Clinton Proposes Solutions to Nigeria Challenges

Former President of United States of America, Bill Clinton, said yesterday that the inability to manage the nation’s natural resources well was one of the three major challenges Nigeria was facing as a nation.

He spoke at the 18th Annual Awards of Thisday newspaper, organised to celebrate Nigeria’s best teachers, further tasked Nigerian leaders to tackle unemployment, brain-drain and to maximise the potential of the citizens.

He said Nigerian leaders mismanaged the proceeds from oil, under-utilised technology and failed to retain its best brains.

Clinton said: “When I became President, my Secretary of Commerce did a lot of work in Africa before he was tragically killed in a plane crash in 1995.

“I said he should make a list of 10 most important countries in the world for the 21st century. Nigeria was in the list.

“Imagine the future of the entire continent if Nigeria fails or South Africa fails. So, you are a country of potential. I will say you have about three big challenges.

Oil money, economic distribution, brain-drain

“First of all, like 90 percent of the countries, which have one big resource, you haven’t done well with your oil money. You should have reinvested it in different ways. Now you are at least not wasting the natural gas. You are developing it in pipelines but you don’t do a better job of managing natural resources.

“Secondly, you have to somehow bring economic opportunity to the people who don’t have. This is not a problem specific to Nigeria. Almost in every place in the world, prosperity is heavily concentrated in and around urban areas.

“So you have all these political problems: violence, religious differences, and all the rhetoric of Boko Haram. “But the truth is the poverty rate in the north is three times greater than what it is in the Lagos area.

 To deal with that, you have to have both powerful stake in the local governments and a national policy that work together.

“As you keep trying to divide the power, you have to figure out a way to have a strategy that will help in sharing prosperity.

He pointed out some solutions-

He said: “So, I think solving the economic divide that is in your country will help the political divide; making better use of your resources.

“Nigeria is trying to set up an investment fund where the Federal Government will set it up and the governors are being consulted so that they can concentrate the capital. That is the problem in India.

“They have unbelievable entrepreneurs but they are not very good at collecting capital and investing it in infrastructure so that they can unite the poor part of the country with the rich part. That’s what you have to do. And then, you have to empower people with education so they can succeed at home as well as around the world.”

I want to highlight his statement:

“You have to somehow bring economic opportunity to the people who don’t have it,” he  said,   “You have all these political problems — and now violence  — that appear to be rooted in religious differences and all the rhetoric of the Boko Harams and others, but the truth is the poverty rate in the North is three times of what it is in Lagos. ”

I've been in some parts of the North and I agree with him! Do you?


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