• Says PDP needs to be rebuilt
A Professor of Economics, Prof. Pat Utomi has described the series of defections witnessed in the past few days following the emergence of the All Progressive Congress (APC) as the new ruling party as unfortunate, saying is not good for our democracy.
He made his view known on Sunday in Abuja while fielding questions from journalists at the sixth graduation ceremony of Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD) after presenting a topic on: ‘Leadership and Societal Development’.
He stressed the need to have a strong opposition that would put the APC on its toes.
According to him, “I found the gale of defection unfortunate, I think if I have not spent the last sixteen years saying we must build a strong opposition, it would be the time for me to join the PDP really, because we really need to rebuild PDP, we need to have strong PDP to hold APC in check.
“I think we need to have a shadow cabinet, we need to have a team on the other side that have a watching brief of government activities,” Utomi added.
He noted that Nigeria has too many problems and that the incoming administration cannot solve all the problems confronting the country, but only needs to focus on some of it.
Utomi emphasised that there was need for a major reform in the civil service, especially capacity building which he said was presently lacking; adding that civil servants view training as an avenue to make money.
The Prof. Of economics also lamented the cost of governance in the country which he said was not sustainable, adding; “If a couple of things are not down in a matter of now, in the next couple of months Nigeria will be before IMF, that’s how bad things are.
“This country must as a matter of now deal with a few extra ordinary questions about the cost of governing Nigeria which is part of the challenge we are dealing with.
“If we don’t trim by 80% the cost of running our federal legislature. We are in serious trouble as a country. We don’t need a National Assembly that cost as this much,” Utomi said.
Utomi equally lamented the corruption in the petroleum sector, stressing that there was need to remove the subsidy if the corruption in the sector would be halted.
“The reason why some of us match during occupy Nigeria is because we knew what is called subsidy was a pure scam…This year we will spend about N1 trillion on a blotted bureaucracy in recurrent expenditure and prevent us from doing the things that will make the quality of lives of Nigerians get better,” he lamented
He opined that unless the citizen hold the leaders accountable, the country won’t get to where it ought to get to be.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary, Centre LSD, Dr. Otive Igbuzor said the theme of the event was chosen in recognition of the role of leadership in accelerating societal development.
He stated that the country was at cross roads, adding that in the past sixteen years of civilian rule, there has been leadership failure, stressing that the school was determined to turm out transformative leaders to feel the vacuum.
The centre has graduated 441 students in the six years of it existence, while 49 students graduated this year.
Source: Thisday
