.
The former governor blamed the recent rise in agitation by youth across the country, especially the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), as a result of the poor leadership of the past administrations in Nigeria, saying that the political class, including himself, was guilty.
Obi said that whether Nigeria was “out or in of” recession, the fact remained that a lot still needed to be done by the leaders. He called on the country to embrace the Sustainable Development Goals.
According to him, “Nigeria should queue into Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), not in signature. The country is there in signature and it is the only country that got involved in Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and did not achieve one goal because as soon as we signed the signature, we threw it away and came here and started doing things wrongly.
“China put MDGs in their developmental agenda, they mainstreamed it in their developmental agenda and they are targeting to lift 16million people out of poverty but I don’t know how many people Nigeria will lift in the next 10 years because there is no such measurable goals, everything is done in confusion,” he said.
“Our reserve is weak today and we are not talking about savings rather we are borrowing more. He said no country succeeds by such Epicurean life.”
Obi thanked Governor Umahi for what he is doing in Ebonyi State and urged him continue to tell the people he is ruling the truth, adding that the people will trust and believe him the more.
Concluding, Obi called on leaders of Nigeria to be alert at the dynamics in the world, especially the shift from baggage to knowledge economy. His words: “We are moving from baggage economy to knowledge economy. So, the country should stop dwelling on solid minerals because it is a baggage economy and nobody lives with it. This is what Nigeria is doing and we are still talking about oil which is already destined to finish one day.”
