The former World Bank Vice President and former Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili has condemned African politicians, that m ost of the leaders enters into politics for the purpose of buying and selling as they are all traders who are only awaken from their sleep by the word ‘Contract’.
She said this while delivering her keynote speech on the theme “Challenges of Growth and Sustainable Development in Africa” at the two-day International Pan-African conference organized by CEOAFRICA in collaboration with Chrisland University, Abeokuta.
The conference which took place at the Chrisland University auditorium on 23rd – 24th June, 2019 was aimed at providing an interdisciplinary platform for academics, researchers, policymakers, Civil Societies, students, Diplomats, CEOs and others under the Chairmanship of the former Liberian Vice President, Joseph Nyuma Boakai.
In her speech, Ezekwesili said ‘’ Talking about economic growth and sustainable development, it is because of this quest for the world to really be an intergeneration of thinking world that led to what we called today ‘The Sustainable Development Goals’. I wish to negotiated the 2015 towards 2030 and the whole ideas is that, all the Seventeen goals are important target for countries to constantly keep in mind the thing that is very interesting about the sustainable development goals, all seventeen of them is that, they are of particular importance and relevance to our continent, and our continent is as of today ‘The Lagging Continent’ a laggard continent. We lagged behind all other continents, on nearly all the metrics of development;
“And when you look at the sustainable development goals, they ranged from Sustainable development goal One to Seventeen and they includes; No poverty; zero hunger; good health and wellbeing; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry innovation and infrastructure; reducing inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; life on land; peace, justice and strong institutions and finally, partnerships for the sustainable development goals. When you look at all of them, you will see how relevance they are to our continent. Every one of these goals that encompass the sustainable development goals just reflect in the issues and challenges that our continent must conquer. And that is why, looking at this topic and saying how do we go beyond identifying the challenges, what then do we do and how do we even carve a conversion that truly we are a challenged continent’’.
Also in her statement, “Often, there are people who are comfortable with mediocrity. And so, you can enter into an unnecessary conversation with them while they challenge you that Africa is growing well. But if you are someone like me, who hates the ideas that every time you look at indicators that shows what it means for the continents to be doing well, we are at the bottom of those indicators, then you can never agree with anyone who says to you that Africa is doing well. ‘Africa is not doing well, Africa must do well’. We are not doing well because by every standard of measurement, we are leaving too many of our people behind in poverty;
“As a matter of fact, I recently said it that, for every one of us who has had anything to do with leadership on our continent, we must feel miserable at the fact that, it is 2019 and yet, we have children died before they attain the age of 5, children who died at childbirth, some died with high maternal mortality rate; a situation whereby 9 – 11 million of our young people graduates from one level of education or the other and enter into the labour market every year and only about 10% of them will be finally be call the saint ones;
“It could be inexplicable contradiction for hundreds of millions of people to be budged down in ignorance and disease in the same world where robots are being proliferated to solve the most complex of human problems. For Africa’s leadership therefore, accepting the important responsibility to lead the efforts to solve our challenges is urgent’’ the former Minister of Education said.
While condemning some of the African leaders ‘’today, Africans spends more of its resources on recurrent cost of running government and so does not have sufficient resources to invest in capital accumulation. We must turn that around. Our budget system is not enabling us to get value for money and a lot of our politicians enter into politics in order to be traders to buy and sell. The only thing that makes them wake up when they are asleep is when they hear the word ‘contract’. There are contemporaries in other countries that have done well. Ministers don’t waste their time discussing contracts; they waste their time thinking of vision, strategies, policies and execution. It is ‘Infradig’ for a minister to seek with a contractor discussing what? And by the way, am telling you what I modeled as a minister that, nobody that had anything to do with my ministry have the effrontery to ask for a meeting with me because they knew they will be summarily asked to leave my office. That’s not my business; there are systems that are in place to handle transactions’’ the ChibokGirls Activist said.
She further said, while describing the roles of a leader that ‘’the roles of a leader should have nothing to do with transactions. Transaction minded leadership is the worst thing that has happened to the political system of our society. You have people sweating seriously because they are busy looking for contract opportunities and there is nothing productive about office in the public life, that is such a waste of leadership for it be that, leadership has reduced to the lowest denominator’’ the former World Bank Vice President said.
She urged that, ‘’ If we can invest well in the things that matters for improved opportunities for our citizens, our citizens would be the ones that will be the process of development in our continent because it has been proven that countries can reduce poverty within a matter of three decades, all we need to do is to look at the miracle of China. China invested in human development of its citizens and in less than three decades, China has been able to lived more than 800 million people out of poverty. Now, that is at least 4-5th of our population in Sub Sahara Africa;
“The most important things for African future includes: we must determine frankly and squarely what economic philosophy we believed in, and our structural economic transformation agenda. When the former Vice President talked about Africa 2063, that is beginning to have that conversation but there is much more to be asked in unifying the ideas of what it means to have an African economy; our regional economic integration philosophy has to go beyond political aspiration of individuals. It has to become a concept completely and entirely owned by the citizens of the respective countries in Africa with a complete consensus on what economic philosophy will seek to pursue; we must build capable states and institutions that are founded on the rule of law and the interesting things about that is that, it takes the citizens finally saying ‘Enough Is Enough’ for there to be the demand side of good governance which is what makes up for a capable state. There can never be a capable state when citizens are comfortable with a failed state’’.
The Pan-African International Conference was enlivened by the presence of national and international personalities like, the former Liberian Vice-President Joseph Nyuma Boakai; Prof. Charles Binam Bikoi, Executive Secretary, International Centre for Research and Documentation on African Traditions and Languages (CERDOTOLA); former World Bank Vice President, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili; the Chancellor of Chrisland University, High Chief Dr. Wilfred Awosika (OON); the Vice Chancellor of Chrisland University Prof. Chinedum Peace Babalola; Vice Chancellor, Crown University, Prof. Sir Bashir Aremu, Delegates from Liberia, including Ministers, Commissioners, media personnel; and others.
