President Muhammadu Buhari monday held the Peoples Democratic Party’s 16-year reign responsible for the nation’s prevailing economic woes and said the party failed to save for the rainy day.
“In the First Republic, more enduring infrastructure was built with meagre resources. But in the past 16 years, we made a lot of money without planning for the rainy day”, the President said at a reception for a delegation of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), led by its President, Dr. Bernard Aliyu, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
“We showed a lot of indiscipline in managing our economy, and that is why we are where we are today” President Buhari said firmly, promising, however, that his administration would do its best to turn things around.
The President’s views echoed in faraway Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, where Governor Abiola Ajimobi attributed the comatose state of the economy to the country’s failure to save for the rainy day during the oil boom.
President Buhari in his presentation to the ICAO delegation explained that the country witnessed a decline in the quality of infrastructure development in the last 16 years in spite of the boom in oil prices, adding that even the First Republic administration with its meagre resources achieved much more.
He regretted that the PDP governments failed to grow the economy with the all-time rise of crude oil sales that hovered around $100 per barrel. “We showed a lot of indiscipline in managing our economy, and that is why we are where we are today”.
President Buhari said Nigeria needed to grow beyond emphasising its potential and assured Nigerians that his administration would do its best to develop the economy beyond rhetorics.
Said the President, “Nigeria needs to work on her potential, so that we don’t remain permanently at the level of potential. If Ethiopia is sustained largely by her airline industry, we have greater potential here. But we must move out, engage with the rest of the world, as we need to re-establish the integrity of this country. We need to rebuild this country again”.
Speaking earlier, Aliyu, the Nigerian-born ICAO president, commended President Buhari for his commitment to fight corruption and urged Nigerians to stand with their president in the on-going war against graft.
He asked Nigeria to pay more attention to the development of civil aviation.
“Civil aviation is a catalyst for economic development. The level of aviation development in any country mirrors the economic development of that country”, he said.
The ICAO president also pledged to support the development of the aviation industry in Nigeria, urging the country to improve on training and capacity development, aviation security, aerodromes and air navigation, runways, control towers and terminal buildings.
In Ibadan, Governor Ajimobi took a cue from President Buhari and attributed the pervading economic woes besetting the country to past regimes’ failure to save for the rainy day during the oil boom, which, he said, was worsened by the neglect of agriculture.
He said: “We did not save for the raining day when there was oil boom in the country. We relied heavily on income from oil. But we have all been jolted into reality now that a barrel sells for all-time low of $30.
“Nigeria has depended so much on oil which has now lost its value at the international market. So we have to look for alternative sources of revenue which is through aggressive investment in agriculture”.
The governor spoke yesterday during the state’s Agriculture Initiative Stakeholders’ Consultative Forum, held at the House of Chiefs, Parliament Building in Ibadan and said the forum was aimed at involving stakeholders in his administration’s resolve to diversify the economy of the state through the exploration of aggressive, all-inclusive and sustainable agricultural value chain.
The forum was attended by royal fathers, including the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi; Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Saliu Adetunji; Baales; local government transition committee chairmen and other stakeholders in the 33 local council areas of the state.
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