The human rights activist also lambasted the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which connived with the corrupt leadership in Nigeria to destroy the country’s human capital development capacity with their imposition of negative economic policies and leadership.
The presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in the 2023 general elections, Omoyele Sowore, has reiterated that the leadership problem in Nigeria is responsible for the downturn in governance, noting that Nigeria is neither complex nor too populated as the leaders would have the citizens to believe.
The human rights activist also lambasted the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which connived with the corrupt leadership in Nigeria to destroy the country’s human capital development capacity with their imposition of negative economic policies and leadership.
Sowore stated these on Saturday while featuring on Arise News TV programme, Perspectives, where he reacted to the World Bank’s ranking of Nigeria 150 out of 157 on its human capital index.
He noted that the population of Nigeria like China and India was supposed to be a blessing, because “Nigeria’s population is not the problem but the population of the thieves is the problem.”
Sowore added that the more than 40 ministers assembled by President Bola Tinubu lacked the capacity to lift the country.
He said, “It is very interesting that the World Bank is the one expressing to the world that we are now lacking in human capital development.
“What we must understand is that Nigeria was subjected to economic policies that actually degraded its capacity to produce people with capacity.
“That was through the structural adjustment programme that was imposed on the military and executed precisely to achieve the objective that they are now reporting on.
“I became an activist first and foremost…in 1989 as I was arriving at the University of Lagos, the World Bank was also giving Nigeria a $120 million loan, supposedly to fix our universities. But they knew that we didn’t need that loan.
“What we needed was the leadership that could have invested in education but the structural adjustment programme specifically targeted a number of universities and there were too many universities that the government had no business investing in free education.
“But some over 30 years later, the people that were half-trained by Nigerian universities are now being brought to the UK, Europe and America as doctors after COVID-19 hit them.”
Sowore noted that had Nigeria had the opportunity to progress when the country started free education, invested in education the way it should; the country would not be experiencing the destruction of human capital development the World Bank now reported on.
According to him, “So, they are guilty – the World Bank, the IMF (International Monetary Fund), they are guilty of this. They know the kind of policies that they have spread over time.”
On the fact that the leaderships of the World Bank and the IMF had changed over time, Sowore said “But they haven’t changed their ways because we are still dealing with the structural adjustment programme.
The current dislocation that they have imposed on Nigeria through the removal of so-called fuel subsidy, it was the World Bank and IMF prescription, and the man who read it on the day of his inauguration didn’t even think about the fact that the moment you have 80 percent of your economy in informal sector, you can’t just come up one day and destroy opportunities that people have to do business and leave.
You already know the statistics shows how many Nigerians that are living below $1 per day, and what is $1 today is almost N950. As of six months ago, the Naira was stronger than it is today.
“What I’m saying is that it is not as if we should blame the World Bank and the IMF all the time but you would link with the kind of leadership they also promote, talking about the West on the continent of Africa, the kind of characters they impose on the continent of Africa since independence.”
Speaking further on the leadership problem in Nigeria and Africa, and what he intended to differently as the AAC presidential candidate, he said, “You have to look at power from the point of view of service. We have produced over the years very egocentric leaders who care about themselves, their friends and families and not the Nigerian people. And you must also look at those of us – particularly those of us who are young – and where we stood when it mattered most in this country.
“It is not always true that someone suddenly decides when he turns 45 or 50 when they want to change their country. But when your services were needed most for your country, you just didn’t partake in fighting for the rights of your people. I come from a long tradition of sacrifices and when people want to choose their leaders, we always say they should look for leaders who have pedigree; who have integrity; who have history and I think I fall into all these categories.
“I always say this that Nigeria is not complicated as our leaders make it sound. But what is complicated is that the leaders themselves don’t understand the nature of complexity. But you look at the size of Nigeria itself, how long does it take to fly from one part of Nigeria to another? Our population is supposed to be a blessing. China has population and they are leveraging well on it. India has population too. Nigeria has population of 200 million people.
“Nigeria’s population is not the problem. It is the population of the thieves that is the problem. Those who ran Nigeria in the 1960s were in their 20s. But those who are running Nigeria now; you don’t even know their age. So you have a problem of people who running the country; who don’t have integrity and the meaning of democracy has been turned upside down.
“The reason why Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso are making jest of us is because they know that what Nigeria has is not democracy.”
Source: SaharaReporters