The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adebayo Adewole, has promised to address all the problems facing the north if elected into power.
Prince Adebayo made this known on Saturday, 15th October, during the Arewa joint committee interactive session with presidential candidates in Kaduna.
He noted that Nigeria needs to tap into the North’s closeness to the Mediterranean for economic purposes.
According to Prince Adebayo, the north has a lot of potentials which is yet to be tapped into, in terms of agriculture, human resources and economic viability.
Here are his answers to some questions during the session:
QUESTION 1: How Do You Plan To Tackle Oil Theft and Diversify the Economy From Oil Alone?
“Thank you very much now that you started scientifically, everybody who is sitting on oil now doesn’t know how it came, so as a lawyer in the oil industry for many years, there’s nowhere in Nigeria that there is no oil. In fact, I’ve gone to work in Niger republic and chad, so it is from just simple understanding of geo special and geological knowledge. There’s oil, that’s not the issue; what we are not managing well is the politics of oil. We’re looking at oil from a political point of view. First let me say this, among the top 100 resources of Nigeria, oil does not even come in the first 100; so it is clear that it is the least profitable of all our resources, because you can’t even itch if you take it.
Another thing I want to say, the oil taken from Niger Delta from 1956 in Obodobiri; all the amount of money that has been spent on northern Nigeria and the rest of Nigeria is not up to the amount of money from oil that has been stolen by foreigners before any Nigerian, whether it comes from the north or south, anywhere can benefit $1 of Nigeria oil, foreigners from Europe, America, Asia will have taken $100. As I’m talking to you now, you know, I was the one who broke the news that 80% of the crude oil in Nigeria is been stolen, and as at that time I believe President Buhari didn’t know as he didn’t know some things”.
“Why would you not do agriculture in a sustainable way, for example, in southern Kaduna alone, the ginger that is grown there, if we just create a plant to process the ginger and get ginger oil in Southern Kaduna, plus two or three local governments, you can get $1.4 billion a year.
“The summary of it is that is a failure of leadership. Our leaders create artificial scarcity, and they use identity to manage that scarcity. Another instance is this, we can build a federal government college in every local government, so that the children don’t have to compete, but they won’t do it. So the resources is frittered away, so now when you want to admit a student you say you are from Katsina State, you are from Jigawa state, you are from Ondo state, so we create tension for ourselves. What should happen in Nigeria and what will happen in the beginning of our administration is that we will develop every resource available in every part of the country.
“Two, we will give capacity, capacity for every state to manage resources in such a way that, for example, the Mambilla Power Project, if Nigeria money is not being stolen, Adamawa and Taraba State can build it. It is possible for Adamawa and Taraba State to handle it. It has failed the entire country, but it is something that Adamawa and Taraba State can handle. We need to do big projects and their major investments. For example, I will just give you a personal example, I brought a company from Virginia when I was a lawyer in New York, because they were looking to build an airport somewhere in Central Africa, and they considered some part of Nigeria to be close to Central Africa. We met with the government, and all this company wanted was land and signature. They will build the airport, they did not let them build the airport rather the same government awarded airport construction based on that idea, wasted public money, they couldn’t do it up to that standard. There are so many investments that we can make in Nigeria, all across this state that doesn’t depend on the paucity of our
Comments
Post a Comment