Poverty: “There is real anguish in the land” – Odigie-Oyegun

The immediate-past National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, has admitted that many Nigerians are still suffering from the pangs of poverty despite the party’s promise to improve the economy.

According to the ex-party boss, “there is real anguish in the land” and it would “sound heartless to say it is not so”.

He stated this in an interview published by Saturday Punch while responding a question on whether the APC-led Federal Government had fulfilled its 2015 campaign promise to revamp the economy and bring an end to poverty in the country.

However, he described development as a “long and tedious process” that could never happen overnight.

Oyegun said:

Well, let me put it this way; the problem has not been solved. Of course, there is real anguish in the land, there is real pain in the land and it is very unfortunate. It will sound heartless to say it is not so. This is a very unfortunate period that we are passing through. Unfortunately, development is a long process, a tedious process.

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As I said in one of my interviews, in 1963, when, as young, passionate officers, we joined the civil service, when development plan which we were a part of, was the in-thing, in many countries of the world, people were actually dying of hunger in the streets. They had trucks plying the streets picking up people who had died of hunger. May God never, never let the situation be as bad as that for us! It’s a very, very unfortunate thing, and if we don’t accept that it exists, emphasise and work to correct the situation, then we are not being true to the Nigerian people.

It is a situation we inherited and it was inevitable. We don’t want to go into the history of it; we are supposed to solve the problem. That is why the people entrusted power to us. All I can say is that, the collapse of the Nigerian economy has been reversed, the economic base has been rebuilt during the first term (of President Buhari in office) and it is my prayer that with the nature of the government we are going to have now, we would be able to bring to bear, the innovative policies, effective policies that will address the economic situation and bring growth.

Right now, we are talking about two per cent of economic growth but the population is growing at well over three per cent, in which case, we are not growing. And if we are not growing, we cannot address a lot of these issues. So, when constituted, the government must aim at a rate of growth that is well in excess of three per cent. Whatever needs to be done has to be done.

Painful decisions may have to be taken, as far as the economy is concerned, which, of course, as usual, will lead to hue and cry in the system. But, there is no way we can make the level of progress we need to make if we do not think and work out of the box. Think out of the box, do something new, be creative and result-oriented.