The former Deputy Governor Central Bank Of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Kingsley Moghalu, on Friday said Nigerians need to shun identity, regional or religion based politics for the needed paradigm shift to be achieved in forthcoming 2019 elections.
Moghalu said on Channels Television’s programme, Politics Today, that the country is plagued by high rate of poverty, coupled with epileptic electricity, poor healthcare delivery, among others and Nigerian citizens need to take their destiny in their hands and say no to politics of ethnicity and religion.
“Nigeria has a very high poverty rate of about 60%. There are about 30million Nigerians unemployed. We have 4,000 megawatts of electricity in a country of nearly 200million people. South Africa has 50million people and they have 40,000 megawatts of electricity. We have about 15million children of school age out of school. We are ranked 187 out of 189 by the WHO of all the countries in the world of our healthcare system.
“These are the facts and I think these are the things that should occupy the minds of Nigerian citizens and should move Nigerian citizens to take their destiny and future into their hands and say no, for the first time to all these identity politics of North and South and religion. It is just backwardness progressing in Nigeria and I think it’s time for us to move into a very different future,” he said.
Moghalu said this movement to a different future can only be achieved if a different and new leadership class emerge in Nigeria adding that leadership class should be based on vision and technocratic competence
“Systemic problems can be solved by real leadership. The problem is that the politicians in Nigeria are just playing politics and not offering us leadership.
“The current and past political class in Nigeria is visionless and they are distributed across various political parties. So, the fact of the matter is that there is no uniting and cohesive vision of the Nigerian state around which we can all unite. We see Nigeria as a very fractured country today and all these is because of leadership failure,” he said.
He suggested how this vision-driven and technocratic leadership can be achieved explaining the main purpose of leadership.
“Leadership is not about authority. It’s not just about power for the sake of power, authority for the sake of authority, no! Leadership is about how you affect the lives of people.
“How do you take the poor millions of Nigeria into the middle-class over a certain amount of time. That’s how countries like China have risen to be world class. That’s how countries like Brazil and Malaysia and even Rwanda in Africa are moving. That’s what we need in Nigeria today, we need a leadership that has clear vision and passion for the Nigerian people,” he said.
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