A two- time minister in Nigeria, Olusegun Aganga, has attributed Nigeria’s socioeconomic woes and underdevelopment over the years to dearth of strong institutions and weak governance at all tiers of government-federal, state and local.
Aganga, former Minister of Finance as well as former Minister of Industry Trade and Investment, said this recently while speaking as a guest on a programme called “The Conversation” organised by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN)
“The Conversation’’ is a new advocacy program of the Institute centered around Governance and contemporary national issues to enlighten, educate and share knowledge with policy makers in the public and private sectors and members of the public.
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Aganga, who pointed out some achievements recorded by the nation since independence as “cases of isolated success”, lamented that Nigeria was not where it was supposed to be in terms industrial advancement and economic development. He therefore tasked the political leaders, governance practitioners in both the public and private sectors and other stakeholders to rededicate themselves by embracing some core ethical values and norms which he described as inevitable to nation building, pollical stability, progress and development.
Aganga provided unflattering macroeconomic statistics on the nation’s debt gearing, Gross Domestic Product and unemployment to prove the point that Nigeria had not realized its full socio-economic potentials.
Speaking on the theme of the programme “National Planning, Governance and Economic Growth, Charting the road for the future” Aganga said, “We are not where we want to be. If you look at our revenue, it is not diversified. It is still over 90 per cent foreign income from one source; that is oil.
“Furthermore, the quality of the revenue is very poor as it is still subject to the volatility of the oil price in the international oil market. If you look at the size of the revenue, it is still very small. The debt service to revenue ratio today is about 83 per cent, and as you can see, that is very bad. By comparison, the debt service to revenue ratio in UK is just 1.9 per cent.
“GDP per capital is only 19 per cent. The level of unemployment is very high. There are about 87 million people in absolute poverty and that is about 41 per cent of our population.
“The basis of our problem revolves around weak Institutions, Governance and Leadership. It is down to poor development and implementation of our national plans.
“Having mineral resources in the soil does not make you rich as a nation. What makes you rich is what you do with them, that is the value you add to them. Unfortunately, we are still struggling with that. That is why we have not diversified the economy.
“We need to do more to have value-based leadership. We need to have strong institutions. Our students need to learn leadership values right from the primary schools, through to the secondary schools to the universities. Upon leaving school they should attend leadership institutes”
Also speaking at the forum as the Chief Host, the President and the Chairman of the Governing Council of the ICSAN, Bode Ayeku, briefly highlighted the contributions the Institute had made to the socioeconomic development of Nigeria over the years.
Ayeku added that the Institute would continue to contribute its quota to national progress by guiding the policy direction both in the public and private sectors through well-articulated and pragmatic recommendations on governance matters.
