A development expert, Dr. Chiwuike Uba, said, yesterday, that the commencement of 2023 election campaigns offer hope and opportunity for Nigerians to address the many challenges facing the nation through their votes.
Uba noted that the present situation of the country is “hopeless” with an inflation figure of above 20 per cent, stressing that the development reflects in high and unaffordable prices of goods and services.
He stated that 33 per cent unemployment rate (with an unemployment rate among young people of about 53 per cent) further compounds the current security crisis caused by a high poverty rate of over 40 per cent, among other factors.
The economist said: “The exchange rate is volatile, even though the nation is faced with high corruption, insecurity and perverse divisions among ethnic nationalities, as well as broken public finance.
“Primary health care is virtually non-existent and basic education is largely or completely ignored. At present, more than 250,000 public school classrooms, from pre-primary to junior secondary, are classified bad and an estimated 20 million Nigerian children are out of school. Kidnapping has replaced Nigeria’s crumbling industries. Public debt, which stood at N42.84 trillion in the first half of 2022, is a huge concern. In addition, crude oil, Nigeria’s largest source of income and foreign exchange, suffers from theft with around 400,000 barrels of oil reportedly stolen daily. As hopeless as the situation is, most state governments will accumulate more debts to fund campaigns. Watch out and speak out.”
Uba, however, encouraged Nigerians to be hopeful, saying: “Having hope means asking politicians for concrete answers about their plans to reduce areas of waste and mobilise resources to finance projects and programmes.
“This means finding out from politicians how they intend to rebuild Nigeria’s broken public finance and put it back on a sustainable track. The politicians should also provide answers on how to reduce growing public sector bureaucracies to free up resources to broaden the private sector space. We need concrete answers on how they want to revolutionise education and health sectors, and deal with problems of poverty, security, urbanisation, unemployment and broken public trust in government.
“This is not the time to remind us of the problems; we need answers on strategies to solve the problems and the challenges.”
