Nigeria Is In Coma, Says Lai Mohammed

From Victor Seyi, Ilorin

Nigeria is facing daunting challenges in all sectors of its socio-economic cum political lives, National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said.
Mohammed lamented that never before has the country been put in a situation where it virtually had to start rebuilding from the scratch. He said almost all sectors of the nation’s development have become comatose.
The APC spokesman made these submissions during the ninth annual
Ramadan lecture organised under the aegis of the Lai Mohammed Ramadan
Lecture Series in Oro, Kwara State.
“We face daunting challenges in all sectors. Never before has our nation been put in a situation where it virtually had to start rebuilding from the scratch, after almost all sectors have become nearly comatose. This is why it is necessary for the new government at the centre to make haste slowly, and get it right once and for all,” he said.
Mohammed, who urged Nigerians to continue to contribute to the nation’s development, said they should insist on nothing but good governance, and resist all reactionary forces who want the status quo because it favoured them.
He also solicited Nigerians support for President Muhammadu Buhari, “who, more than any other leader in the history of Nigeria, is again being saddled with unprecedented challenges at a time of little resources”.
He blamed the rot that the nation has become on past elected officials in the country. He noted that the erstwhile elected officials were unable to translate growth to increased employment because the task of budgeting, fiscal and monetary policy management were left in the hands of political appointees.
According to him, such political appointees had inadvertently made policy choices that had weakened growth, constrained demand and worsened unemployment rate.
Mohammed, who painted a grim statistics in the key area of health, education, poverty and unemployment of the country’s socio-economic life, stressed that “we are in trouble, as a nation, if we don’t act in a deliberate, concerted and determined ways to turn things around for better.
“This is not a problem of ‘this government is slow or this government is fast’. It is a challenge of understanding the enormity of the problems we face, and finding a lasting solution once and for all, so we won’t be going around in circles.”