Bad governance behind Nigeria’s poverty – Ezekwesili

Former Education Minister, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has blamed the continuous rise in poverty in Nigeria on poor government policies and corruption.

Ezekwesili described the country as an African paradox with excess natural resources, yet lacked the capacity to feed its people.

The former Minister said that corruption which was the outcome of bad governance had to a great extent destroyed the country.

Ezekwesili, made this statement on Tuesday at the opening ceremony of the 2013 Port Harcourt Book Festival in the Rivers State capital. She said Nigeria was yet to translate the huge natural resources it possesses for growth and development of the country.

She said that 69 percent of Nigerians were currently living below poverty line.

She said, “Nigeria is perhaps the best known example of the African paradox. It is a country which has struggled with the development process over the last 53 years of her independence.

“As the 6th largest producer of oil in the world, it has earned more than half a trillion dollars in oil export since the discovery of that commodity in the South-South region of this country where we are gathered today.

“Unfortunately, the massive revenue from oil has been a source of enormous sorrow to citizens due to poor government by our political elite over the many decades since its discovery.”

The ex-minister added, “Nigeria has therefore tragically failed to translate her rich resource endowment to improvement in the standard of living of her citizens hence we today have 69 percent of over 100 million of our citizens in the poverty bracket, according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

“The poor governance or its more virulent manifestation, public corruption, is of course the fundamental reason for Nigeria’s poor economic performance despite our globally acknowledged economic potentials to have become not just one of the largest economies of the world, but in fact, one of the most prosperous of those countries.

“There is no better saying of the governance failure in our nation than the relatively unchanged structure of the economy of Nigeria since our independence; and it is the rapid change of the structure of an economy that determines the level of economic growth, development and prosperity that would happen. In our case, it has remained relatively unchanged.”

Ezekwesili said that while Asian economies had experienced significant growth in economic prosperity, African countries has continued to remain stagnant.

She advocated for alternative means of survival in the African continent, instead of just holding unto one or few means of survival.

“As 48 percent of the continent’s population survive on a mere $1.25 a meal, it is urgent that the economies of Africa should find new sources of growth to the present crop of the poor,” Ezekwesili added.