Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State believes the
oil wealth accruing to the country constitutes a major obstacle to
Nigeria’s ability to think and innovate its way out of underdevelopment.
He wishes the oil wells and the ‘free money’ there from dry up so
that the government and the people can get serious about making the
country realize its full potentials.
el-Rufai spoke yesterday in Ibadan at the 2017 Town Hall Meeting/
Founder’s Day Celebration in memory of renowned economist, Professor
Ojetunji Aboyade.
He also made a fresh case for state policing, and warned against
allowing the federal character policy become an enemy of merit in
appointments.
The governor who was the special guest of honour at the event said:
“Because Nigeria gets easy money from oil, the nation has lost its
thinking initiative on how to develop other sources of revenue and
diversify the economy.
“We get easy money, we do not collect taxes and our taxes are six per
cent of Gross Domestic Product; that is an average of 21per cent. We
stop respecting the intellectuals that we have in our universities
because we get easy money.
“This is very sad, I wish the oil will dry up so that we can begin to
use our brains because we have stopped using our brains and we have
stopped respecting intellects because of easy money.
On policing, he said: “It is obvious that Nigeria is severely
under-policed, and will require more personnel, intelligence assets,
better training, technology and equipment for its security agencies for
the country to be a credible guarantor of security.
“Even if these were to be available, it is also debatable whether a
single centralised policing system, structure and staffing for 200
million citizens is viable in a diverse, multi-lingual, multi-cultural
and multi-ethnic nation like Nigeria.”
He also addressed the issue of federal character, saying: “To
complement the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals, we must
have discourse around the imperative of a project dedicated to enabling
equal opportunity so that the circumstances of a citizen’s birth don’t
prescribe his or her ceiling in life.
“How can we promote a national subscription to meritocracy? How can
we ensure that the imperative of reflecting federal character does not
become the enemy of merit and quality of appointments? Today, we don’t
plan. We don’t have national plan and if we don’t plan, we are planning
to fail.
“Having suffered brain drain, how do we attract back our Diaspora and
the brain-gain associated with it like the Chinese and Indians have
witnessed? These are the questions a distributive mentality around easy
oil revenues is dodging.
“The earlier the oil dries up the better for our national ability to
think, be innovative and respect intellect and academic achievement.
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