Clinton carpets Nigerian leaders for wasting resources
• Says poverty fuels
religious violence
United States former
President Bill Clinton yesterday blamed Nigerian leaders for squandering the
country’s resources. Adding that money realised from oil had been mismanaged.
Clinton, who spoke at the
18th Annual ThisDay Award for Teachers in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital,
noted that the country could have invested her earnings from oil in other
entrepreneurial endeavours rather than squandering it.
The former US president said
that Nigeria would be one of the greatest 10 countries of the world only if her
leaders could effectively manage her natural resources well in a way that would
reduce poverty across the land.
He noted that the future of
Africa depended on Nigeria and South Africa, but regretted that Nigeria had not
done well with her oil money.
“When I became president, my
Secretary of Commerce did a lot of work in Africa before he was tragically
killed in a plane crash in 1995 and I said he should make the list of the 10
most important countries in the world for the 21st century and Nigeria was in
the list. “Imagine the future of the entire continent if Nigeria fails or South
Africa fails.
So, you are a country of
potential,” he said. Clinton lamented the apparent inability of the country’s
leaders to harness the opportunities available for Nigeria to become great.
“I would say you have about
three big challenges. First of all, like 90 per cent of the countries who have
one big resource, you haven’t done well with your oil money. You should have
reinvested it in different ways; now you are at least not wasting the natural
gas, you are developing it in pipelines.
You don’t do a better job of
managing natural resources.” He advised policy makers in Nigeria to ensure that
they bring economic opportunities to those who did not have so as to reduce
poverty in the country.
Emphasising that the
revolution witnessed in the telecommunication industry has not been able to
reduce poverty and illiteracy, Clinton urged governments at all levels in
Nigeria to empower citizens with education and the needed capital so that they
could make a success of their individual lives.
He also charged Nigerian
leaders to harness the “staggering” intellectual and organisational ability in
the country which her citizens exhibit in every country of world where they are
immigrants and to bring such to bear at home in order that the country could
realise her potential for greatness.
“One of the people on my
trip with me today who unfortunately could not come up here because he had to
go visit his family is a young Nigerian-American named Nnamdi. He is an all
proquarter back footballer for the Philadelphia Eagles. He’s a wonderful man;
he does great work in America for poor kids in Arkansas City and he became a
friend of mine.
“His parents have PhDs, his
sister has a PhD; he often says ‘I’m the failure in my family and I only have a
university degree and I play football.’ My point is: there are Nigerians who
are like this all over the world.
“What you have to figure out
is how to keep those people in Nigeria and how to ensure their success leads on
into the rest of the country,” he said. Clinton also said that the country must
evolve a national policy that would make local governments tackle poverty at
the grassroots.
“Prosperity is heavily
concentrated in and around urban areas. So, you have all these political
problems and now violence problems, religious differences and all the rhetoric
of Boko Haram, but the truth is the poverty rate in the North is three times
greater than what it is in the Lagos area.
And to deal with that, you
have to have both powerful stake in the local governments and a national policy
that work together,” the former American president added. Clinton also said
that the country must do more to alleviate the extreme poverty in the North to
halt the wave of bombings, shootings and kidnappings by Islamic extremists. He
said that poverty remained the main driver for the attacks and needed to be
addressed by strong local and Federal Government programmes.
“You have to somehow bring
economic opportunity to the people who don’t have it. You have all these
political problems and now violence problems that appear to be rooted in
religious differences and the all the rhetoric of the Boko Haram and others,
but the truth is the poverty rate in the North is three times of what it is in
Lagos,” he said.
Clinton advised that Nigeria
must not take a “divide the pie” approach toward attacking poverty.
“That appeared to be a
subtle reference to the endemic corruption that envelopes government and
private industry in the country. It’s a losing strategy, the former president
said.
“You have to figure out a way to have a
strategy that will have share prosperity.” He advised Nigerian leaders to pay
more attention to agriculture and education of her citizens to be able to
actualise her potential on the African continent.
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