How will Buhari, Atiku, others address Nigeria’s poor development indices?
THE polity witnessed an interesting debate among five vice presidential candidates on Friday. The debate was a tango between the two leading parties’ flag bearers, Professor Yemi Osinbajo of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Mr. Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. It was not devoid of the usual trading of blames with the APC vice presidential candidate accusing PDP of looting the country for 16 years and his PDP counterpart accusing the APC of ineptitude and bad policies that worsened the plight of the citizenry.
Osinbajo
listed the achievements of his party to include railway, power, provision of
infrastructures and payments to the poor that must be sustained. Obi reeled out
figures and statistics detailing economic and welfare decline, assuring that
his team will create jobs using the small and medium scale enterprises model as
China did. As expected, all the vice presidential candidates, including Khadija
Abdullahi of the Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN; Ganiyu Galadima of the Allied
Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN; and Umar Gesto of the Young Progressives
Party, YPP, identified the problems of the country and marshalled reasons the
electorate should hand each of the parties the mandate in 2019. Apart from
enumerating the problems of the country and promising to address them, if
elected, the candidates’ utterances were not deep on the measurable steps that
will be taken to tackle these challenges. They were also loudly silent on many
poor development indices the country is swimming in.
President
Muhammadu Buhari ajnd Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN presidential
candidate, Oby Ezekwesili Thus, the next level of debate – presidential,
holding next year, specifically on January 19, 2019 among President Muhammadu
Buhari of the APC, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Oby Ezekwesili of the ACPN,
Kingsley Moghalu of the YPP and Femi Durotoye of the ANN – must be more robust
and deep. The debate must, for instance, tackle how Nigeria will cease to be
the poverty capital of the world, improve life expectancy, reduce maternal and
infant mortality rates and improve other growth and development indices. How
will they tackle poverty, which saw Nigeria, in October, according to the World
Poverty Clock, overtaking India and becoming the poverty capital of the world
with 88 million people living in extreme poverty?
The
presidential candidates must show how Nigeria will overcome being the 11th
worst place to be born (2018), second worst country with electricity supply in
the world (2017), third most terrorized country in the world (2018) of which,
as of November 30, 2018, no fewer than 6,652 Nigerians had been killed through
terrorism, Boko Haram insurgency; farmers/herdsmen, ethno-religious and cult
clashes, and armed robbery among others. Other indices include: One of the most
dangerous places in the world to give birth and third country with the worst
maternal mortality rate (2018), seventh worst country on World Bank’s Human
Capital Index (2018), worst police in the world (2017), third worst city to
live in the world (2018), worst country in the world at fighting inequality
(2017), 10th worst army in the world (2018), highest number of children out of
school – 32 million (2018), most corrupt country in the world (2018), the
fourth country with the highest deforestation rate in the world (2018), the
country with the highest number of road fatalities in Africa (2017, FRSC), and
the 9th most dangerous country for women (2018).
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