Deputy Minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hon. Okechukwu Tuesday, have stated that the COVID-19 pandemic has afforded Nigeria the chance to organize before future emergencies.
He said that the present pandemic raving the planet might not be the last.
Okechukwu’s assertion was contained in a keynote address themed, ‘Governance and Development in the COVID-19 Era: Strategies for Breaking the Jinx‘, which he presented at an international conference organised by the Department of Public Administration, Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka on Wednesday.
In the speech made available to journalists, the lawmaker representing Aninri/Agwu/Oji River Federal Constituency of Enugu State noted that Nigeria’s inability to cope with the economic, health, and social consequences of the pandemic underscored a perennial state of unpreparedness marked by the absence of good governance and institutions that should support development and buffer the country in moments of crisis.
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He said: ‘One of the fallouts of the pandemic is that it further exposed our vulnerabilities to external shocks such as the fall in crude oil prices. The last time we witnessed a sharp decline in crude oil prices in 2016, our economy slipped into a recession.
‘Unfortunately, Nigeria is plagued by the ‘Dutch Disease’ or what Prof. Charles Soludo calls the Lottery Syndrome whereby a nation spends in the spirit of the boom of today without planning for tomorrow.
‘We learn nothing and forget nothing – like the Bourbon royals of France. The chicken is now coming home to roost because even though the oil prices are going up, we are unable to reap its benefits due to our inability to meet our OPEC production quota. And since we are spending 98% of our entire revenue on debt servicing, we are left with little option but to keep borrowing from local and foreign lenders’.
Okechuckwu who emphasized the connection between governance and development also bemoaned the decline of Nigeria’s ranking on the Ibrahim Index for African Governance (IIAG).
‘Governance is the foundation of development. But out of the 54 African countries measured in 2019, Nigeria ranked 34 with a score of 45.5 points and persistent decline of 1.6 points from 2010. We should be worried that this ranking is with African countries when we pride ourselves as the ‘Giant of Africa’.
‘If we do not get it right with governance, we cannot get it right with development because in the broadest sense, the challenge of development is to improve the quality of life – higher incomes, better education, higher standards of health and nutrition, less poverty, cleaner environment, equal opportunities, a more secure society, and greater individual freedom.
‘Our failure to repeatedly activate governance to save development each time it is threatened by a crisis is the jinx we must break, and public administration is an effective tool we need to do it’, he stated.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
