Nigeria may go the way of Rwanda, Congo DR, says Ezekwesili

A former Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has said that Nigeria may go the way of Rwanda or Democratic Republic of Congo if government did not address the festering political and economic crisis facing the people.

She stressed that the problem with the country was not technical but “governance failure.”

Ezekwesili, who spoke at a podium organised by the African Heritage Institution, Enugu, with the theme “Nigeria: The Economics of Failure,” said that the fundamental problem facing Nigeria was not the political structure but the failure of the ruling elite to deliver good governance to the people.

According to her: “The obsession with politics is a divisionary strategy of the ruling class every time which favours the rapacious elite to distract the suffering masses with politics.

“Nigeria presently is not sustainable. Something radically different must happen. Political restructuring will not solve our problems because the content will remain the same and the outcome this time around will be disastrous. We need economic governance as the basis for any political grouping the country may need.

“For Nigeria to survive, it must overthrow the existing order, especially the 57-year-old political class and entrenched pattern. We need world-class human capital not a nation of global trolls.

“We can’t continue to allow a few people who have hijacked our government to decide our fate, the citizens must rise to disrupt the status quo. A well-constituted non-partisan group of intellectuals must help Nigeria fight this war because it cannot be a war fought without knowledge.

“We need a conversation of economic structure, inequality and governance that comes from the people. It’s time to interrogate the dreams of the founding-fathers, we must think differently.

“How long will it take Nigeria to lift 100 million people out of poverty when China used only 30 years to lift 700 million out of poverty. It’s time for the citizens to organise a collective action that can produce results. Today, our literacy level is still 59 per cent while Rwanda has progressed to 72 per cent within two decades since the genocide.”