By Ada Okafor
The former Governor of Anambra State and Vice Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019, Mr Peter Obi, has reiterated his popular thesis that tangible development will continue to elude Nigeria until it finds solutions to the wastage of public funds and high cost of governance at all levels.
Obi made the declaration to the participants of Course 4, Strategic Management and Policy, at tge Nigerian Army Resource Centre in Abuja.
He told his audience, comprising of retired Generals and serving top brass of the Army, various security agencies and paramilitary organizations that growth and progress will not happen in Nigeria, as long as we maintain the quantum of wastes in the public service.
He stressed that Nigerian leaders must strive to create public wealth, rather than focus on accumulating private wealth while in office.
“Public wealth enriches everybody, but private wealth impoverishes the people and the nation” he said.
According to Obi, the core of Nigeria’s challenges is leadership of its political class.
He stressed that until our leaders commit to good governance and responsible management of public resources, the right policies will not be put in place to serve public good.
Earlier, the Director General of the NARC Maj-Gen Garba Wahab (rtd.) welcomed Obi to the Centre for the third year in a row, to address participants on leadership and strategic management issues.
He explained the goals of NARC, as well as the Centre’s reason for occasionally bringing in civilians to interact with Course Participants.
It was immediately after Obi was introduced by the Lead Faculty for the Strategic Management and Policy Course, Dr Okey Ikechukwu, that Obi who held his audience spellbound with his experiences as governor and how he managed to get the resources he used in achieving the much he did, saying: “Whether we agree or not, failure of leadership is taking a huge toll on us as a nation and it could be worse if we do not put the right and committed people incharge of the affairs of critical sectors. Education, health and provision of basic infrastructure were my main goals and I was able to record success because we planned our programs using a universally certified development formula”.
Obi described as disheartening the recourse to owe pensioners and going about wasting money on useless social projects stressing that “owing people at the most difficult times when the opportunities are less is the worse thing to do to them.
He reiterated his repeated public observation that borrowing is not bad in itself when it is for production.
“But that is becomes bad when it’s for consumption; which is another way of mortgaging the future of the country”.
On revenue generation, Obi said that expecting to generate more revenue without doing much to improve on the people’s lives is like expecting to withdraw more money in an account you have not been depositing on. He pointed out that less than 40, out of the eligible 120 million Nigerians gainfully employed. Even then, the few working Nigerians are over taxed.
