From Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
Gombe State Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya on Thursday called on the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) to develop implementable strategies to solve developmental challenges in the country.
The governor said that Nigeria has no reason to be left behind in midst of developed countries such as China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil, he argued that the country was left behind due to its lack of visionary and purposeful leadership that would prioritise development as done by leaders in China and others.
Governor Yahaya stated this during a visit to his office by a team of the Executive Course 44 of the NIPSS. He told the team which was in Gombe to access local governance and performance in the state that the local system in Nigeria was rotten and needed an honest approach to be addressed.
He said: “You have come to study our local governments principally and I believe you have seen the rots, but I know you will do justice to what you have seen, but all I will ask you to do is to, when you make up your report, please take them on side of implementation.
“Don’t just go and file them and stock them somewhere else. We know our problems better than anybody, but we need to relate, tell us the truth so that we will rectify, but be on the side of justice, make sure you recommend proper implementation,” the governor said.
He further explained that the lack of implementation of recommendations has been a major challenge in addressing issues in the country. He said: “That has been the bane and part of the problems of this country. The reports are there, but the results are really not showing and are taking us backwards.
“At this point in time we need to prioritise, compare to China, Nigeria is about one over ten of China size equally in population we are about one 10th of China, in terms of resource both human and natural we are in a better place than China but where is China today, China has been on the part of progress because they are prioritising, they are pursuing and they are working day and night to actualise.
But here are we in Nigeria, instead of prioritising productivity we are more on the consumption side, we can’t consume what we don’t produce and still stay afloat without going to the negative side of the balance,” Governor Yahya while urging NIPSS to help the government in developing true means challenges in Nigeria.
He said: “Think inward and think outward too, produce the result but make sure we get the people that can do the work as we do the talking and thinking.”
Meanwhile, the leader of the visiting NIPSS team in Gombe, Dr Emmanuel Sambo Mamman, assured the institute was working on developing a document with strong implementation strategies for the federal government to use in pulling the local governments out of the woods and perform better.
He explained that the federal government had identified a critical problem in the local government system and tasks his group to go and access the situation with a view to strengthening local governance in Nigeria. “With the emphasis on the challenges, the options and the opportunities,” Mamman told newsmen shortly after meeting with the Gombe State governor.
He said: “Now we have in Gombe, we have been in four local government areas and we have seen what is happening there, some local governments are not doing bad while some are not actually good at all and we are going to report exactly what we have seen and make our recommendations to the president.
“We shall do our best to ensure that we bring out strong recommendations and very strong implementation strategies that will help not only Gombe State but the local governments to come out of the woods and perform better,” the team leader said while assuring that the report dumped in shelf and not implemented.