Osinbajo sees prudent resource management as panacea for growth, not restructuring
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that prudent management of national resources and providing for the people remains the main challenge facing the nation rather than geographical restructuring of the country.
He said this while fielding questions from a cross section of Nigerians at a town-hall meeting in Minnesota, the United States (U.S.) at the weekend where he dwelled on a wide range of issues covering the economy, anti-corruption, health and agriculture, among others.
According to him, “the problem with our country is not a matter of restructuring and we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the argument that our problems stem from some geographical restructuring. It is about managing resources properly and providing for the people properly, that is what it is all about.”
A statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, on Monday, quoted the Vice President as saying that the administration had put in place an economic structure that was able to function properly despite previous challenges, particularly corruption that led to a slowdown in the economy.
Osinbajo noted: “unless we are able to deal with the fundamental questions, our economic circumstance will keep going one step forward, two steps backward.”
According to him, “When you talk about corruption in Nigeria, the truth is stranger than fiction. It is the kind of thing that would cripple an economy anywhere because you simply don’t have the resources for the graft and the greed of the numbers of people who want to steal the resources. All that we have been able to deal with is grand corruption.”
He assured Nigerians in the U.S. that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari could be trusted, lamenting that not much had been done in terms of infrastructure development despite the huge oil revenues realised by the country based on OPEC statistics on oil revenues accruable to Nigeria under successive administration.
