Posted by From DENNIS MERNYI, Abuja on
Former Minister of Finance, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, has dismissed the President Olusegun Obasanjo government's claims that it has reduced corruption in the country to barest minimum in the last years, insisting that the social malaise is spreading like a wild fire.
Former Minister of Finance, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, has dismissed the President Olusegun Obasanjo government's claims that it has reduced corruption in the country to barest minimum in the last years, insisting that the social malaise is spreading like a wild fire.
Ciroma, finance minister in the first tenure of Obasanjo, also argued that the Federal Government's reforms over the past eight years have achieved nothing to brag about.
He said the deteriorating condition of the electricity and energy sectors and the alarming rate of insecurity, unemployment and poor industrial development in the country assumed a proportionate level more than those years before 1999 when the regime came into power.
Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday at the extra-ordinary meeting of the National Council on Commerce and Industry, Ciroma, whose wife, is currently a minister in the Obasanjo cabinet, said he has been part of the Nigerian government since 1961, adding: " The nation's economy can only grow if corruption is completely weeded off.
" The economy cannot grow with the high level of corruption here. The level of corruption here is too high. When I was minister of finance, I scuttled a plan to steal N150 million by some public officers who were employeers of government. It was amazing," he disclosed.
He insisted that corruption in higher places continues to pervade the country at a proportionate rate and wondered why the government does not want to be realistic with the situation.
Said he: "In 2007, today, we are still looking like when we were before 1999. Starting with fuel supply, electricity, security, unemployment, poor industrialization, agriculture and the rest, nothing has changed. It is rather unfortunate.
"Unemployment has remained one of the consistent problems in this country. It is not good to ask our university and polytechnic graduates to create jobs for themselves when we have a government to provide job opportunities for them soon as they leave school because the nation's economy is vibrant enough to do so for young graduates."
He therefore, cautioned government workers and all Nigerians to shun corruption and concentrate on government work
In a keynote address on the "Challenges of Industrial Growth and Trade," Minister of Federal Capital Territory Administration, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, in an overview of the nation's economy, between 1999 and today, said the country's Growth Domestic Projection, GDP has risen to a reasonable margin of $140 billion by 2007 rating the nation's economic growth to the second largest in Africa.
El-Rufai also said that Nigeria's per capita income has moved to $1,000, up from less than $300 in 1999, giving the economic growth on average rate of seven percent starting from 2003.
He said that Nigeria's target to attain the position of the 20th largest world economy by the year 2020, captioned 20-2020 must include the role of trade and industry in the economic development and expansion, urging government to provide at least N100 billion in its annual budgetary arrangement to finance the Bank of Industry as bonds to industries seeking such assistance.