TheCable

Abigail Ogwezzy-Nsidika, head, mass communication department at the University of Lagos, says Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world because of bad leadership.

She said this at a symposium which Posterity Media held at UNILAG on Tuesday.

Participants at the symposium, themed “Nigeria At 58: Counting the Political and Economic Gains-Looking Back, Looking Forward”, discussed the development of the country, the problems ravaging it and the way forward.

They expressed concerns over the killings going on in the some parts of the north, the country’s failing health care system and lack of stable power supply, among others.

She also lamented the lack of access to education by millions of children in the country.

Quoting the late Nelson Mandela, Ogwezzy-Nsidika said an educated, enlightened and informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy.

“Recently, there were data saying Nigeria has about 13 million out-of-school children and some people are saying it was 10 million. The veracity of the data is not the issue but that we have a large population of our youths outside school,” she said.

“Nelson Mandela said an educated, enlightened and informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy; this means that our democracy is endangered. Because these are the future of the country.

“Our value system is poor and we need to get it right. Even those of us that are educated are also endangered.

“All the issues that are confronting us as a nation, such as poor access to health care, poor access to education, poor infrastructure, all of that is because of bad leadership. This is social injustice and the biggest form of corruption.

“Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world because of bad leadership. We should start asking ourselves serious questions and start thinking of how to solve our problems. We need a viable economy to prevent the current brain drain going on in Nigeria.

“Looking forward, we need to make our leaders accountable, we should ask them questions and demand right answers. The election is coming, your PVC is your authority, ask questions before you cast your votes.”

O’Femi Kolawole, publisher, Posterity Media, said: “For our country, we just celebrated 58 years and just in a few months time, we will be going for the 2019 elections, for us, this is a time to pause and take stock of our national journey so far, how we have fared and the things we need to do.

“We know many Nigerians lament about the fact that the country has been unfair to them, but we need to ask, what gains have we made? And if we have made any, we should count our blessings and as we are doing that, we should also look ahead at what can be done.

“Significantly, since we fought the civil war, God has helped us to remain a united nation despite the challenges, it is something to acknowledge. There are countries that have developed themselves to an enviable height and we can learn from them.”