By Henry Uche
A former Minister of Finance, Olusegun Aganga, has attributed Nigeria’s socioeconomic woes and underdevelopment over the years to dearth of strong institutions and weak governance and lack of Political Will on the side of government at all tiers to do the right thing at the right time and place.
Aganga who was also former Minister of Industry Trade and Investment made this known at a forum Titled “The Conversation” organised by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN).
“The Conversation’’ is an 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.
Aganga, who pointed out some achievements recorded by the nation since independence as “cases of isolated success”, lamented that Nigeria was not where it ought 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 stakeholders to rededicate themselves by embracing some core ethical values and norms which he described as inevitable to nation building, Political stability, progress and development.
He 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 socioeconomic potentialities.
Speaking on the theme of the program “National Planning, Governance and Economic Growth, Charting the road for the future” Aganga said, “We are not where we want to be. Look at our revenue, it is not diversified. It is still over 90 per cent foreign income from one source; which is oil.
“More so, the quality of revenue is very poor and small as it is still subject to the volatility of the oil price in the international oil market. The debt service to revenue ratio today is about 83 per cent and as you can see, that is very bad.
He maintained that 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, the Chief host- President/Chairman of Governing Council of ICSAN, Mr. Bode Ayeku, briefly noted 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.
Ayeku said “If you look at the theme of this program you will notice that there are three concepts embedded in the theme: The National Planning, Governance and Economic Prosperity. The three concepts are interrelated in the sense that if you put a national plan in place, you have to put governance behind it to drive actualization and if you get the governance right it will lead to economic prosperity.
“But if there is no proper planning and no good governance this will definitely lead to economic challenges as we are seeing it today. So we need to strive to connect these three concepts together to achieve our desired economic prosperity as a nation.
“This Program shall continue as we strive to trash issues affecting the nation like economic problems, insecurity and governance challenge etc. Our focus is to rub minds to find solutions to these problems,” he added.