Bad governance behind poverty in Nigeria – Ezekwesili

A former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has attributed the rising poverty in Nigeria to poor governance and the monotonous economic structure of the country.

Ezekwesili described the country as an African paradox with the land rich in natural resources but a large percentage of her citizens poor.

The former World Bank Vice President for Africa said bad governance, which had manifested through corruption, was responsible for the poor economic performance of the country.

Ezekwesili, who spoke on Tuesday at the opening ceremony of the 2013 Port Harcourt Book Festival in the Rivers State capital, observed that Nigeria had been unable to translate the huge natural resources at her disposal to the improvement of her citizens' living standard.

She said that 69 percent of over 100 million Nigerians were living within the poverty bracket

She said, "Nigeria is perhaps the best known example of the African paradox. It is a country which has struggled with the development process over the last 53 years of her independence.

"As the 6th largest producer of oil in the world, it has earned more than half a trillion dollars in oil export since the discovery of that commodity in the South-South region of this country where we are gathered today.

"Unfortunately, the massive revenue from oil has been a source of enormous sorrow to citizens due to poor government by our political elite over the many decades since its discovery."

The ex-minister added, "Nigeria has therefore tragically failed to translate her rich resource endowment to improvement in the standard of living of her citizens hence we today have 69 percent of over 100 million of our citizens in the poverty bracket, according to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

"The poor governance or its more virulent manifestation, public corruption, is of course the fundamental reason for Nigeria's poor economic performance despite our globally acknowledged economic potentials to have become not just one of the largest economies of the world, but in fact, one of the most prosperous of those countries.

"There is no better saying of the governance failure in our nation than the relatively unchanged structure of the economy of Nigeria since our independence; and it is the rapid change of the structure of an economy that determines the level of economic growth, development and prosperity that would happen. In our case, it has remained relatively unchanged."

Ezekwesili lamented that while Asian economies had experienced significant growth in economic prosperity, countries in Africa had failed to develop economically.

She expressed the need for African countries to search for other sources of development in order to improve the poor.

"At 48 percent of the continent's population surviving on a mere $1.25 a meal, it is urgent that the economies of Africa should find new sources of growth to the present crop of the poor," Ezekwesili added.

Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi said his administration would soon construct a N3bn administrative village.

"We are building a Creative Village at present and it is going to cost N3bn. In the village, there will be a public library, a theatre and a cafe, among other facilities," he said.

Amaechi said the public library was part of the government's effort to promote the reading culture in Rivers State, adding that Shell has promised to contribute to the funding of the project.