Former Cross River State Governor, Donald Duke, has mocked the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government for rejoicing over Nigeria’s ‘exit’ from recession.
Duke, who said he’s broke, also advised the administration to work harder, stating that the masses were yet to feel the development.
“Just because it is easier for goods to pass through the port…that’s no big deal,” he said at the official launch of the National Competitiveness Report and Sub National Index held in Lagos.
“The point is what does each one of us add to the general well-being of the country. Most folks in Nigeria are parasitic.
“You walk on the streets and people in the prime of their lives are hawking plantain chips if they are lucky to find something to hawk.
“We, the few privileged, sit in our cars, our windows wound up, and pretend to look at our phones because we don’t want to see the reality out there.
“This country, for instance, has to grow at about 15 per cent annually, not in Lagos, but nationally, for the next ten years, to absorb the numbers that are out of the economy. We are self-deceptive. We say that unemployment is 15 per cent.
“In other words, out of every 100 only 15 have no jobs. I think it is the other way round; only 15 have jobs and the rest 85 are living off the 15. The question is how long can that go on?
“Then we sit down and say that inflation is 16 per cent. How do you arrive at that? I know I’m broke. So if inflation is too much money in circulation, where is this money?
“The truth is too few people have too much money. If you re-circulate resources properly, and I am not being socialist here (all you need to do is to create jobs for people), then you’ll find that it will reflect on the economy.
“So what we are doing is to run a goodwill economy; 85 percent of the economy is depending on the goodwill of the 15 percent.”
Duke further advocated for a policy he described as SHIT (Skills, Health, Infrastructure and Technology).
“I don’t use education any longer because education is beyond reading and writing. Education without the set skills that make you productive is hollow,” he said.
“We are ridiculously spiritual because we live purely by the grace of God. Yes, we all do, but heaven helps those who help themselves. If you are afflicted here by a disease today, your chances of survival are 50:50.
“The drugs for common diseases are not even manufactured here. So we have a loss of productivity that we have not addressed at all.”