“Nigeria is not a poor country. Nigerians are the most travelled people. There is no country you go that you will not see Nigerians. The GDP of Nigeria is over half a trillion dollars and the economy is growing at close to 7 per cent. Aliko Dangote was recently classified among the 25 richest people in the World. I visited Kenya recently on a state visit and there was a programme for Nigerian and Kenyan business men to interact and the number of private jets that landed in Nairobi that day was a subject of discussion in Kenyan media for over a week. If you talk about ownership of private jets, Nigeria will be among the first 10 countries, yet they are saying that Nigeria is among the five poorest countries. Some of you will experience that there is an amount of money you will give to a Nigerian who needs help and will not even regard it and thank you but if you travel to other countries and give such an amount, the person will celebrate.But the World Bank statistics shows that Nigeria is among the five poorest countries. Our problem is not poverty, our problem is redistribution of wealth.’’ - President Goodluck Jonathan. (And I had thought this was all a hoax! So he really did utter these words? I am now reading it in the papers. When we say there is a difference between PhD - Doctor of Philosophy - and PhD - Powerful High Degree, Ogas personality cultists will say that we have started again. Are the above statements not from the mouth of someone with a Powerful High Degree? Anyway, I see some progress here. I see evidence of movement in the intellectual quality of Nigerias rulership. With Yakubu Gowon, in the heyday of the oil boom, it was: our problem is not money but how to spend it. With Goodluck Jonathan, it is: our problem is not poverty, our problem is redistribution of wealth.’’ You can see that a little over three decades of pedestrian, caterwauling, unsophisticated Nigerian leadership has witnessed a minimal positive shift. If you compare both statements, youll notice that Goodluck Jonathan the thinker is slightly less bad than Yakubu Gowon the thinker. We thank God for little mercies of progress.)
Posted on: Fri, 02 May 2014 10:24:48 +0000
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