-Says Senator Bola Tinubu,ex-governor,Lagos State
Posted by Lateef Lawal
Poverty and economic backwardness in Nigeria and most of the countries in the continent of Africa has been attributed to leadership devastation.
This attribution was made by the former governor of Lagos State and the national leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN), Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu while speaking with journalists at the Lagos Airport,Ikeja on his return from Accra, Ghana where he bagged the African Servant Leadership Award.
He said that in a continent that has suffered a lot of deprivation and wars brought about by introvert leaders, the award given to him has far reaching significant to him, Nigeria and the continent.
According to Senator Tinubu,:'We have not been able to substancially provide for the poor and the down-trodden and this is an encouragement to invert the pyramide. If you see government after government and leadership after leadersip,people are more concerned about trhe top echelon of leadership.'
He said,:'That is why in Nigeria today, we are still talking about minimum wage of N18,000.You can not even define what is there for blue collar job and the white collar job.....you have not come to the bottom of the pyramid where people are complaining about the quality of education.'
The former Governor of Lagos State noted that,:'If you say you want to fight poverty and you want to encourage tourism as well, and you have not been able to develope your medical facility so that researh and development can be able to eliminate the scourge of malaria that is killing millions of people in many countries in the continent, that is so glaring to the outside world, then you need to have yourself prepared to do all of this and bring the poor from the bottom of the ladder to really to have a living standard that is worthy of humanity .
'We have always theorise and apostlate about leadership .Leadership defined for the people and caring compassion,ability to chart a new cause that will care for ordinary common man and the down-trodden and lift millions out of poverty '.
'If you look at Brazil, we were on the same level before now .Today, they are able to uplift their people.Their standard of living, the purchasing power which is improving their own economy.
Why should we continue with the abundant resources that God has given us to export our goods, raw materials to be refined and send back to us?Where are those industries that will create jobs,develop skills and the capacity to drive the economy'.
'We have huge market, we have huge resources ,material resources, blessed with good weather.We are not been devastated by natural disasters but by man made disaster in the leadership and wars. If truely, the continent is our mother, we have abused this mama too much.if truely our fathers like Rawlings and many of them have gone to the extent of putting their lives on line, with the wisdom of Papa Obafemi Awolowo and many others have made great sacrifices, so where is our generation?My be we should now start to look at the cause of bad leadership and possibly, we can find solutions'.
No comments:
Post a Comment