TheCable

Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra state, says it is wrong to blame President Muhammadu Buhari or any single person for the country’s problems.

Obi said this on Saturday in Abakaliki, Ebonyi state capital, where he delivered a lecture on the nation’s 57th independence anniversary.

Speaking on the topic ‘Change and changing Nigeria through harnessing of investment potentials of Ebonyi State: yesterday, today and tomorrow’, Obi said it was time for Nigeria to shift its focus to solid minerals and embrace economic diversity.

He said the world is moving to an era of knowledge economy while Nigeria is still dwelling on oil “which is already destined to finish one day”.

Obi also said the recent rise in agitation by youth across the country is a result of cumulative years of failed leadership, adding that the entire political class, including himself, is guilty.

He regretted that countries with the same growth trajectory as Nigeria in the eighties have all overtaken the country in all indices of development.

Obi said whether Nigeria was “out or in of” of recession, a lot still needed to be done by the leaders, while calling on the country to embrace the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

“Nigeria should queue into sustainable development goals (SDG), not in signature. The country is there in signature and it is the only country that got involved in millennium development Gogl (MDG) and did not achieve one goal because as soon as we signed the signature, we threw it away and came here and started doing things wrongly,” Obi said.

“China put MDGs in their developmental agenda, they mainstreamed it in their developmental agenda and they are targeting to lift 16million people out of poverty but I don’t know how many people Nigeria will lift in the next 10 years because there is no such measurable goals, everything is done in confusion.

“Our reserve is weak today and we are not talking about savings rather we are borrowing more.

“We are moving from baggage economy to knowledge economy. So, the country should stop dwelling on solid minerals because it is a baggage economy and nobody lives with it.

“This is what Nigeria is doing and we are still talking about oil which is already destined to finish one day.”