Former Minister of Finance, Dr Kalu Idika Kalu said on Wednesday that Nigeria has the capacity to overcome its economic and social challenges with its abundant human and natural resources.
Kalu said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ohafia, Abia state.
He was speaking on the sideline of the 100th year of Nigeria’s nationhood following the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914.
``We should thank God that we have survived to this point as a conglomerate group of nationalities. So often we try to blame the British.
``We’ve had ups and downs but I think we should be humble enough we cannot blame God who designed all of these things.
``We should always ask ourselves what we did to move forward from where the design was handed to us.
``It is just plausible that Nigeria today with the conglomerate of wisdom, of skills, of energies, of talents that we should be way, way ahead of where we are today.
``We should be honest in identifying what were the problems.
``Yes, we have had major hiccups. We should thank God for having survived this long.
``We should think of why we were brought together as groups of nations,” he said.
Kalu expressed concern that successive administrations had failed to re-enact the feats that made Nigeria’s economy the envy of the Colonial Masters.
He said that the country which was potentially one of the brightest before and after the amalgamation in terms of human and natural resources had slid backward with the education sector the worst hit due to poor management.
``We have failed woefully in every sector. I am one of those that believe very strongly that with proper management we should have had the much stronger education system than we have.
``At the dawn of independence the quality was so good that some of us who travelled abroad after independence we went to America, went to Britain and people were impressed with the quality of the students that came from here.
``So we have to continue to rebuild the education to that level.
``We have to strive given the resources we have to make sure that every Nigerian wherever he may live has access to education free at least up to secondary school level and there will be bursary for those who cannot afford to pay at the higher level.
``And there should be scholarships for a lot of talents so that those who are really paying in full are very few and far between and they can be assisted with proper funding.
``What we have now where you have deplorable facilities at the tertiary level is a disaster, is a scandal for a country that has so many resources,” he said.
Kalu said that though poverty in the country was frightening, government had the capacity to address such challenges.
He urged government to make wise investments that would have direct impact on the lives of the populace.
``Poverty is not a function of gimmick projects. It’s a function of investing properly to develop the economy.
``That’s how the jobs come out and that’s how the incomes are improved to reduce poverty.
``Since we started talking about poverty alleviation that’s when we left doing the right thing to reduce poverty.
``We have to invest in agriculture; we have to invest in small, medium, large scale.
``We have to invest in mining of different source. We have solid minerals we have never exploited.
We have to invest in infrastructure such as roads, rails, waterways, airways. That’s the way you reduce poverty.
``You don’t reduce poverty by having gimmick thing.
``Some of it can help but cannot make a dent when you are talking about 80 million jobs or more for a population of 170 million.
``So I don’t believe in talking about poverty on its own as a separate issue from the growth of employment through the development of the real sector,” Kalu said.
-NAN
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