President of the Senate, Senator David Mark has said that the global economic crises rocking nations are reversible if ” we go back to the drawing board to formulate alternative and more sustainable and equitable development models”.
Senator Mark noted that the current model of development has been overhyped by its over-emphasis on the economy, at the expense of other local variables of human development.
Addressing the 128th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), titled “from unrelenting growth to purposeful development, new approaches, new solutions”,holding in Quito, Ecuador yesterday, Senator Mark told the World body that ” it is our sincere and humble suggestion that local factors must be injected into the model to make the development meaningful and realistic”.
According to him, “this new model must be all inclusive and not just about economics of advanced democracies. It must include social factors that are important aspects of our culture.
I have never heard of bail out for any emerging or young democracy. Yet, what we need to bail out all developing countries is less than 50 per cent of what is given to one nation today”.
The leader of the Nigerian delegation to the Assembly stressed that development should be about increasing life expectancy, improving health care, providing education for all, poverty reduction, improved nutrition, peace, healthy life styles and diets, clean drinking water and sanitation as well as protecting the environment.
By doing so, he added that “we not only meet our current challenges but also safeguard the rights of future generations.
“Development should be bottom-up and not top-down. To ignore knowledge systems and impose outside models on developing countries is surely a recipe for disaster”.
National policies, he emphasized should not be driven by only global economic conditions but also by local factors.
Senator Mark told the crowded audience that the Nigerian Parliament is committed to this model of growth that is purposeful and has human face, adding, ” We are vigorously encouraging all sector development, promoting indigenous knowledge and making our system more transparent”.
He assured that the Nigerian Parliament will continue to promote people centered development through good and representative governance, saying that “there is good governance only when there is rule of law”.
