Friday, January 23, 2015

Tony Osborg, Can Nigeria Bake Her Own Bread?

“What we now have as a government is a god, built by our mortal hands and, yet, externally variant in power, always requiring our prayers, pity and appeals in order to fulfill its supposed purposes.”

“It seems even more worrisome that the world has become even more integrated to the extent that a country that fails to produce its own basic consumables will end up consuming its whole income in outsourcing them.” 

“Without doubt, our inability to design and implement a sustainable economic framework has resulted to our present ranking on the globalization index; a precious market to the productive countries.”

“Since Nigeria has refused to fully embrace the present reality as it is, that is; the importance of science and technology, the redundancy of religion, the need for pragmatic international relations, economic reforms, support of entrepreneurship spirit, etc., but rather, has continued to accept the world the way it has choose to see it, that is; the supremacy of supernatural belief over human intelligence, the sacredness of tribalism, the abuse of democratic tenets, inability to appreciate scientific truth, its desire to be lifelong importer of finished products, etc., all of which have become our reality, then one would imagine how soon we can attain self-reliance.”

“Can this Nigeria, without external support, bake her own bread, sew her own garments, drill her own oil, produce her own cars, fly her own planes, design her own cities and, fight her own wars? What can this Nigeria do? Or does development come through stages and Nigeria, unfortunately, still occupies a learning stage?” 

“Democracy, religion, education and terrorism have all become practicable norms all over the world – thanks to globalization”

“An economy funded by subsidy is no economy in an ideal sense.” 

“Many Nigerians get excited when the government execute such projects as newly constructed schools, roads, health centers and other government funded projects which they tag as developmental projects. They get excited over what they perceive as a performing government carrying out its corporate responsibilities. But they are ignorant of the fact that public funds cannot disappear in a vacuum, it has to be accounted for; therefore contracts must be awarded to make the stealing legal and official. Yet, the people only wish that more of such projects can be executed; they fail to understand that with a defective procurement process in place, the more projects a government executes under this abnormal process; the more kickbacks its officials receive, the more money is stolen, the more corruption is patronized. In fact, under our present abnormal procurement process, the more project a government executes, the more money its officials steal through each contract inflation and kickbacks. If we therefore do not fix our public procurement lapses; stealing through contract inflation and kickbacks will become an inevitable and official act of corruption as it has seemingly already become!”

“The issue of gay is at the heart of the human rights struggle. The decision of two consenting male adults to engage in marital affair should be a personal decision and not the decision of the state inasmuch as their relationship does not infringe on the rights of another. The state should mind its business and let the individual's mind theirs” 


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