Professor Emeritus of Economics, and Professional Economics Consultant, Professor. Ibi Ajayi has charged the Nigeria Government to cut down the cost of governance, improve on the level of current insecurity challenges, and fix a credible electoral system for Nigeria, so as to boost the nation's economics growth.
Prof. Ajayi made the appeal at the Dominican University Ibadan, during the annual lecture that was organized by the Institution in commemoration of the celebration of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In his lecture titled Our Nation, Our Wealth, The Dreams, Misconception and The Reality" Prof. Ajayi made it known that the poor growth of economics in Nigeria can be linked to high cost of governance, insecurity and poor electoral system.
The Don, described those three key factors as worms that have eaten deep into Nigeria system and has resulted in bad governance and leadership thereby resulted in the increased of the poor masses in Nigeria.
Prof. Ajayi said it's so sad that these days we no longer have a credible leader that can give us some basic amenities that can easily enhance our growth and our economics development.
He further stated that we are now thoroughly monitored by the material things, in the early days, one can travel from Abuja to Lagos on our road any time any day without the fear of insecurities, like kidnapping, or otherwise, you don't have to fear those days, the only thing that can make you have some fear is that maybe your engine got broken down in the middle of the road, despite that then Nigeria was so great that you can sleep in your car irrespective of where you are till you will see someone that will come and help you, there is nothing that is will happen to you, can we still have that kind of Nigeria?
"Things have changed, this shows that things have really changed. And if our security apparatus are very functional and can guarantee a very functional security services for the citizenry, then investors will starts to come in and invest their will be jobs opportunities for our teaming youths.
Prof. Ajayi maintained that if there is no credible electoral system there might not likely to be a successful economic system.
Nigeria in the past has four of the best hospitals in the nations of Commonwealth, but now I don't think we can be proud of a very standard hospital , the vision 2020 could not be sustained due to lack of monitoring, There is no consistence in government policy, talk is cheap in making policies but to do the talk for our government is another thing.
In better clime people write to the office of the authorities to ask them about how far they have gone in terms of their policy making and in fulfilling their mandates.
In corruption fighting, our people are interested in the fact that don't probes should not be centered on the opposition, For Nigeria to be properly functioning, You have to grow the economic, if you try to break the economic growth of a Nation then the situation is likely to get worse.
Insecurity, banditary, kidnapping, and all these cannot contribute to the economic growth of our nation, if we are going to have a serious economic growth our government should provide adequate security for every citizenry and with this the foriegner will come and invest hugely in our country and this will contribute a lot to our economic growth.
Medical personnel from Nigeria constitutes about 4% of those with the British Countries , and this is seriously affecting our growth, the increasing cost of governance, despite all the money pump into the last general elections, we still have issue of irregularities that are faulted to that elections.
The multiplicity of the parties? Long list of electoral list is too old in version for a Nigerian to be using, cost of the maintainace of the Presidential fleet, the assembly packages are too costly, they collected different allowance that are just too much for Nigerian to continue to bear, how do we run a country like this and expect rapid economic growth.
Our National resources cannot sustain all these frivolous spending, it's so sad we don't have leaders any more but a rider, some of our leaders some people are too much for the law, some leaders that you even thought that are fighting for the masses are no longer do that but has liased with some leaders in other to lead us the way they want.
We need attitudinally changes, we should be ready to work, for whatever we earn, we should forget about any form of short ways of getting wealth, we need sacrifice but the truth is remain the truth. You can not break all evonomic rules and hopes to get away with it. Prof. Ajayi said.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Vice Chancellor of The Dominican University Ibadan, Prof. Anthony Akinwale, the lecture was held in honor and in communication of the celebration of the achievements of St. Thomas Aquinas, who is an illustrious son of the Dominican Order, the proprietor body of the University.
Prof. Akinwale said "every year, we at the Dominican University gather with friends to celebrate the intellectual achievements of this towering medieval philosopher and theologian whose writings ideas continue to exert great influence even on modern ideas that Gerard Verschuuren, a human geneticit and philosopher of science, published four years ago a seminar and stimulating work entitled Aquinas and Modern Science: A New Synthensis of Faith and Reason.
Though, St. Thomas was not an economist in the mordern sense of the word, he was a philosopher and theologian whose ideas offers us an indispensable point of convergence between philosophy, theology and economics, that meeting point, that rendezvous of philosophy, theology and economics, can be found in moral values.
Today, our planet is threatened by environment degradation while our country Nigeria bears the dubious distinction of an oil-rich country inhabited by an impoverished population.
There we have at least two reasons why the validity of the principle of right relationship in economics conduct ought to be taken seriously and at least two reasons why the topic of this year's Aquinas Lecture is eminently pertinent
Of course, we are privileged to have in Prof. Ibi Ajayi to speak on a lecture titled"Our Nation, Our Wealth, The Dreams, Misconception and the Reality."